Valpei

The Valpei are an Oceanic-speaking Melanesian people of the northern tip of Espiritu Santo, the largest island of Vanuatu, where their closely related Valpei and Hukua varieties are remembered together under the name Valpei-Hukua. Like other Ni-Vanuatu, they trace their ancestry to the Austronesian Lapita navigators who settled the archipelago roughly three thousand years ago.

In May 1606 the Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós anchored in Big Bay on the island's northern coast, the first recorded European landing in Vanuatu, and clashed with local villagers before sailing away. No other Europeans returned to Santo until Louis Antoine de Bougainville in 1768 and James Cook in 1774, who gave the archipelago the name New Hebrides.