The Hawaiian Islands had been uninhabited for millions of years, until around A.D 300 to 600. The Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands were the first to reach the Hawaiian Islands. Settling by the waters, these natives started small farming systems that became some of their main food sources. Another group of settlers arrived in hundreds of years later. This second wave of settlers were the Tahitians, who were also of Polynesian decent. The Tahitians oppressed the first settlers from the Marquesas, calling them commoners and forcing them to run off and make a living in the mountains. It was the Polynesians from Tahiti who came to inhabit much of the Hawaiian Islands before the first Westerners landed on the Islands in the late 1700s.