Misima

The Misima are the people of Misima, formerly marked on European charts as Saint Aignan, a mountainous volcanic island in the northwestern Louisiade Archipelago. Austronesian seafarers settled the island around 1500 BC, and their descendants speak Misima-Panaeati, a language shared with the people of Panaeati and closely linked to the Kilivila speech of the Trobriands.

Dense forest covers the interior, so the population clusters in coastal villages, living from gardening, fishing and inter-island trade between Misima and Vanatinai. Europeans first sighted the island in 1768, when Louis Antoine de Bougainville passed through the archipelago.

The d'Entrecasteaux expedition explored and surveyed Misima in 1793, giving it the name Misima after the expedition's officer de Rossel; for the rest of the age of sail the islanders had little more than passing contact with whalers and traders.