CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORICAL SKETCH.
Although the written history of the Hawaiian Islands begins with their discovery by Captain Cook in 1778, yet the aboriginal inhabitants had at that time an oral traditional history which extended back for several centuries.
ORIGIN.
As to their origin, these people formed but one branch of the Polynesian race, which at a remote period settled all the groups of islands in the central and Eastern Pacific, as far as New Zealand in the South and Easter Island in the East. This is shown by the close physical and moral resemblance between their inhabitants, as well as by the facts that they all speak dialects of the same language, and have the same manners and customs, the same general system of tabus,
and similar traditions and religious rites.
The evidence of both language and physical traits tends to show that their remote ancestors came from the East Indian Archipelago, and that they were still more distantly related to the pre-Arian races of Hindostan.
It is also proved by concurrent traditions of the different groups that there was a general movement of population throughout central Polynesia during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the Christian Era, during which the Harvey Islands and afterwards New Zealand were colonized, and many