High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Native Hawaiians (in Hawaiian, k naka iwi, k naka maoli or Hawai i maoli) refers to the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants. Native Hawaiians trace their ancestry back to the first Marquesan and Tahitian settlers of Hawaii (possibly as early as AD 400), before the arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook in 1778. According to the U.S. Census Bureau report for 2000, there are 401,162 people who identified themselves as being "native Hawaiian" alone or in any combination.