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In Hawai‘i it was much the same. Hiram Bingham, probably the most prominent leader of the missionary movement in the first half of the nineteenth century, was, as someone reared in New England, a product of that American worldview. Indeed, his detailed account of his experiences with the Hawaiian people closely mirrors the North American imperial literature of the era. Recalling his memorable “first intercourse with the natives,” for example, Bingham, sounding much like those who first made contact with the Indian peoples of North America, found that

the appearance of destitution, degradation, and barbarism, among the chattering, and almost naked[,] savages, whose heads and feet, and much of their sunburnt swarthy skins, were bare, was appalling. Some of our number, with gushing tears, turned away from the spectacle. Others with firmer nerve continued their gaze, but were ready to exclaim, “Can these be human beings! How dark and comfortless their state of mind and heart! How imminent the danger to the immortal soul, shrouded in this deep pagan gloom! Can such beings be civilized? Can they be Christianized? Can we throw ourselves upon these rude shores, and take up our abode, for life, among such a people, for the purpose of training them for heaven?”