page_title: Hawaii
section_title: European arrival
hierarchical_section_title: Hawaii / History / European arrival
caption_attribution_description: Kalaniopuu, King of Hawaii, bringing presents to Captain Cook. Shows a Hawaiian canoe with "crab-claw" and many oarsmen, carrying Kalaniopuu, the Hawaiian chief, to visit Captain Cook aboard the 'Resolution'. The main canoe, an outriger, is followed by two double-hulled canoes without sails, full of oarsmen, and one boat is carrying wrapped carved figures. The Hawaiian coastal hills can be seen in the right background.
context_page_description: Hawaii is a state of the United States of America located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the only U.S. state located outside North America, the only island state, and the only state in the tropics.
  The state encompasses nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, 137 islands spread over 1,500 miles. The volcanic archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are, in order from northwest to southeast: Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and the largest, Hawaiʻi, which the state is named after. It is often called the "Big Island" or "Hawaii Island" to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago.
  Hawaii is the 8th-smallest geographically and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the 50 states. It is the only state with an Asian American plurality. Hawaii has more than 1.4 million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U.S. military personnel. The state capital and largest city is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu.
context_section_description: The 1778 arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook marked the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawaiʻi. Cook named the archipelago "the Sandwich Islands" in honor of his sponsor John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, publishing the islands' location and rendering the native name as Owyhee. The form 'Owyhee' or 'Owhyhee' is preserved in the names of certain locations in the American part of the Pacific Northwest, among them Owyhee County and Owyhee Mountains in Idaho, named after three native Hawaiian members of a trapping party who went missing in the area.
  It is very possible that Spanish explorers arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the 16th century, two hundred years before Cook's first documented visit in 1778. Ruy López de Villalobos commanded a fleet of six ships that left Acapulco in 1542 bound for the Philippines, with a Spanish sailor named Juan Gaetano aboard as pilot. Depending on the interpretation, Gaetano's reports describe an encounter with either Hawaiʻi or the Marshall Islands. If de Villalobos' crew spotted Hawaiʻi, Gaetano would thus be considered the first European to see the islands. Some scholars have dismissed these claims due to a lack of credibility.
  Nonetheless, Spanish archives contain a chart that depicts islands at the same latitude as Hawaiʻi, but with a longitude ten degrees east of the islands. In this manuscript, the island of Maui is named La Desgraciada (The Unfortunate Island), and what appears to be Hawaiʻi Island is named La Mesa (The Table). Islands resembling Kahoʻolawe', Lānaʻi, and Molokaʻi are named Los Monjes (The Monks). For two-and-a-half centuries, Spanish galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico along a route that passed south of Hawaiʻi on their way to Manila. The exact route was kept secret to protect the Spanish trade monopoly against competing powers. Hawaiʻi thus maintained independence, despite being situated on a sea route East-West between nations that were subjects of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, an empire that exercised jurisdiction over many subject civilizations and kingdoms on both sides of the Pacific.
  Despite such contested claims, Cook is generally credited as being the first European to land at Hawaiʻi, having visited the Hawaiian Islands twice. As he prepared for departure after his second visit in 1779, a quarrel ensued as Cook took temple idols and fencing as "firewood", and a minor chief and his men stole a boat from his ship. Cook abducted the King of Hawaiʻi Island, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, and held him for ransom aboard his ship in order to gain return of Cook's boat, as this tactic had previously worked in Tahiti and other islands. Instead, the supporters of Kalaniʻōpuʻu attacked, killing Cook and four sailors as Cook's party retreated along the beach to their ship. The ship departed without retrieving the stolen boat.
  After Cook's visit and the publication of several books relating his voyages, the Hawaiian Islands attracted many European visitors: explorers, traders, and eventually whalers, who found the islands to be a convenient harbor and source of supplies. Early British influence can be seen in the design of the flag of Hawaiʻi, which bears the Union Jack in the top-left corner. These visitors introduced diseases to the once-isolated islands, causing the Hawaiian population to drop precipitously. Native Hawaiians had no resistance to Eurasian diseases, such as influenza, smallpox and measles. By 1820, disease, famine and wars between the chiefs killed more than half of the Native Hawaiian population. During the 1850s, measles killed a fifth of Hawaiʻi's people.
  Historical records indicated the earliest Chinese immigrants to Hawaiʻi originated from Guangdong Province; a few sailors had arrived in 1778 with Captain Cook's journey, and more arrived in 1789 with an American trader who settled in Hawaiʻi in the late 18th century. It is said that leprosy was introduced by Chinese workers by 1830, and as with the other new infectious diseases, it proved damaging to the Hawaiians.
caption: Tereoboo, King of Owyhee, bringing presents to Captain Cook by John Webber (drawn 1779, published 1784)
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