Kealakekua's Pre-Captain Cook History

One of the most entertaining retellings of Hawaii’s pre-history is captured in James Michener’s tomb Hawaii, while it is undeniably fiction his description of the ocean floor rising up through volcanic action and then the populating of the island chains by flora and fauna is as likely accurate as any geology and biology book explanation.

The first people to arrive and stay in Hawaii were Polynesians, most historians and Hawaiian legends agree that the first wave of these seafaring people arrived from the South Pacific, Marquesas Islands sometime between 300 AD and 500 AD, a distance of 2400 miles in double-hulled sailing canoes. It was approximately 600 years later when the second wave of Polynesians arrived from Tahiti and established dominance over the existing tribes enslaving them.

It is this later group that most people are familiar with, as they introduced high priests and ruling kings for each island. The most famous of these kings being Kamehameha I, who was present at the festival in Kealakekua Bay when Captain Cook arrived in 1779. Just three years later Kamehameha I became the ruler of the Big Island of Hawaii in 1782. By 1792, at the age of 24, Kamehameha had conquered all the Hawaiian Islands but Kauai. In 1810 he fulfilled his own prophecy by uniting all islands under his rule after negotiating peace. Nine years later, Kamehameha I passed away in Kona on the island of Hawaii. From this period on, Hawaii’s history is fatefully tied to the history of Britain and the United States.