Hawaii today is the farthest west state in the Union. It is also the most unusual state in the United States, for it consists of 132 islands and atolls extended across some 1,600 miles of ocean. The eight major islands in the chain are what are usually referred to as Hawaii, and of these, seven are permanently inhabited--Kahoolawe is not (Kyselka & Lanterman, 1980, 1-10). As is true of many parts of the world, the Hawaiian Islands were actually "discovered" more than once. The islands were first discovered by the Polynesians who came to inhabit the region. The West discovered the islands centuries later when they were explored by Captain Cook, a rather controversial figure in Hawaiian history and in the history of exploration and discovery.
The first contact with Western ideas and technology came when Captain James Cook accidentally visited the islands with hi British expedition in 1778-1779. At that time, the population of the islands was totally Hawaiian (Tabrah, 1980, 3). The Polynesian ancestors of contemporary Hawaiians settled the islands more than a thousand years ago (Tabrah, 1980, 4). Captain Cook was surprised to find the islands where they lie because he believed there was no land in those waters. This was three thousand miles north of Tahiti, and because of the way the people reacted, Cook believed that they had never before encountered Europeans. The islands were so far from the routes usually taken by early explorers that they had remained undiscovered by Europeans over two centuries of Pacific voyaging. The islands were like New Zealand in that they had been settled from central Polynesia, probably by a population from either the Society Islands or the Marquesas, around A.D. 1000. The customs and language of the people remained remarkably similar to those of Tahiti and its neighbors. While Cook considered himself the first European to find these islands, there is some evidence that Spanish explorers foun...