Tutuila - History

History

The Polynesians first emerged in Samoa in about 10,000 BC. By 600 BC they'd established a settlement on Tutuila at Tula. They built up a settlement at Tula. Over the centuries, the Samoans kept in contacts with the neighboring islands of Western Polynesia, Tonga and Fiji.

In 1722, Jacob Roggeveen became the first European to visit the Manu'a islands and in 1768 the islands of Samoa were named the "Navigator Islands" by Louis Antoine de Bougainville because of the fact that the islanders used canoes offshore to catch tuna. Whalers and Protestant missionaries began to arrive in the early 19th century, particularly in the1830s, including John Williams of the London Missionary Society. Apia, rather than Pago Pago developed as a trading station. Louis de Freycinet arrived in October 1819 and named Tutuila Rose Island after his wife. In the 1872, the Pago Pago Harbor was recognized by the Americans as the ideal refueling station for the new San Francisco to Sydney steamship service. In 1872, the US Navy negotiated a treaty on Tutuila to use the island but didn't ratify it until 1878. Due to competing interest from Great Britain and Germany which began to emerge in the 1860s, in 1879 the Americans formed a tripartite government of the islands after the Samoans declared that they open to all of them. The Berlin Conference of 1889 was held to discuss the political future of the islands but by 1899, American dissatisfaction of not having complete control led to a division of the Samoan islands, with Tutuila and Aunu'u forming American Samoa. The Samoans signed the agreement in 1900 and the Flag of the United States was raised on Tutuila on April 17, 1900. It wasn't until 1929 though that it was formally ratified and the name of American Samoa wasn't given formally until 1911.

During World War II, Tutuila was an important island for the US Marines in the Pacific and they erected many concrete bunkers along the coastline. The island, given that it was such an important base went relatively unscathed during the war, except for an attack from a Japanese submarine on January 11, 1942. Since 1951, the island and American Samoa has been the responsibility of the Department of the Interior.

In 1956 Peter Tali Coleman became the first Samoan-born governor and during his term protection for the islanders against the alienation of their lands and loss of culture was approved in 1960 and subsequently the Flag of American Samoa became official. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed H. Rex Lee and generated massive funds to develop Tutuila, financing the building of an international airport, port facilities, roads, schools, houses, a hospital, a tuna cannery, a modern hotel and installing electricity throughout the 1960s. This massive development came at the exact time that the political future of American Samoa was uncertain given that Western Samoa became independent of New Zealand in 1962 and effectively stamped American authority over Tutuila as a dependency.

In July 1997 Western Samoa, by legal agreement, changed the country's name from Western Samoa to Samoa. This was opposed by the Americans, including the American Samoan islanders who believed that the name diminished their sense of identity and still use the terms Western Samoa and Western Samoans.

Today American Samoa is an unincorporated and unorganized territory of the US but is under the administration of the Office of Insular Affairs of the US Department of the Interior. Politically, the island is divided into two of American Samoa's primary divisions, the Eastern District and the Western District.