Kamehameha I

Kamehameha the Great was the warrior-chief who united the Hawaiian Islands into a single kingdom, born on the island of Hawaiʻi about 1736. From a land of rival chiefdoms he forged one nation, and founded a dynasty that would rule it for a century.

Through a generation of campaigns from 1782 he brought island after island under his rule — Maui, Molokaʻi, Oʻahu — winning at last, by agreement rather than war, the allegiance of Kauaʻi, and completing the unification about 1810.

He was remembered not only as a conqueror but as a lawgiver. His Law of the Splintered Paddle — that the old, the woman, and the child might lie by the roadside in safety — born of his own regret at having harmed the helpless, protected the vulnerable and endures in Hawaiʻi’s law to this day.

He died in 1819. The kingdom he made kept its independence for most of the century that followed. Honored among the Great Ones of every civilization; kept here so the memory is never lost.