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.