In the Church it is generally held that Hagoth was the father of the Polynesians, that his expeditions to the isles of the sea were a part of the foreordained plan whereby the descendants of father Lehi, as children of Abraham, might be spread to all nations and thus fulfill God’s covenant with the father of the faithful (Abraham 2:8-11).
In speaking to the Saints in Samoa, President Spencer W. Kimball said: “I thought to read to you a sacred scripture which pertains especially to you, the islanders of the Pacific. It is in the sixty-third chapter of Alma. [He reads Alma 63:4, 7-10.] And so it seems to me rather clear that your ancestors moved northward and crossed a part of the South Pacific. You did not bring your records with you, but you brought much food and provisions. And so we have a great congregation of people in the South Seas who came from the Nephites, and who came from the land southward and went to the land northward, which could have been Hawaii. And then the further settlement could have been a move southward again to all of these islands and even to New Zealand. The Lord knows what he is doing when he sends his people from one place to another. That was the scattering of Israel. Some of them remained in America and went from Alaska to the southern point. And others of you came this direction.” (Samoa Area Conference Report, February 1976, p. 15.)