Christian missionaries probably had more success in Hawaii than anywhere else in the world. The first missionaries came to the islands in 1820, and by 1825, the Hawaiian king recognized the ten commandments as the basis of his legal system. Soon the Hawaiian language was formulated as a written discipline by the missionaries, and as further testimony to their zeal, in 1835 the islands outlawed public drunkenness.
The islanders were essentially an agricultural people, whose polytheistic religon was filled with idols and taboos. The early Hawaiian concept of an afterlife was peculiarly unpleasant: most Hawaiians believed that evil spirits slowly ate them after death. The missionaries, besides offering education and law, gave the Hawaiians a religion that would at least provide a pleasant afterlife for people who had been good. The new religion was embraced, and within thirty years, only vestiges of the previous religion remained.
An agrarian society has little need for government mail service, and a society that has not learned to write has even less. This was the situation in Hawaii before the missionaries came. But the missionaries did require a post, both to communicate with each other from island to island and to communicate with family, friends, and coworkers back home. The first stamps were produced under a postal reform act of 1851 and were issued in October of that year. Three stamps were produced: a two cent, five cent, and thirteen cent. The two-cent and five-cent tamps, when used to the United States, had to have additional United States stamps applied to them or else they would arrive postage due. The thirteen-cent stamp would pay the postage through, though money would later be exchanged between the United States and Hawaiian postal services, and the stamp would be cancelled "US Hawaiian Postage Paid." All three of these stamps are called the Hawaiian Missionaries, because they are found exclusively on missionary correspondence.
The three stamps were printed on an extremely thin, hard paper called pelure by philatelists; pelure paper resembles an onion skin as much as it does paper, and it is extremely brittle. Although the missionary stamps were issued in 1851, they were unknown to the community of philatelists until 1864. Even then, many philatelists considered their status to be questionable, until information on their issuance was ferreted out of Hawaii some years later. The jury was out on the two-cent Hawaii, by far the rarest of the three, until the mid-1890s.
One of philately's most fascinating stories relates to the two-cent missionary. (And it does not stem from the fertile brain of Agath Christie, either!) In June of 1892, a French collector, Mr. Gaston Leroux, was discovered murdered. There was no sign of a break-in at his Paris apartment, and though the drawers of his desk appeared to be rifled through, there was no evidence that any of Leroux's considerable possessions had been taken. The apartment was searched and researched for clues until finally the motive for the crime was discovered-- Leroux's two-cent Hawaiian was missing from his collection.
Even in 1892, a two-cent Hawaiian was worth about $2,000. Police fanned out through the city, checking dealers' shops and notable collectors to see if anyone had been offered the stamp. Suspicion (the reasons are not clear) fell on another prominent collector, one Hector Giroux. A detective of the police force pretended he was a collector, joined the Paris Society, learned about stamps, and eventually befriend Giroux. After some months, the detective feigned an especial interest in the rare Hawaiian Missionaries, particularly the precious two cent. Soon the pride of the collector Giroux overcame his prudence and he showed the policeman the two-cent Missionary. He was arrested and eventually confessed to the crime. Giroux had the money to buy the stamp, he said, but Leroux would not sell.
Philatelists have long wondered whether Giroux should have been made to stand trial. Among a jury of collectors, "temporary philatelic insanity" would have been a reasonable defense for the crime. As stamps from a United States possession, the Hawaiian Missionaries have great popularity, and of the fourteen specimens that are known of the two cent, only about half now exist outside philatelic museums and so can be bought by a collector. In November of 1980, two examples of the two cent were sold from the collection of Royohei Ishakawa, who in recent years has created perhaps the finest United States and United States-related stamp collections. Both copies realized over $200,000 when they were sold, which represents an increase of 100 times the 1900 price.