The story of the young Hawaiian who created the first written form of his own language, and whose death set off the missionary wave that reshaped the islands.

• ʻŌpūkahaʻia escaped the wars on Hawaiʻi Island as a boy by swimming out to an American merchant ship.
• He landed in Connecticut unable to read English, then learned English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
• Realizing Hawaiian had never been written down, he built the first Hawaiian grammar and dictionary himself.
• He died of typhoid at 26, just before he could carry the work home.
• His published memoirs drove the 1820 missionary expedition that brought writing and Christianity to Hawaiʻi.

Outlook: His alphabet work remains the foundation of written Hawaiian, and the missionary arrival it triggered is still the dividing line in how the islands' history gets told.