Polynesian colonization of the Americas

In a world where Homo Sapiens was unable for some reason to make it in the Americas and the two continents exist as an untouched world, would it be possible for the Polynesians, when they eventually come around, to colonize part of the Americas?

If so what would colonization look like?
 
Unless they were lucky enough to hit the Equatorial Counter-Current no Polynesian sailor would get within a thousand miles of America.
 
I started a TL with this concept. From what I came to understand, Polynesian colonialism was driven by in many ways a search for new resources. A group of settlers could reach America, but without Native American's settlements refueling it's food supplies for a journey home, they wouldn't be able to return from say The Sandwich Islands or Rapa nui. OTOH, W/out prior settlesments warding them away, the polynesians might have enough food to make a colony (The Polynesians brought living food with yams and pigs).
 
What about the Rapa Nui giving the Andean Civilizations Chickens and the Andeans giving them sweet potatoes or the Chumash having sewn boats.

That's right. The evidence is pretty suggestive of agricultural exchange between South America and Polynesia. Since the mainland presumably had a lot more to offer than tiny atolls, my question has been, why didn't we see more Polynesians stay in South America?

But I don't think Polynesians could immigrate in very big numbers. The Americas in OTL took tens of thousands of years to populate... the Polynesian colonization would probably proceed at a comparable pace.

Probably not a situation like this one. This was one of the first images I ever uploaded to AH.com.

polynesia.png
 
But I don't think Polynesians could immigrate in very big numbers. The Americas in OTL took tens of thousands of years to populate... the Polynesian colonization would probably proceed at a comparable pace.

A remember a professor talking about the populating of the America's, although this was twenty years ago. He said that an anthropologist had run the numbers and came up with a theory that the America's could easily have been populated all the way from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego within only about five hundred years. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who had come up with that theory.

It probably actually took a couple of thousand years, not five hundred, though. I think it would still be a lot faster than tens of thousands of years, though.
 
I don't know. They might see the Andes region, if devoid of human life, as not worth settling. Would the Polynesian crop package even grow there?
 
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