On 14 February 1779, English explorer Captain James Cook attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief (aliʻi nui) of the island of Hawaii. The decision to hold him in exchange for a stolen longboat was the fatal error of Cook's final voyage, and led to his death at Kealakekua Bay.
Cook's arrival in Hawaii was eventually followed by mass migrations of Europeans and Americans to the islands that gave rise to the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the Aboriginal monarchy of the islands, by pro-American elements beginning in 1893.
Arrival
James Cook led three separate voyages to chart areas of the globe unknown to the Kingdom of Great Britain. It was on his third and final voyage that he encountered what are known today as the Islands of Hawaii. He first sighted the islands on 18 January 1778. He anchored off the west coast of the island of Kauai near Waimea and met inhabitants to trade and obtain water and food.
On 2 February 1778, Cook continued on to the coast of North America and Alaska, mapping and searching for a Northwest Passage to the Atlantic Ocean for approximately nine months. He returned to the island chain to resupply, initially exploring the coasts of Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii and trading with locals, then making anchor in Kealakekua Bay in January 1779. Cook and his crew were initially welcomed and treated with honour, as his arrival coincided with the Makahiki season, an ancient New Year festival in honour of the god Lono of the Hawaiian religion, and a celebration of the yearly harvest. The idea or suggestion that the Native Hawaiians considered Cook to be the god Lono himself is considered to be inaccurate and is attributed to William Bligh. It is conceivable that some Hawaiians may have used the name of Lono as a metaphor when describing Cook or other possible explanations other than Hawaiians simply assuming the explorer was their own deity.
However, after Cook and the crews of both ships, and , left the islands, the festival season had ended and the season for battle and war had begun under the worship and rituals for Kūkaʻilimoku, the god of war. Although Cook's sequential visits may have coincided with native traditional seasons, the natives had soured on Cook and his men by the time of Cook's initial departure. John Ledyard was the only American aboard Cook's ship during this time. Ledyard was present during the events leading up to and during Cook's death, and wrote a detailed account of the events in his journals.
During Cook's initial visit, he attempted to barter with the Hawaiians and ordered his men to remove the wood used to border the natives' sacred "Morai" burial ground, used for high-ranking individuals and depictions of their gods. Ledyard says in his journals that Cook offered some iron hatchets for the wooden border around the Morai and when the dismayed and insulted chiefs refused, Cook proceeded to give orders to ascend the Morai, chop down the fence and load the boats with the wood. John Ledyard also tells of an episode where Captain Charles Clerke accused a native chieftain of stealing the Resolution'''s jolly boat. However, the boat was soon found and the native chief was incensed by the accusation. After staying in the bay for 19 days, Cook and his two ships sailed out of the bay.
On 6 February Cook's ships left Kealakekua Bay. They were soon met with an unexpected hard gale which wrenched the mainmast of the Resolution. On 11 February, the Resolution returned again to Kealakekua Bay to make repairs. Ledyard writes on 13 February:
Our return to this bay was as disagreeable to us as it was to the inhabitants, for we were reciprocally tired of each other. They had been oppressed and were weary of our prostituted alliance...It was also equally evident from the looks of the natives as well as every other appearance that our friendship was now at an end, and that we had nothing to do but to hasten our departure to some different island where our vices were not known, and where our intrinsic virtues might gain us another short space of being wondered at.
While the Resolution was anchored in Kealakekua Bay, one of its two longboats was stolen from the ship by the Hawaiians, testing the foreigners' reaction to see how far they could go with such a significant loss. The Hawaiians had begun openly stealing from the foreigners. To try to obtain the return of the stolen longboat from the Hawaiians, Cook attempted to kidnap the aliʻi nui of the island of Hawaii, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. Possibly being quite sick at this point, Cook made what were later described as a series of incredibly poor decisions.