Please evangelize a little by telling friends what you read, or about the website.  It is by no means a small thing in the kingdom of God that His people should learn of His deeds on behalf of His Son Jesus and through Him, mankind! 

Captain Cooke's crew had behaved so disrespectfully that it led to Cooke's death upon their expulsion.  Hawaiians will only tolerate so much!  But contact with Europeans did lead to knowledge of Jesus' teachings, though perhaps not so much by example.   

1820 A.D. - Missionaries To Hawaiian Islands Helped By Strange Prophecy

   Hawaiians are a pretty virile bunch of people.  They are a physically strong race and were often at war with each other in the years of the first European arrivals.  And their society was regulated by a caste system of a certain type, a good many regulations, and a great many tabus (or 'kapus').  A tabu was something you either had to do, or not do, and if the tabu wasn't obeyed the consequence could be severe.  Commoners approached kings on hands and knees.  A commoner didn't stand in the presence of a king unless asked to, if your shadow fell upon the shadow of a king, that could be death.  The eating of some foods (squid, turtle, some birds) were at certain points in Hawaiian history reserved for royalty or the high ranking.  Violating these, even through ignorance, could mean death some writings inform us.  It could be tough to avoid accidentally making a mistake it sounds like.  Hawaiian religion also incorporated idols called heiaus, placed at various special locations for worshiping.  So, there was a pretty entrenched and long-established system of doing things which might have posed a tough barrier for Christian missionaries.

    But when the first Europeans under Capt. James Cook landed in 1779 change was already brewing.  There had been a lot of political unification happening.  Small kings were conquered by greater kings.  The rulers of one island placed a covetous eye on becoming the ruler of neighboring islands as well.  Incidentally, maybe Cook's bunch were the first Europeans to land, maybe not - it is said that an old Spanish nautical map was known to list these islands prior to Cook's landing.  But upon Cooke's arrival (and this is just about the time of the American Revolutionary War, to place the time in perspective) Cook and his crew found incredibly beautiful island scenery and an interesting and friendly enough people greeted them as well.  But the women were beautiful too, and Cook's crew showed little restraint and very disrespectful manners concerning them.  This largely spoiled the good relationship that could have been.  Cook, as we learn in school, was even killed in an altercation with the angered Hawaiians soon afterwards.

  But, despite this ill will, in about 1820 when the initial group of Christian missionaries arrived, they found that the bad first impression that the Europeans had made hadn't totally ruined their chances of introducing the Hawaiians to Jesus.  God and the Spirit had been doing their work, as usual, to prepare the ground - or so it seems.

  American missionary Hiram Bingham (father of the Bingham who discovered Maachu Picchu in South America) mentions in his book "A Residence of 21 Years in the Sandwich Islands" that a certain pre-Christian Hawaiian prophet from among the Hawaiian people, a man named Kalai Kuahulu, had received a revelation approximately a generation before the arrival of the Christian missionaries.  Kalai's prophesy said that:

'A teaching would come to them from heaven, (the residence of their God Ke Auka maoli', a name that apparently means 'the real God') It would be entirely different than anything that they had known.  And tabus would be subverted (ended?).'

 Also, there came to be a great dissatisfaction, a very widespread dissatisfaction, with their old religion and its tabu systems and the problems that all those tabus produced at about this same time. 

  And, to give an example of the social atmosphere of the time, King Liho Liho of Oahu had actually ordered the idols in his domain to be removed, for his own reasons.  So, just at the time that the Father sent his Son's servants into the islands with a good and true faith - the right and wholesome faith for all men (if we'd only actually follow it!) - He brought about the realization that their old faith was flawed and unsatisfying and He caused many Hawaiians to hunger for something good to replace it.

  Between 1837 A.D. and 1840 A.D. about 20,000 Hawaiians considered the teachings of Christ the redeemer and decided to accept Him as their Lord.  That is an unusually large number of converts from so strongly pagan a culture, and that was in a three-year period for which I found a record that someone had kept.  God had placed something in their hearts.  They were ready.  Hawaiians, a great number at least, did as the Europeans had done, as men from many continents had done, and reached out for what was true.... the one thing that can save people from hell, the one single doorway through which heaven can be reached:  Jesus!