For two and a half centuries the Spanish galleons and their attendant marauders and rivals crossed the Pacific from Manila to Acapulco. Still, the great volta of Spanish transit was almost as remarkable for what it did not do. As Magellan had crossed from South America to Guam without making landfall, so the galleons followed winds and sailing routes that allowed them to never sight Hawai‘i, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Despite speculation that galleons of Juan Gaytan in 1542 might have stopped in the islands, no definitive case has been made that the voyagers of the Spanish Lake ever did more than pass by hundreds of miles to the north and south.

Separated from European contact and drawing on a voyaging heritage of Polynesian ancestors, Hawaiians developed richly complex cultures and political organizations. A number of small kingdoms dominated the islands, each led by a ruler assisted by chief ministers. Ranked below them were ali‘i, or chiefs, whose power depended upon their ancestral genealogies and personal mana. The famous kahuna were priests also skilled in traditional arts, building, and medicine.