Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
small number of scorpions, although unless you're hiking through a compost pile
you're not likely to encounter them. So when you set off hiking, there is nothing to
worry about in the way of natural predators.
No one knows exactly when the first Polynesians arrived in Hawai'i, but the great delib-
erate migrations from the southern islands seem to have taken place AD 400-800, though
anthropologists keep pushing the date back as new evidence becomes available. They ar-
rived through an uncanny ability to sail and navigate without instruments, using the sun
by day and the moon and rising stars by night. The first planned migrations were from the
Marquesas, a group of 11 islands in eastern Polynesia, and for five centuries the Marques-
ans settled and lived peacefully on the new land.
Then, it appears that in the 12th century a deliberate exodus of warlike Tahitians arrived
and subjugated the settled islanders. They came to conquer, and when a Tahitian priest
named Pa'ao introduced the warlike god Ku and the rigid
kapu
system of laws, it forever
altered the religious and social landscape. Voyages between Tahiti and Hawai'i continued
for about 100 years, and Tahitian customs, legends, and language became the Hawaiian
way of life. Then suddenly, for no recorded or apparent reason, the voyages discontinued,
and Hawai'i returned to total isolation.
On January 18, 1778, Captain Cook's 100-foot flagship HMS
Resolution
and its 90-foot
companion HMS
Discovery
first caught sight of the island of O'ahu. Two days later, Cook
would venture ashore at the town of Waimea to reprovision his ships, and from this mo-
ment on, life would never be the same for Hawaiians. Though he didn't stay long in
Waimea, Cook did note in his diary that the Hawaiians looked similar to other peoples of
the Pacific he had encountered, specifically those of New Zealand.
Once the seafarers were onshore, brass medals were traded for a mackerel, and Cook
noted that the Hawaiians were quite enamored with the ships. Sailors immediately took to
mixing with the women, bringing the first venereal diseases to the island that would later
