The footprints cannot be separated from the war that brought these warriors to Kilauea. The 1782 Battle of Moku'ohai had given Kamehameha I control of Hawaii Island's western and northern districts, but his rival Keoua Kuahuula held the southern district of Ka'u, and Keoua's uncle Keawemauhili controlled Hilo. By 1790, alliances were shifting. Keawemauhili had made peace with Kamehameha and supported his invasion of Maui, breaking a prior agreement with his nephew. Keoua, enraged, raided Kamehameha's lands and then turned on his uncle, killing Keawemauhili at Hilo. When Kamehameha returned from Maui, the two forces clashed inconclusively before each retreated to secure territory.

Hawaiian oral histories recorded the eruption as Ke one helelei, meaning "the falling sand" -- a name that reflects how unusual this event was. Hawaiian eruptions are typically effusive, producing flowing lava rather than explosive blasts. The 1790 eruption was different. It produced pyroclastic surges, clouds of hot ash and gas that rolled across the Ka'u Desert at ground level. Keoua's retreating forces, crossing near the summit, made offerings to the goddess Pele and camped. When the eruption began, Keoua split his group into three parties. Two of those parties were overwhelmed. Only one group of three people survived. British sailor John Young, living on the island at the time, witnessed the eruption from a distance. Surveyor Frederick S. Lyman later used the 1790 date as a chronological anchor when conducting his 1857 tax assessment.

The footprints were discovered accidentally by HVO seismologist Ruy H. Finch while investigating a 1919 eruption that created Mauna Iki. Pressed into fine volcanic ash in the Ka'u Desert, they are sometimes called fossilized, but they are not old enough for true fossilization. The preservation mechanism was simpler and more immediate: the eruption's fine ash was turned into thick mud by rain triggered during the event itself, and the prints solidified quickly in the arid desert heat. Extensive surveys in 1998 and 2000, including radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples, revealed that the area had been used for hundreds of years. A large number of habitation sites and trails indicated continuous human presence during Kilauea's eruption cycle from roughly 1500 to 1790.

Early geologist Thomas Jaggar, founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, attributed the footprints to Keoua's warriors who died in the eruption. More recent research has questioned whether all the prints belong to that single event -- the area saw centuries of foot traffic -- but the connection to the 1790 eruption and the fate of Keoua's army remains central to how the site is understood. The footprints were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 7, 1974. Keoua himself survived the eruption but was killed the following year at Kawaihae, and Kamehameha went on to unite the Hawaiian Islands. The footprints are what remains of the people caught between two forces -- a political struggle and a volcanic one -- neither of which they could control.