° Funafuti ° Nanumanga ° Nanumea
French Polynesia is a collection of 118 islands covering a vast area of the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
Divided among five archipelagoes: the volcanic Society Islands, also called the islands under the wind (in the west) and the wind islands (in the east), with the well known island of Tahiti, the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Gambier Islands, the Marquesas Islands, and the coral Tubuai Islands (Austral Islands). Also included are American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue, Pitcairn (famous for the Mutiny on the British ship HMS Bounty), Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu.
According to the evidence of linguists, the language of Tuvalu goes back about 2,000 years. The traditional stories and genealogies, however, mostly go back only about 300 years. It seems, therefore, that the story we have today came to us not from the earlier ancestors but from later arrivals in Tuvalu.
The first European Explorer to make contact with Tuvalu was Alvaro de Mendana y Neyra, a Spanish explorer. He sailed westward across the Pacific in 1567-8 to discover, explore and name a substantial part of the eastern half of the Solomon Islands. On January 16, 1568 Mendana, with his ship Capitana, sighted his first island, which turned out to be Nui, and named it the Isle of Jesus. Mendana himself reported on Nui “ . . .we found it so small it was not more than six leagues in circumference. The island was very full of trees like palms; towards the north it had a reef . . . ” Although islanders ventured out to the ship no contact was made with them. Gallego, the Chief Pilot, merely recorded that they were “naked and mulattoes” and Sarmiento, the captain of Magellan's flagship, observed that the island "had a large fishery".
A quarter of a century later Mendana made a second exploration of the Pacific. On August 29, 1595 the atoll of Niulakita was discovered and named La Solitaria. Once again no contact was made and Mendana sailed off in search of the Solomons where on Santa Cruz, he died in October 1595.
Such was the first and only European contact with Tuvalu for almost two centuries. The atolls were ignored until 1781 when the Spanish trader Don Francisco Maurelle was forced well south of the Equator by unfavourable winds on a routine journey from Manila to Mexico.
With inadequate provisions (since cockroaches ate most of the stores) he was forced as far south as the Tongan archipelago. Sailing north, on May 5, 1781 he discovered an island which he called Isla del Cocal, the atoll of Nanumanga. Maurelle set sail northwestwards, sighting Nanumea, which he named San Augustin, but passing no closer than six leagues. Once again Tuvaluan atolls had been discovered by accident, and once again they provoked little or no interest in their discoverers.
Captain Arent de Peyster, an American, is given credit for the rediscovery of Tuvalu. He was in command of the British brigantine Rebecca, who in May 1819 discovered a group of fourteen islets which appeared to be inhabited. The first atoll was discovered when the Rebecca was only three times her length from the shore. The atoll was Funafuti and de Peyster called it Ellice's Group after Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the Rebecca's cargo. Ellice was also a London merchant, a financier of wide imperialist interests and a leading figure in the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada. The next morning de Peyster sighted Nukufetau, which he called de Peyster's Group. Eventually, the name Ellice was applied to all nine islands by the English hydrographer A. G. Findlay.
In the next decade more traders and whalers briefly visited Tuvalu, especially after the discovery of the Central Pacific whaling grounds in 1818. Captain George Barrett in the Nantucket whaler Independence II, was the first to sight Nukulaelae, and rediscovered Niulakita on November 6, 1821. Four years later, 1825, Obed Starbuck in the whaler Loper, discovered Niutao and Vaitupu, and Captain Eeg of the Dutch ship Pollux sights Nui again, more than 250 years after Mendana's first voyage
By the middle of the nineteenth century Tuvaluans had obviously become quite familiar with the unfortunate medical impact of the arrival of increasing numbers of Europeans, so that in 1853 when Captain Pease of the Planter became one of the first Europeans to visit the atoll of Nanumea he was washed and various propitious ceremonies were carried out before he was allowed to step ashore.
Alton Telegraph, Alton, Illinois
February 28, 1873
The Archipelagos of the Pacific
The Islands of the Pacific Ocedans are divided into Archipelagoes; the principal are the Fiji Islands, a group comprising 154 islands some 64 of which are inhabited.
The natives are for the most part sunk in the lowest depths of cannibalism, although a small proportion have been christianized through the efforts of teh Wesleyan missionaries. The nativeds, however, suffer so many falls from gracethat it is doubtful whether any of them are really reclaimed.
The productions of these islands are chiefly "Beche de Mer" and sandal wood, although cotton plantations have been started by capitalists from Australia and New Zealand.
Th Ellice and Gilbert Archipelagoes also lie south of the equator, and together, number some 200 islands and some 60,000 inhabitants, who are also cannibals for the most part.
North of the equator we find the Marshall gropu, adn the Sandwich Islands. Cannibalism in these islands is almost extinct, although there is great need of improvement in the morals of the inhabitants, as they are very licentious and are also addicted to stealing anything that they can lay their hands upon.
Tuvalu's waters were frequented by American whalers in the 1800's. Seamen occasionally deserted and settled ashore, while some of the more adventurous islanders became crewmen. Some Europeans beachcombers become traders and agents for firms in Australia, Germany and the US, and organised the export of coconut oil or copra.
During the 1860s slave traders, or "blackbirders", carried off about 400 islanders, mainly from Funafuti and Nukulaelae, to work in Peru. None of them ever returned. Others were later recruited for plantations in Fiji, Samoa and Hawai'i.
Christianity was introduced in 1861 when some adherents of the London Missionary Society from Manihiki in the Cook Islands accidently drift to Nukulaelae in a canoe. In May 1865 the Reverend A. W. Murray of the LMS visited Tuvalu from Samoa and installed Samoan pastors on the various islands.
The German Company of Godeffroy and Son of Hamburg were first island traders in Tuvalu. As the locals were not very enthusiastic about copra-making, they devised the system of establishing agents, many of whom were American and British beachcombers, at likely points in the islands to trade European goods supplied by Godeffroy to the natives for coconuts which they dried.
Jack O'Brien was of Australian-Irish descent and came to Funafuti in the 1850's. Jack O'Brien was the first white man in Funafuti and the Ellice Group, preceding the other white traders by some thirty odd years. He married Salai, the daughter of the then King of Funafuti and became the matriarch of an extensive Tuvaluan family. The O'Brien name is synonymous with Funafuti with the extended family evident in many countries throughout the world.
