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On the eve of the Europeans’ accidentally stumbling across Hawaii, the major Hawaiian islands held substantial numbers of people of Polynesian descent. They had no written language, but their oral and musical traditions were ancient and rich.

Their technology apparently remained as static as their rigid social system. Commoners, or makaainana, lived in self-sufficient family groups and villages, farming and fishing for most necessities and trading for necessities they could not otherwise obtain. The land was divided among hereditary chiefs of the noble class (alii). Commoners paid part of their crops or catches as taxes to the chief who ruled the land-division they lived on; commoners served their chief as soldiers. Higher chiefs ruled over lower chiefs; the higher chiefs received taxes and commoners to serve as soldiers from the lower chiefs in turn. People especially gifted in healing, divination, or important crafts served the populace in those capacities (for example, as priests). There was also a class of untouchables, the kauwa. Most people were at death what they were at birth.