contact, most likely through voyages from Japan to Hawaii in the period 1550–1630 AD. While there is no record of trade between Japan and Hawaii pre-1778, a statistical review of historical shipping and oceanic patterns suggests there may have been as many as a dozen drifts from Japan to Hawaii in the period between 1600 and 1778. Western contact Economic and demographic factors in the 18th to 19th centuries reshaped the Kingdom of Hawaii. With unfamiliar diseases such as bubonic plague, leprosy, yellow fever, declining fertility, high infant mortality, infanticide, the introduction of alcohol, and emigration off the islands or to larger cities for trade jobs, the Native Hawaiian population fell from around 150,000 in 1778 to 71,000 by 1853. Faced with depopulation and a changing economy, Kamehameha I and others sought tradesmen, including navigators, blacksmiths, armorers, carpenters, sailmakers, etc. These men could expect to receive a gift of land and one or more native wives if they agreed to stay. Rapid depopulation The rapid depopulation of the Hawaiian people is traced to many causes. Missionary William Ellis described deserted villages and abandoned enclosures which he attributed to "the frequent and desolating wars during Kamehameha's reign, the ravages of a pestilence brought in the first instance by foreign vessels, which has twice during the period [1778-1823] swept through the islands; the awful prevalence of infanticide; and the melancholy increase and destructive consequences of depravity and vice." The Hawaii State Statistician Robert C. Schmitt explained the severe depopulation as a result of declining fertility, high infant mortality, and emigration.The Hawaiians' customs and land use system also caused a downward spiral in the population from which after the diseases they could not recover. Firstly, Hawaiians practiced population control with infanticide, abortion, and the like. By one estimate by William Ellis in 1823, nearly two-thirds of babies were killed. It wasn't until 1835 and 1850 respectively that infanticide and abortion became illegal. Secondly, the family unit was centered around a "punahele" or favored child; a firstborn who would inherit the grandparent's property and continue the kupuna kin group. In this system, grandparents were responsible to then feed not only their children, but also their children's children. Further families could simply not accommodate growing unless they were ceded new lands from a kupuna group or applied for new lands with the local konohiki and paid for with renewed acts of submission. During the nineteenth