The original inhabitants of Hawai‘i were Marquesan navigators who’d migrated northward to Hawai‘i in sailing vessels as early as the 4th century AD, followed by Tahitians voyagers who’d settled Hawai‘i during the 12th and 13th centuries.
On Kaua‘i, the first Tahitians landed by the mouth of the Wailua River and settled there during the 12th century.
Voyages between Hawai‘i and the South Pacific apparently ceased after the last wave of Tahitian migrations, so that by the time English Captain Cook made his discovery of Hawai‘i in 1778, the Hawaiian Islands had probably been isolated from human contact with the rest of the world for several hundred years.
There is no conclusive proof, such as a shipwreck, in existence to prove otherwise.
However, Spanish galleons had been sailing across the Pacific between Acapulco and Manila on trade routes approximately 1,200 miles north of and 800 miles south of Hawai‘i beginning in 1535.
It’s conceivable that a galleon blown off course in a storm could have reached Hawai‘i between 1535 and 1778.
Also, a Spanish map, document and artifact found in Hawai‘i appear to indicate that Spaniards had visited Hawai‘i in the 1500s.
Likewise, Hawaiian legend tends to corroborate Spanish contact with Hawai‘i before Cook.
What’s more, Hawaiian legend also refers to Japanese being shipwrecked on Maui before 1778.
Then there were the Dutch.
In February 1600, Dutchmen aboard two ships spotted islands at 16 degrees north latitude, while sailing northwest across the Pacific from Chile to Japan.
The islands could have been none other than the Hawaiian Islands, since there are no other islands near that location along their route from Chile to Japan.
Yet, it is far-fetched to believe that these Dutchmen could have seen islands 207 miles away — the distance between 16 degrees north latitude and the location of the Big Island at 19 degrees north latitude.
Be that as it may, eight of those Dutchmen actually did jump ship thereabouts.
And, according to an 1827 report written by missionary William Ellis, the deserters went ashore at Kealakekua Bay, married Hawaiian women and became chiefs.
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Hank Soboleski has been a resident of Kauai since the 1960s. Hank’s love of the island and its history has inspired him, in conjunction with The Garden Island Newspaper, to share the island’s history weekly. The collection of these articles can be found here: https://bit.ly/2IfbxL9 and here https://bit.ly/2STw9gi Hank can be reached at hssgms@gmail.com
