Book on Foreign Mission School in Connecticut

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Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Savages of New England; The Connecticut academy welcomed Cherokees but didn’t anticipate that the students might fall in love with local girls. Wall Street Journal, Mar 25, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702304914904579437362532449156
(book review on John Demos, The Heathen School; A story of hope and betrayal in the age of the early republic. Knopf, 2014)

Note:
(a) "a short-lived academy that opened its doors in 1816 in the quiet Connecticut village of Cornwall. Its formal name was the Foreign Mission School, and its stated purpose was to educate 'heathen youth' from far-flung parts of the world as well as from Native American tribes. Graduates were to be dispatched back home as teachers, doctors and missionaries. The school closed in 1826 after a scandal erupted over two Cherokee students who courted and married local women."
(i) Cornwall, Connecticut
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornwall,_Connecticut
([now] a town; The population was 1,420 at the 2010 census; named after Cornwall, England)
(ii) Foreign Mission School (1817-1826; established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions)  wikipedia
(iii) American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Board_of_Commissioners_for_Foreign_Mission
(section 2 ABCFM in China)

(b) "His [Mr Demos'] previous subjects have included * * * a Puritan family in colonial Massachusetts that was captured by the Mohawks during the French and Indian wars."
(i) Mohawk people
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_people
(historically based in the Mohawk Valley [see map] in upstate New York; section 1 Origins of name)
(ii) French and Indian War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War
(1754–1763; is the American name for the North American theater of the Seven Years' War; The war was fought primarily between the colonies of British America and New France, with both sides supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France, who declared war on each other in 1756 [to 1763; total seven years]; last paragraph of introduction for "outcome"; table: Mohawk fought on the French side, Cherokee on British side until 1758 [followed by Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761; Cherokees fought independently and not as allies of France; resulting in British victory)] )

(c) “Among the mission school's first students was the wistful young man at Yale [main entrance in 1809] who longed to be educated. His name was Henry Obookiah, and he was an ‘Owhyhean.’  That is to say, he was a Hawaiian, or in the parlance of the day, a native of the Sandwich Islands. He arrived in the United States after working his passage as a seaman on a New England trading ship that had sailed to China. In New Haven, he was taught informally by Yale students and invited to live at the home of the college president, Timothy Dwight. He went on to master English, become a devout Christian and write a memoir (with the help of a mentor at Yale) that became a best seller and catapulted him to celebrity status.”
(i)
(A) Hawaiian language
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language
(section 1 Name: The island name was first written in English in 1778 by British explorer James Cook)
(B) Hawaii
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii
(section 1 Etymology)

Maori of New Zealand are from Taiwan.
(ii)
(A) For Henry Obookiah, see Henry Opukahaia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Opukahaia
(c 1792-1818; His name was usually spelled Obookiah during his lifetime; converted to Christianity in 1815;
(B) Memoirs of Henry Obookiah; A native of Owhyhee, and a member of the Foreign Mission School; Who died at Cornwall, Conn Feb 17, 1818 aged 26 years. Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union (1830)
archive.org/details/memoirsofhenryob00dwig

* Internet Archive is a non-profit founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco.
archive.org/about/


(d) “Obookiah is just one of the remarkable men and women in ‘The Heathen School’ * * * [including] students themselves—a mix of boys and young men from the Pacific Islands, East Asia, Europe, Mexico and 14 Native American tribes. The townspeople of Cornwall are especially well limned by Mr Demos. At first, the residents take pride in the school and are generous to the students, with whom they develop affectionate relationships. But when two teenage girls fall in love with Cherokee students, a crisis ensues. The men and women of Cornwall are shocked into a close examination of their Christian beliefs and forced to take sides on the question of intermarriage. The author poignantly traces the evolution in the attitudes of the girls' families from initial revulsion to warm acceptance. The new wives accompany their husbands to their Cherokee homelands and by all accounts are happy in their marriages. Mr Demos follows the Cherokee suitors long after they leave Cornwall. Both men become influential leaders of the Cherokee nation. John Ridge negotiated with the federal government on behalf of his people. Elias Boudinot (who had taken the name of a New Jersey congressman and president of the American Bible Society) was editor of the first Native American newspaper. Both men were key players in the process of Indian ‘removal.’ They initially opposed the forced relocation of the Cherokee nation from Georgia to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, but they came to support it, in part because they feared that Cherokees would not survive white encroachment if they stayed in Georgia.
(i) limn (vt)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/limn
(ii) Cherokee
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee
section 4.3 19th century; section 4.3.1 Acculturation: Major RIDGE, his son John RIDGE and Major's nephew Elias BOUDINOT; section 4.3.2.1 Trail of Tears: Indian Removal Act of 1830, Cherokee removed 1838-1839, Intermarried European Americans and missionaries also walked the Trail of Tears, On June 22, 1839, Major Ridge, John Ridge and Elias Boudinot were assassinated)

* Cherokee (n; probably ultimately from Creek [language]  calá·kki; plural: Cherokee or Cherokees)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cherokee
(iii) John Ridge
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ridge
(1802-1839; born Skah-tle-loh-skee (Yellow Bird); section 2 Marriage and family)
(iv) Elias Boudinot (Cherokee)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Boudinot_(Cherokee)
(1802-1839; born Gallegina Uwati; section 2 Marriage and family; section 6 Removal to Indian Territory)
(v) “The new wives accompany their husbands to their Cherokee homelands”

Both families (John Ridge’s and Elias Boudinot’s), after their separate marriages, moved back to New Echota (in present-day northwestern Georgia).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Echota
(capital of the Cherokee Nation from 1825 to their forced removal in the 1830s; named after Chota, the former capital in the present-day Tennessee [the Cherokee land in Tennessee was ceded to US (in 1819), so Cherokee Nation had to build a new capital at New Chota)

(e) “Mr Demos uses the story of the heathen school and its scholars as a vehicle to examine larger subjects in US history—the China trade that helped open the young nation to the wider world; the Second Great Awakening, which propelled a Protestant religious revival; and, most movingly, the Trail of Tears, the forcible relocation of the Cherokees and other tribes after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He also examines broad themes in the evolution of US identity. In his words, the heathen school's ‘bedrock ambition was to make the world a better place,’ an aim he rightly calls ‘intrinsic to American culture and history.’ The school was, however, a failed ‘experiment’: The collision of cultures rocked the town of Cornwall, divided families and led to the school's collapse. Yet it was a noble venture that pointed "toward the diverse, multicultural people we have become today.”

Second Great Awakening
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening