Hawaiʻi, now a state in the United States, is an island chain in the Pacific Ocean.
This archipelago comprises dozens of islands, but the eight most prominent in the
group are Hawaiʻi, Maui, Kahoʻolawe, Lanaʻi, Molokaʻi, Oʻahu, Kauaʻi, and Niʻihau.
At a distance of over 4000 km from
Vancouver Island, Hawaiʻi was, nevertheless, an overwinter location for famous West Coast explorers
such as
Cook,
Vancouver, and
Douglas, with the
Cook being the first European to make contact with the Hawaiʻian people in 1778. Several despatches refer to the location of
“Woahoo”, which is likely an archaism for Oʻahu. Throughout much of the 1800s, the HBC traded
in dried salmon and timber to the Sandwich Islands, and sometimes drew from the Hawaiʻian
labour pool for ship's crews and a variety of work.
By the 1820s, Hawaiʻians were a common enough presence on the West Coast to be recorded
in Chinook Jargon as “Owhyhees”, who became known by the Hawaiʻian word for human
beings: Kanaka.