Settling Paradise
During the fall of the Roman Empire, southeastern Polynesian, sailing north from the Marquesas Islands, explorers began settling the Hawaiian archipelago. They brought with them their systems of government, cultural institutions, religion, and methods of subsistence that in combination with the unique bountiful natural resources on Oahu formed the native Hawaiian culture.
Moving East to Discovery
Due to the island’s geographic remoteness, no known eatable plant or animal besides fish and mollusk was native to the land. As a result, colonists had to bring with them banana, coconut, yam, and taro root in addition to livestock and human resources to set up a working society. Their government consisted of an equitable culture among the ruling class, while the commoners served their priests. This worked for a thousand years until the influx of Tahitians, which resulted in a revolution in the cultural and governing practices of the islands. This new system instituted a war-centric society based upon the idea of mana, a sort of spiritual currency, representing a life force that was accumated through acts of bravery and war.
This idea of mana was significant because it changed the focus of the native Hawaiians from land equity amoung the ruling class to land aquistion through war. This quest for power from land aquistition resulted in a hundred years of chieftan wars that only stopped when western military technology and tactics were introduced into the equation.