Belauan

The Belauan, or Palauans, are indigenous people of the Belau (Palau) archipelago at the western edge of Micronesia; their Palauan language is Malayo-Polynesian, outside the Oceanic group. Austronesian settlers reached the islands between the third and second millennia BC, leaving terraced hillsides, stone paths and monoliths and building a strict matrilineal society of inheritance, marriage and titles.

A surviving ship of Magellan's fleet sighted Sonsorol in 1521, but Palau long stayed beyond European reach; Jesuit voyages of 1710 and 1711 ended in the priests' deaths.

Sustained contact began when the East India Company ship Antelope wrecked off Ulong in 1783; Captain Henry Wilson and his crew spent three months with the ruler of Koror and took his son Lee Boo to London, where he died of smallpox in 1784. British traders visited regularly, yet in 1837 the Palauans still lived under their own matrilineal chiefs.