Indigenous Polynesian people invented surfing in ancient times and likely brought the practice with them when they established the first human settlements in Hawaii. In Barbarian Days, Finnegan explains that historically, the practice was one aspect of Hawaiian religion:

After prayers and offerings, master craftsmen made boards from sacred koa or wiliwili trees. Priests blessed swells, lashed the water with vines to raise swells, and some breaks had heiaus (temples) on the beach where devotees could pray for waves. (27)

Finnegan explains that Hawaiians’ mastery of skills such as fishing, hunting, and agriculture allowed them to produce an abundance of food in the tropical landscape of the Hawaiian islands, which indicates that their communities often had copious leisure time to dedicate to surfing.

This all changed with the arrival of European explorers and colonizers. Captain James Cook, an Englishman, arrived in Kauai in 1778; local Hawaiians murdered him a year later when he returned a second time. European colonization didn’t occur overnight, however. Hawaiian King Kamehameha defeated other Hawaiian chieftains and consolidated all the Hawaiian islands into one kingdom by the early 19th century. Soon, European missionaries, as well as workers such as whalers and traders, began working and settling in Hawaii.

Upon contact with Indigenous Hawaiians, Europeans passed on lethal contagious diseases to which the locals had no immunity, decimating the Indigenous population.