Until American Calvinist missionaries created a Hawaiian alphabet and writing system after their arrival to the Hawaiian islands in 1819, all Kanaka Maoli literature was oral. By inventing a Hawaiian alphabet, the missionaries were able to teach Kanaka Maoli reading and writing; by the early 1830s the first missionary-controlled printing press was established, and by 1861 the first of several dozen independent Kanaka Maoli Hawaiian-language newspapers, which flourished from 1861 through the 1930s, came into existence.