Also arguing that Native Hawaiians would see a European and think him a god has all kinds of troubling implications, one of them being that Native Hawaiians aren't terribly smart, when in fact we know that they are very smart because, unlike the rest of us, they live in Hawaii. And last but definitely not least, Lono is associated with fertility, and the Hawaiians would have associated the Europeans with the exact opposite of fertility because they introduced gonorrhea to Hawaii. And there's a further problem with the Cook equals Lono equation, which is that nothing in Hawaiian religion has any of their gods being ritually killed. Part of their mythology can be seen as sanctioning a ritual killing of the king, but not of a god. And also, it's a long way from ritual killing to actual killing. The truth is probably a lot less spectacular, which is that Cook was probably killed during a melee in which a bunch of Hawaiians were also killed. Before his death, Cook had attempted to take a Hawaiian king hostage in response to Hawaiians taking a bunch of stuff from Cook's boats.