Maewo

The Maewo are an Oceanic-speaking Melanesian people of Maewo, a narrow, rain-soaked forest island 105 kilometres east of Espiritu Santo in northern Vanuatu, known to Europeans after 1768 as Aurora.

The central districts speak Sungwadaga, with the related Marino tongue to the north and Baetora, or South Maewo, to the south. Their island is the wettest in Vanuatu, its dense forest cut by streams, waterfalls and hot springs supplying its garden villages.

Pedro Fernandes de Queirós's Spanish expedition made the first recorded European sighting of Maewo at the end of April 1606; Louis Antoine de Bougainville sighted it in 1768 and named it Aurora for the dawn light in which he found it.