Joseph (or Iosepa) Kahoʻoluhi Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu was born January 13, 1842, at the village of Kaimū, known as the "land of the patterned sand" in the Puna district, located in the southeastern corner of the island of Hawaii. His parents were Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu and Keaweolalo (also known as Keaweleikini). Born into a family of the kaukau aliʻi class of chiefs, subordinate to the high chiefs or aliʻi nui, Nawahi's chiefly (aliʻi) descent was rarely emphasized in his lifetime. His father was descended from the chiefly retainers of the 18th century King Kalaniʻōpuʻu, who the British explorer Captain James Cook attempted to kidnap at Kealakekua Bay in 1779, before his demise at the hand of the Hawaiians. Shortly after his birth, he was adopted in the Hawaiian tradition of hānai by his paternal uncle Joseph Paʻakaula, an elementary schoolteacher who became the first educator of his hānai son at the ʻAiakalā School. In 1853, at the age of eleven, Nāwahī was enrolled in the Hilo Boarding School, a Protestant mission vocational school, under the care and instruction of American missionary Reverend David Belden Lyman. The school had been established in 1835 by Lyman and his wife to teach Native Hawaiian boys the trades needed to adapt to a modernizing Hawaii entering the industrial age. Students were taught the ideals of American Protestant work ethics, and were required to perform manual labor to pay for their board. It became a model for the schools of the rest of the islands and also influenced missionary descendant Samuel C. Armstrong, who founded Hampton University to educate emancipated slaves after the American Civil War. In 1857, Nāwahī attended the Lāhaināluna School on Maui, where he was educated by J. F. Pokue and L. ʻAnalū. Upon graduating from Lahainaluna in 1861, he decided to continue his education at the Chief's School at Kahehuna (also known as the Royal School) for several years under the tutelage of Reverend Edward G. Beckwith. After finishing his formal education, Nāwahī returned to the island of Hawaii and worked as a teacher, establishing his own boarding school at Piʻihonua in 1863. Principal Lyman later hired him to become assistant principal at his alma mater, Hilo Boarding School. Although educated and heavily influenced by the American missionaries, Nāwahī remained loyal to his Hawaiian roots, as evidenced by his later political opposition to the descendants of the missionaries. According to historian Jon Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, "he