Fulaga Atoll

Fulaga, also called Vulaga, belongs to southern Lau in Fiji. One of its people played a documented role in the movement of Christianity between Tonga and Fiji during the 1830s. Josua Mateinaniu, a chief from Fulaga who had converted in Tonga, accompanied the Wesleyan missionaries David Cargill and William Cross to Lakeba in 1835. His standing and knowledge of both Tongan and Fijian helped them enter a society whose political and family connections already crossed the sea.

This episode places Fulaga within a network of travel and personal relationships rather than making it simply an isolated reef island. The missionaries' arrival at Lakeba on 12 October 1835 depended partly on an Indigenous intermediary familiar with both island worlds. Mateinaniu's involvement also shows that the spread of the new religion included Pacific chiefs and voyagers alongside European missionaries. The event concerned a man from Fulaga working elsewhere in Lau, not a recorded conversion of the whole island.