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:
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other ...”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)