Maui, Hawaii City Guide
For over 20 years, Pamela Lanier's Maui, Hawaii Travel Guide has been your connection to Maui's tourism community with invaluable details on local attractions, restaurants, shopping, museums, history, outdoor recreation and more.
Maui History
The original inhabitants of Maui came to the island from Tahiti and the Marquesas. The Tahitians introduced the kapu system of social order, which became the core of Hawaiian culture. When King Kamehameha, king of the Big Island, finally captured Maui, he moved here and made Lahaina the capital. Although Captain James Cook was the first European to discover Maui, he never officially landed on the island, due to his inability to locate a suitable landing place. French admiral Jean-François de La Pérouse landed on May 29, 1786, on what is now known as La Pérouse Bay. As more Europeans, traders, whalers, loggers and missionaries arrived, the Hawaiian culture was unfortunately changed. Although the missionaries were responsible for much of the alteration of Hawaiian culture, (clothing natives and banning hula dancing) they did however, invent the Hawaiian alphabet and build a printing press in Lahaina, during the height of whaling, Lahaina, Maui was a major whaling center and home too much drinking and prostitution. Maui was also home to the first sugar plantation in Hawaii. The beaches of Maui served as a staging center and training base for the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Today agriculture and tourism dominate the economy of Maui and the bed and breakfast visitor can learn about the history of the island from both a cultural and economic perspective at Maui¡¯s museums, as well as from the personal insights of the native bed and breakfast innkeepers.
