Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States on August 21, 1959. It is situated in the North Pacific Ocean, 2,300 miles (3,700 km) from the mainland. During roughly 1778-1898, Hawaii was also known as the Sandwich Islands. Hawaii was first inhabited in roughly AD 1000, by foreign Polynesians who came from islands in the South Pacific, most likely the Marquesas. By colonizing Hawaii, these originally foreign settlers in effect became Hawaiian people.

For about 800 years, these people were sometimes at peace and sometimes at war with each other, while they expanded their colonial territory throughout the eight main islands. During this time, the Hawaiian people also developed a complex caste society governed by an extensive system of religious and social taboos called the kapu system. When British explorer James Cook chanced upon the Hawaiian archipelago in 1778, a Hawaiian warrior known as Kamehameha was beginning a gradual ascent to power.