Ancient Hawaii - The Discoverers of Hawai'i

Ancient Hawaii, by Herb Kawainui Kane:
THE DISCOVERERS OF HAWAI'I

The Discovery of Oahu
Collection of the Outrigger Waikiki Hotel

They came in double canoes, searching northward into an unknown sea. Sailing on strange winds, paddling through doldrum calms, braving high seas and storms, they persisted in their quest for new land.

Behind them lay the South Pacific islands their ancestors had discovered centuries earlier. observing plover and other shore birds flocking together each spring and migrating northward, they may have concluded that land lay in that direction.

Their spaceship was the voyaging canoe. Built with tools or stone, hone, and shell, assembled with lashings or braided fiber, and powered by sails of plaited matting, it was the finest product of any culture that knew no metals.

In these unfamiliar northern latitudes they were buffeted by strong prevailing easterly winds. When seas came over the gunwales, they bailed. When gusts ripped the sails, they made repairs. Lashings loosened by pounding waves were tightened or replaced. When drinking water and food supplies dwindled, they went on scant rations. And they endured.

For these were the Children of Tangaroa, Spirit of the Sea, and of Tane, Tu, Rongo, mighty Spirits of Nature and the most senior ancestors of the People as well as all other beings in the universe. While other explorers sailed with the comforting presence of continental coasts on heir beam, Polynesians faced the open ocean without fear as their own and only world.

The moaning of conch shell trumpets kept canoes together at night. Sailing under the rising stars of the northern sky, reaching across powerful Northeast Tradewinds, they came upon a chain of islands of immense size. They searched for a landing; and when their canoes touched shore, human history in Hawai'i had begun.

Their landing, we may believe, was not made without some ceremony to placate the spirits of this strange new land. They planted the cuttings, tubers and seeds they had carefully protected from seawater. Until their first harvest was ready they subsisted by fishing, bird hunting, and gathering. And, over many generations, they made these islands a Polynesian place.

We know nothing of their traditions, nor the names by which they knew themselves or these islands. The traditions we know as Hawaiian originated with others from the South Pacific who came to rule them centuries later. But we know from the archaeological record that they were Polynesian.

A thousand years would pass before the Vikings of another ocean would dare venture away from Europe's shores.

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