Bau (island) - History

History

It was at Kubuna that the great ancestral chief, Ratu Vueti Koroi-Ratu mai Bulu, Serui-Ratu mai Bulu, the first Roko Tui Bau Vuani-ivi (according to the legend he was the fourth generation from Ratu Lutunasobasoba) established the Kingdom of Kubuna and formed one of the earliest known Fijian settlements after hostilities ceased the people of Nakauvadra and the victorious Bauan army upon leaving the mountains and finding their way to the sea made a Cairn named Ulunivuaka and later called it Bau in honour of Ratu Vueti and his achievements. It was named after a shrine in the Nakauvadra range. He took the titles of Roko Tui Bau Vuani-ivi and Koroi Ratu Maibulu. After his death, he was buried in Kubuna.

After his death a division arose between Bucaira and Vunibuca over the installation of a successor to Ratu Vueti. Other clans went to Namuka and wandered from place to place. Eventually a new Roko Tui Bau, Ratu Serumataidrau, was selected from the Vuaniivi, a Tokatoka Valelevu of the Mataqali and the Yavusa Ratu Vuani-ivi Buca clan, which had settled at Namuka.

Naulivou was installed in 1791 as the Vunivalu (in modern Fiji this is now the highest chiefly title in the Kingdom of Kubuna, but was not so in Fiji's early history) after the death of his father Banuve who had three sons: Naulivou, Tanoa II and Celua in 1791. Ratu Raiwalui of the Roko Tui Bau Vuaniivi Clan, Yavusa-Ratu, became the sixth Roko Tui Bau Vuani-Ivi which was the highest chiefly title in the greater area of Kubuna and the second Roko Tui Bau Vuani-Ivi that occupied the Island Delainakorolevu or Ulunivuaka, which was then called Bau in 1760 which was named by the fifth Roko Tui Bau Vuani-ivi Ratu Lele who was then buried at Delai Daku. But the relationship between these two men was not a happy one. When they came into conflict, the Vuaniivi clan fled to Kubuna and sought the protection of Titokobitu, the Chief of Namara. Together with some other chiefs of Namara, they reached Koro and from there went to Vuna, on the island of Taveuni, and thence to Vanuabalavu. The Namara people who later joinned their early travellers now of Levukana village on Lomaloma, were left behind at Vuna and they fled to the mountains lest the Bauans should pursue them. The Vuaniivi warriors left some of their war canoes high and dry on the beach at Vuna when they set off for Vanuabalavu.

With the aid of Charlie Savage, who brought firearms to Bau, opportunities for new wealth and power, symbolized by the acquisition of muskets, intensified political rivalries and hastened the rise of the Kingdom of Bau, ruled by Naulivou as Vunivalu and then by his nephew Cakobau. By the 1850s Bau dominated western Fiji. Cakobau’s main rival was the Tongan chief Ma’afu, who led an army of Christian Tongans and their allies from eastern Fiji. After a short-lived alliance with Ma’afu, Cakobau became a Christian in 1854. The Bauan people quickly established themselves as an undefeatable military force. With that unmatched power, Seru Epenisa Cakobau was able to unite all of Fiji’s disparate tribes under his authority in 1871.