Norms White, age 14, of Carson City, Nev., for her question:
WHEN WAS HAWAII FIRST SETTLED?
We don't know exactly when Hawaii was first settled, but we do know that the first people to establish homes in the region were Polynesians who arrived from other South Pacific islands about 2,000 years ago. According to the legends, they were rather dwarfish.
There is evidence that about 1,200 years ago more Polynesians crossed the ocean from Tahiti in large double canoes. The new settlers quickly won control over the earlier settlers.
A legend says that the leader of the new group of settlers was named Hawaii loa, and that the islands were named in his honor. But the name Hawaii is also a form of Hawaiki, the legendary name of the Polynesian homeland.
The Hawaiians discovered that other lands were too far away to carry on any regular form of trade, so they developed independent ways. They also tailored old customs into elaborate ceremonies for their social and religious lives.
Dogs, pigs and chickens came to Hawaii with the original settlers. And the new settlers' diets easily adjusted to the fruits of the land there waiting for them: bananas, taro, breadfruit, coconuts, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and yams. From the sea came a wide variety of fish and shellfish. Taro provided their chief starch. The roots of the plant were ground and then cooked into a paste called poi.
The climate was so mild that most of the cooking and eating was done outdoors. Homes were constructed with timber frames tied together with cords made from plant .fibers and covered with native grasses.
Spanish, Dutch or Japanese explorers may very well have visited the Hawaiian Islands back in the 1500s, but the rest of the world didn't know about the islands until a British explorer named James Cook arrived there on Jan. 18, 1778. The Hawaiians treated Cook well, probably thinking that he was some sort of a god.
Cook named the region the Sandwich Islands in honor of the Earl of Sandwich, first lord of the British admiralty. Cook's name didn't stick.
Many other explorers and traders arrived in the islands after Cook's visit. They brought with them livestock, plants from other countries and all sorts of manufactured goods.
Records show the first trading ships arrived in 1786, eight years after Cook's first visit. It was a ship loaded with furs that was sailing from Oregon to China.
When the first Europeans arrived, there were probably as many as 300,000 Hawaiians living on the islands.
During the first period of trading, Hawaii was ruled by a number of local chiefs. One of the moat important united the main islands in 1795, with the help of firearms he obtained from white traders, and became the well known King Kamehameha I.