They were wayfinders, traveling in double-hulled canoes into unknown seas. They were skilled travelers over the open ocean at a time when Europeans were still clinging to coastlines. They came from the South Pacific; The Marquesas, perhaps, or Bora Bora or Tahiti, on voyages of discovery over thousands of miles, just as their ancestors had made the journeys of discovery to those islands.
Having only tools of wood and stone, they sailed an area of millions of square miles and discovered and populated islands spread out over a quarter of the surface of the planet.
They learned to recognize the wind in the color of the sea, the presence of land in the color of the clouds. When they set foot on these strange, beautiful, uninhabited islands, sometime around 1700 years ago, they became The Hawaiians. By the time of western contact some 1500 years later, they were a thriving civilization with a population estimated to be as large as 800,000.
The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated land forms on Earth, lying in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. In Hawaii, you are literally further away from anywhere else than anywhere else.
The islands are also said to be the most prominent geological feature on the face of the planet. The islands are the uppermost part of huge volcanoes formed on the ocean floor. A chain of islands that stretches all the way to Kure Atoll, beyond Midway, were actually formed over the same spot on the surface of the Earth, where a hot spot has existed on the sea floor for about 80 million years.
The islands sit on a huge tectonic plate which is slowly moving northwest. As it moves, it drags the islands along with it; everything moving to the northwest at approximately 3½ inches per year. As the islands string out to the northwest, they get progressively older. That kind of explains why this southern-most of the islands is the youngest in the chain.
The northwest movement also explains why the only active volcanoes in the entire chain are the three that form the south side of this island, and the submarine volcano Lo’ihi, off the Big Island's south coast. All the other volcanoes that formed the other islands have been pulled away from the hot spot on the sea floor and have become extinct.
Two of the largest mountains on Earth, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, are here on the Big Island. By the time they reach the surface of the water to become islands, Hawaiian volcanoes are already over 19,000’ tall. Mauna Kea, the tallest of the Hawaiian peaks, rises to 13,796’ above sea level. All told, Mauna Kea rises over 33,000’ from base to peak, and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the tallest mountain on Earth. Mauna Loa falls about 120’ short of Mauna Kea, but makes up for it in shear volume. Mauna Loa, which means ‘long mountain’, is about 80 miles long and 30 miles wide, and is over 18,000 cubic miles in volume! It could easily swallow, for instance, the entire Sierra Nevada mountain range along the West Coast of the U.S. mainland. Spread out over this entire island, 18,000 cubic miles would cover the entire island to a depth of about 4½ miles.
The two mountains are pretty much responsible for shaping our local weather. Typically, clouds form out over the ocean through evaporation and ride in over the eastern side of the island on our fairly constant easterly trade winds. The clouds stack up against the slopes of those two huge volcanic peaks and linger here on the eastern side, making Hilo the rainiest city in the U.S. Generally, clouds are blocked from getting to the western side of the island. On the western side, they get less than a tenth of the rain we get here in the east. Of all the islands, The Big Island is the most ecologically diverse. There are 13 distinct climatic zones identified throughout the world, and the Big Island has 11 of them, with natural environments ranging from the desert plains of Ka‘u to the rain forests above Hilo, to snowcapped mountain peaks.
Before it was a part of the United States, Hawaii was an independent nation and a kingdom. And before all these islands were united as one kingdom, each of the individual islands were individual kingdoms. It was Kamehameha, a native of this island, that first brought all the islands together under one rule. That’s probably why they’re called the Hawaiian Islands, since Kamehameha was from this island of Hawaii. Kamehameha is still a pretty revered character here in Hawaii. Throughout the islands are statues of the king and things named in his honor. June 11, Kamehameha’s birthday, is even a State holiday here in Hawaii. We call him Kamehameha the Great. Kamehameha was the first in a string of monarchs that ruled these islands for a short 98 years, between 1795, when he first brought them together under one rule, and 1893, when they fell under the rule of the United States.
Instrumental in Kamehameha’s conquest of the islands was the introduction of western weaponry, unknown to the Hawaiians prior to the arrival of western man in 1778. The first westerner to ‘discover’ the islands was a British sea captain by the name of James Cook, who arrived in Hawaii in 1778, around the same time as the American Revolution. Hawaii and Great Britain established very strong ties throughout the following years. Kamehameha was able to mass a cache of guns, cannons, and ammunition and had several British naval officers as tactical advisors. Great Britain even adopted Hawaii as a protectorate, and Hawaii adopted the British national flag and the British national anthem for the fledgling kingdom. ‘God Saved The King’ was the official anthem of the Kingdom of Hawaii for the first 50 years of its existence, and the Union Jack, basically in whole cloth the way the British fly it today, was the official flag of the Kingdom for the first twenty years. In 1816, a British naval officer designed the flag we still use today, still incorporating the Union Jack as part of the design, still reflecting the strong ties between Hawaii and Great Britain.
A monument to Captain Cook, in Kealakekua bay on the west side of this island, remains a sovereign piece of British territory to this day.
