The word "Hawaii" comes from the Polynesian language. Around the 4th century AD, a group of Polynesians arrived in canoes across the waves and settled here. They named the island "Hawaii", which means "primitive." "Home". The first European to discover the islands was Juan Gaetano of Spain, and it was the British navigator Captain Cook who truly made Hawaii known to the world, who landed on the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. In 1795, Cairo Chief Mihameha conquered other tribes and established the Kingdom of Hawaii. In 1898, Hawaii was annexed by the United States and became the 50th state of the United States in 1959.