| HISTORY The theory generally accepted today attributes Southeast Asia as the origin of vast migrations of people to Polynesia and to the other parts of the Using double-outrigger canoes of wood and braided fibre and equipped with sails, these first navigators, thanks to their knowledge of the wind, the currents and the stars, travelled towards the east, colonising the central archipelagos (French Polynesia, Cook islands…) between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. Great expeditions ending around 1000 A.D. gave birth to the Polynesian triangle bordered to the north by Hawaii, to the east by Easter Island, to the west by Tahiti and her islands and to the southwest by New Zealand. Similarities in the languages spoken in these islands and their derivations from the Ma'ohi language proves the common origin of their inhabitants.  |  In the sixteenth century, Magellen, then later Mendana, reached the archipelagos of the Tuamotu and the Marquesas. However, it is the Englishman Samuel Wallis who remains renowned for the European discovery of Tahiti in 1767. The following year, the Frenchman Antoine de Bougainville baptised the island "the new Cythera". One year later, the Englishman James Cook landed on Tahiti and took possession of the Society Islands. Tahiti and her islands were then divided into several realms and kingdoms and the separated Polynesian people began giving praise to different gods. Little by little, the Protestant and Catholic missionaries began evangelising the islands when around 1797, with the help of the Europeans, one of the chiefs proclaimed his supremacy and created the "Pomare Dynasty". |
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