A Touch of History for Hawai'i

The Polynesians, of course, were the first to discover the Hawaiian Islands (only they weren't called Hawai'i until many centuries later.)  Sometime around 1300 A.D. the Polynesians virtually stopped all voyages to these islands, and the Hawaiians developed a sophisticated culture of their own making.

Almost 500 years later, when Captain Cook landed on Kaua'i and named these islands the Sandwich Islands (after his mentor, the Earl of Sandwich, back in England), he found about 400,000 "native Hawaiians."  They were a friendly, self-sufficient (had to be!) and very productive people.  As he moved inland to the east and north, exploring the island, Cook might have seen something like this:

The Hawaiians built and lived in grass houses (pili) (without the wood and glass windows in Cook's time...),

 
built saltwater fishponds on the shores called loko i'a, made feather-crested headgear (mahioles) and created petroglyphs called ki'i pohaku.  These things were not replicated anywhere else in the world.  They were completely and distinctively Hawaiian.

When you arrive here, if you're going to take a taxi, you had better learn their language.  It looks like English, but it ain't English!  If you give the taxi driver an address in English pronunciation, he will have no idea where to take you - even if he himself is a New Yorker or a Texan!

The first missionaries to arrive found no written language and so created one using only 12 letters.  (Why?  N-o-o-o idea.)  There are five vowels : A, E, I, O, U.  That's cool, but they aren't pronounced the same way as OUR vowels.  There were only seven consonants:  H, K, L, M, N, P, and W.  These ARE pronounced the same as ours, except for the W which might sound like a V.  That's the easy part.

Vowels are like this:
A - as in Ah if stressed, or above if not stressed
E - as in say if stressed or dent if not stressed
I -  as in bee
O - as in no
U - as in boo

There's a particular type of lava called 'a'a.  That would be pronounced ah-ah. (See the stress marks on both letters?)  A Hawaiian chief is called Ali'i (ah-LEE-ee).  Check these out:  hala (HA-la) and hale (HA-leh).  One is a tree and the other a building.  You will be known as a haole (HOW-leh), a white man.  Perhaps the better part of wisdom is to hand the taxi driver your address written on a piece of paper...

Within 100 years after trading ships and exploring adventurers arrived with diseases and immigrant workers, the native Hawaiian population dwindled to just 40,000.

There is an island off of the coast of Kaua'i known as the Forbidden Island because it is forbidden for any non-native Hawaiian to step foot on the island - even for a picnic!  It has a population of about 200.  The island's real name is Ni'ihau.  (You might remember the movie "South Pacific" referencing the "Forbidden Island.)