Читать книгу Incredible Hawaii - Terence Barrow - Страница 10

2 Hawaiian origins and navigational skills

WHO ARE THE HAWAIIANS AND WHERE DID THEY COME from? How did they find these islands? When did they find them? These questions Hawaiian scholars have asked themselves with varying answers. Captain Cook puzzled over them when he found the Hawaiians speaking the same tongue as the Polynesians below the equator.

The endeavors of archaeologists, particularly of the Bishop Museum, give us a picture of settlement, not yet complete, that affords a view of the main events. The comparative study of artifacts such as adzes and fishhooks in relation to Polynesian voyaging and other features of the culture suggest the first of Hawaii’s settlers came from the Marquesan Islands about the 7th century, followed by dominant, militaristic immigrants from the Society Islands about 500 years before Captain Cook’s introduction of Western culture in 1778-79.

Polynesian navigators had no instruments to determine longitude and latitude but they knew which stars stood over each island. Wind patterns, ocean currents, bird flight, cloud formations and, above all, stars guided their paths. Large sea-going canoes made voyages of settlement bearing men, women, children, hogs, dogs, chickens, tools, seeds, roots and cuttings.

The Hawaiians are of this sailor stock of courageous men and woman who settled Polynesia.