Tolomako

The Tolomako are an Oceanic-speaking Melanesian people of the Big Bay coast on northern Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, their language also being called Bigbay after the bay. Their speech has changed little from the ancestral Proto-North-Central Vanuatu tongue, unlike that of the Sakao people farther along the same coast.

In May 1606 Pedro Fernandes de Queirós's Spanish expedition anchored in Big Bay, clashed with the local chief and killed him, and briefly proclaimed the island part of the supposed great southern continent. After the Spanish departure, no Europeans returned to Santo until Louis Antoine de Bougainville in 1768 and James Cook in 1774.