Niuean

The Niueans are a Polynesian people whose home is the single raised coral island of Niue, set between Tonga, Samoa and the Cook Islands and traditionally called the Rock of Polynesia. Archaeological evidence traces their settlement to about 900, when voyagers from Samoa arrived, and oral tradition recalls a further party of Tongan warriors reaching the island in the sixteenth century.

For centuries authority rested with village and family chiefs rather than any single ruler; only in the early eighteenth century did a line of kings, the patu-iki, begin with Puni-mata.

Captain James Cook sighted Niue in 1774 but was refused a landing, and named it Savage Island for the red banana paint worn by the islanders who met him; whaling ships, starting with the Fanny in 1824, became the first regular European visitors.