Discovery and Settlement
The earliest settlements in the Hawaiian Islands were made by Polynesians who traveled to Hawaii using large double-hulled canoes. They brought with them pigs, dogs, chickens, taro, sweet potatoes, coconut, banana, and sugarcane.
There are several theories regarding migration to Hawaii. The "one-migration" theory suggests a single settlement. A variation on the one-migration theory instead suggests a single, continuous settlement period. A "multiple migration" theory suggests that there was a first settlement by a group called Menehune (settlers from the Marquesas Islands), and then a second settlement by the Tahitians.
On January 18, 1778 Captain James Cook and his crew, while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage between Alaska and Asia, were surprised to find the Hawaiian islands so far north in the Pacific. He named them the "Sandwich Islands", after the fourth Earl of Sandwich. After the discovery by Cook, other Europeans and Americans came to the Sandwich Islands.
Juan de Gaitán is said to have arrived in Hawaii in 1555. There are Spanish maps of the era in which islands are shown in Hawaii latitude, but 10° further east. The first sea chart that would prove this is dated 1551, signed by Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian and French cartographers, in which is shown an archipelago located at points close to the place Hawaii occupies on the globe.
Read more about this topic: History Of Hawaii
Famous quotes containing the words discovery and/or settlement:
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)