Natugu

The Natugu are the people of Nendö, the largest of the Santa Cruz Islands in the Solomon Islands, whose language Natügu means our language and shares the island with Nalögo and Nanggu. Their ancestors belonged to the Lapita world, and neighbouring Vanikoro has been settled since about 1200 BCE; these Reefs–Santa Cruz tongues form a small Oceanic branch of Austronesian.

The islanders sailed the outrigger canoes called tepukei between the Santa Cruz group, the Reef Islands and Vanikoro by reading stars, swells and the bioluminescence on the water.

Álvaro de Mendaña, the first European in these waters, sighted Vanikoro in 1595 and tried to plant a colony at Graciosa Bay on Nendö, but he died there in 1596 and the settlement was abandoned. In 1788 the French explorer Lapérouse lost both his ships on Vanikoro's reefs, and his survivors vanished before search parties reached the island.