The kapu system regulated Hawaiian life as law and as religion at once. Among its central provisions was the separation of men and women at meals, together with prohibitions on women eating pork, bananas, coconut and certain fish. These were not customs but sacred restrictions, enforced by penalties up to death, and they were the visible foundation of a structure that included the temples, the priesthood and the ranked authority of chiefs.
By 1819 that structure had been under pressure for four decades. Foreign ships had come and gone since 1778 without their crews suffering for breaking kapu; sandalwood and provisioning had reshaped the economy; Kamehameha had unified the islands with foreign weapons; and the population had fallen sharply through introduced disease. Chiefly women in particular had been eating with foreigners aboard ship for years.
Kamehameha died in May 1819. Ka'ahumanu announced at the succession that he had willed her the office of kuhina nui, sharing rule with his son Liholiho, and she and Keopuolani pressed the young king to end the eating kapu. In November he sat down and ate with the women in public. The kapu system was declared at an end, and the temple images were burned. The kahuna nui Hewahewa is recorded as supporting the abolition. The first company of American missionaries arrived in March of the following year, to find the old order already gone.