Which, by the way, happened everywhere Cook went in the Pacific, so maybe he should have figured out that it was like a thing, that you were allowed to take stuff off boats in exchange for the right to hang out there. Great sailor, terrible anthropologist, although to be fair, anthropology hadn't been invented. Additionally, right before Cook was killed, there were rising tensions between the Hawaiians and the Europeans, even though at first their relationship had been quite cordial, as evidenced by all that gonorrhea. So why the tension? Probably because the Europeans dismantled a Hawaiian ritual space, some sources call it a temple, and used it for firewood. Cook attempted to pay for it, but his lowball offer of two hatchets, I'm not making that up, was refused. I'm sorry we destroyed your temple, but I'll give you two hatchets, one for each hand.