Pukapuka - European Visitors

European Visitors

Pukapuka has the distinction of being the first of the Cook Islands to be sighted by Europeans. The Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendana de Neira saw it on the feast day of Saint Bernard, Sunday 20 August 1595 and named it San Bernardo.

On 21 June 1765 the British Naval expedition under Commodore John Byron (Dolphin and Tamar) sighted the island. Byron gave the name "Islands of Danger" because of the high surf that made it too dangerous to land. The name "Danger Island" still appears on some maps. (It should not be confused with Danger Island of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean.) According to oral tradition, an unknown ship called at Pukapuka in the 18th century, and when the lineage chief Tawaki boldly took the captain's pipe out of his mouth, he was shot.

Thirty years later, Pukapuka was given the name "Isles de la Loutre" (Isles of the Otter) by Pierre François Péron, a French adventurer who was acting as first mate on board the American merchant ship, Otter (Captain Ebenezer Dorr) when it was sighted on 3 April 1796. The following day, Peron, Thomas Muir of Huntershill (1765–1799) and a small party landed ashore but the inhabitants would not allow them to inspect the island. Trading later took place near the ship as adzes, mats and other artifacts were exchanged for knives and European goods.

"Everything united to convince us that we had the right to attribute to ourselves the honour of having discovered three new islands; and with this conviction I gave them the name "Isles of the Otter" which was the name of our vessel. In order to distinguish them we named the eastern one 'Peron and Muir', the one to the north 'Dorr', and the name of 'Brown' was given to the third, after one of our officers."

Due to Pukapuka's isolation, few vessels visited before 1857 when the London Missionary Society landed teachers from Aitutaki and Rarotonga. Luka Manuae of Aitutaki later wrote an extended account of the first days of contact 5-8th December 1857: "No te taeanga i te tuatua o te Atua ki Pukapuka" ('The arrival of the Word of God at Pukapuka', dated Aug 1869). Some lineages wanted to kill the newcomers in revenge for an incident that had happened a month earlier, but Vakaawi, chief of Yalongo lineage, protected them.

In 1862, Rev. Wyatt W. Gill found most of the people on the island converted to Christianity. Peruvian slavers raided the island in early 1863 and took away a total of 145 men and women; only two returned. The London Missionary Society barque John Williams was wrecked on the west side in May 1864. In 1868 the buccaneer Bully Hayes took about 40 people to go on a labour scheme, but none of them returned home.