Kosrae

The Kosraeans are the people of Kosrae, a small volcanic island at the eastern end of the Caroline Islands, speaking Kosraean, a core Micronesian language of the Austronesian family. Settled by the early first millennium, the island gave rise to the walled city of Leluh, which flourished from about 1250 as seat of a stratified kingdom of nobles and commoners, with matrilineal clans, shell money and stone burial pyramids for its rulers.

Álvaro de Saavedra made the first recorded European sighting in 1529, sailing from Tidore. Spain later claimed the island without occupying it. The first Europeans to land were the French crew of Louis-Isidore Duperrey's corvette La Coquille, spending ten days at Okat Harbour in June 1824 and recording Leluh's ruins.

Whalers followed, but as late as 1837 Kosrae remained under its own chiefs, untouched by colonial administration.