Moananuiākea is the domain of Kanaloa, god of the ocean. It is the ancestral home of the Hawaiian people. Kealaikahiki is the name of an ancestral sea road that forms a heritage corridor connecting Hawaiʻi and the Kahiki Homeland. (KSBE)
“Kahiki” or “Kahiki Homeland” is a specific reference to the ancestral region that includes the Society Islands, Tuamotu Archipelago, and the Marquesas Islands, and may generally refer to other closely-related island groups. (He Kama Na Kahiki Symposium)
Kahoʻolawe (Kanaloa) is an important ancestral marker for the Kealaikahiki pathway. The ʻili, the point, and the channel known as Kealaikahiki, as well as the island of Kahoʻolawe itself, constitute these markers. (He Kama Na Kahiki Symposium)
“Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)
“Most important from the perspective of Hawaiian settlement are the colonization dates for the Society Islands and the Marquesas, as these two archipelagoes have long been considered to be the immediate source regions for the first Polynesian voyagers to Hawai‘i. …”
“In sum, the southeastern archipelagoes and islands of Eastern Polynesia have a set of radiocarbon chronologies now converging on the period from AD 900–1000.” (Kirch)
Research indicates human colonization of Eastern Polynesia took place much faster and more recently than previously thought. Polynesian ancestors settled in Samoa around 800 BC, colonized the central Society Islands between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290. (Hunt; PVS)
“There is also no question that at least O‘ahu and Kauai islands were already well settled, with local populations established in several localities, by AD 1200.” (Kirch)
On November 28 1520, Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to enter “Sea of the South” (which he later named the Pacific (meaning peaceful)) and thereby open up to Spain the possibility of an alternative route between Europe and the spices of the Orient.” (Lloyd)
Ferdinand Magellan is often credited as being the first person to have circumnavigated the globe; his expedition of five ships and crew of 270 set sail on September 20, 1519 as part of an attempt to find a western route to the spice-rich East Indies in modern-day Indonesia.
Some history books still say Ferdinand Magellan “is most known for being the first explorer to circumnavigate the world.” (The Brave Magellan: The First Man To Circumnavigate The World – Biography 3rd Grade Children’s Biography Books)
However, although he had masterminded the first expedition to sail around the world, he didn’t complete the voyage. Along the way, Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521 on Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippines.
The first European to complete the circumnavigation was Magellan’s second-in-command, Juan Sebastian de Elcano, who took over after his death. At that point, the final crew had only 18 men. (Royal Museums Greenwich and PennToday)
Almost 50 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, Manila galleons finally fulfilled their dream of sailing west to Asia to benefit from the rich Indian Ocean trade.
Starting in 1565, with the Spanish sailor and friar Andrés de Urdaneta, after discovering the Tornaviaje or return route to Mexico through the Pacific Ocean, Spanish galleons sailed the Pacific Ocean between Acapulco in New Spain (now Mexico) and Manila in the Philippine islands.
Once a year, gold and silver were transported west to Manila in exchange spices (pepper, clove and cinnamon), porcelain, ivory, lacquer and elaborate fabrics (silk, velvet, satin), collected from both the Spice Islands (Indonesia) and the Asian Pacific coast, in European markets.
The galleons leaving Manila would make their way back to Acapulco in a four-month long journey. The goods were off-loaded and transported across land to ships on the other Mexican coast at Veracruz, and eventually, sent to European markets and customers eager for these exotic wares. (GuamPedia) The Manila Galleon Trade lasted for 250 years and ended in 1815 with Mexico’s war of independence.
“The English circumnavigations by Drake (1577-1580) and Cavendish (1586-1588) were not rich in discoveries. The Dutch merchant Isaac Ie Maire, with Willem Corneliszoon Schouten, reached the Pacific in 1615 via Cape Horn (which they named)”.
“Sailing from there, the Dutch had made several sightings of the coast of Australia, north, west and south, in the early seventeenth century, and Anthony van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies from 1631 to 1645, was responsible for a number of expeditions”.
“[L]ater, another Dutch expedition, under Jacob Roggeveen, left the Netherlands in 1721 in search of the southern continent. Roggeveen went through the Strait of Le Maire and found Easter Island and Samoa before reaching Batavia after a year’s voyage.”
“The English had now come strongly on the scene, with the expeditions of Narborough up the South American coast (1669-1671), a mixed assembly of buccaneers, adventurers and privateers, including Dampier, Wafer, Cowley, Ringrose, Woodes, Rogers and Shelvocke, followed by the grand naval expedition of 1740-1744 under Anson.”
“As far as discoveries go, the most important of these men was the remarkable amateur William Dampier, whose painfully assembled New Voyage Round the World (1697) set alight the imagination of eighteenth-century England.”
“On this first voyage Dampier had touched on Australia (New Holland), ‘a very large Tract of Land’, and had thought the inhabitants ‘the miserablest People in the World’. He returned on his second voyage but was only able to make a cursory investigation of the north-western and northern coasts.”
“The major period of English exploration in the Pacific followed the ending of the Seven Years War with France in 1763. The Earl of Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1763 until 1766, sent out John Byron in the Dolphin in 1764, and on its return from a speedy circumnavigation in 1766, sent the ship out again under Samuel Wallis, with Philip Carteret in the Swallow as consort.”
“James Cook, thirty-nine years of age, a master in the Navy engaged on the survey of Newfoundland, was proposed by the Navy, and during April and May 1768 it was agreed that he should become leader of the expedition.” (The Journal; Edwards)
In the dawn hours of January 18, 1778, on his third expedition, British explorer Captain James Cook on the HMS Resolution and Captain Charles Clerke of the HMS Discovery first sighted what Cook named the Sandwich Islands (that were later named the Hawaiian Islands.)
Hawaiian lives changed with sudden and lasting impact, when western contact changed the course of history for Hawai‘i.
Following the American Revolutionary War, American Captain John Kendrick was among the first citizens of the new nation to sail into the Pacific. The new nation needed money and a vital surge in trade.
In 1787, a group of Boston merchants decided to send him on a two ship mission around Cape Horn and into the Pacific Ocean, to establish new trade with China, settle an outpost on territory claimed by the Spanish and find the legendary Northwest Passage.
The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska. The furs were to be mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods to be sold in the US.
Kendrick visited Hawai‘i a number of times and is credited for initiating the sandalwood trade (Hawai‘i’s first commercial export). He died at Honolulu Harbor, December 12, 1794.
