Islands of Oceania: The Mystery of Pitcairn Island

The Mystery of Pitcairn Island

Among thousands of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, Pitcairn Island is probably one of the most mysterious. It is best known for the mutineers from HMS Bounty who settled down on the island. However, we do not know much about natives who inhabited the island between the 11^th and 15^th centuries. They just disappeared after living on the islands for about 400 years. Will their disappearance forever remain a mystery?

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The Island

Pitcairn is a small, volcanic island (4.6 km², 3.2 kilometres long and 1.6 kilometres wide). The highest point is called Pawala Valley Ridge (347m). It is British territory along with three other, uninhabited islands: Ducie, Oeno and Henderson.

Among the four islands in the group, Pitcairn Island is the best for living. It has all the other three islands lack. It has volcanic rock, abundant vegetation, fresh water, and fertile soil which grow breadfruit, bananas, and other food plants. The climate is tropical, hot and humid.

Pitcairn Islands

Pitcairn Island

The Europeans

On 3 July 1767 Pitcairn Island was sighted for the first time by Europeans. On that day Captain Philip Carteret of H.M.S. Swallow recorded:

It is so high that we saw it at a distance of more than fifteen leagues, and it having been discovered by a young gentleman, son to Major Pitcairn of the marines, we called it PITCAIRN'S ISLAND

The crew did not land on the island. However, they noticed rich vegetation and a stream pouring over a cliff, so they surmised that the island was inhabited.

What was much more crucial for the modern history of the island happened on 28 April 1789 near Tonga Islands. On that day mutiny on HMS Bounty broke out. It was led by Fletcher Christian and it succeeded to take over the ship. The mutineers decided to hide in a place where they will be safe, far from sailing tracks. Thus, they chose Pitcairn Island that had been discovered 22 years earlier.

Mutiny on the Bounty

The Natives

When the mutineers arrived on the island they saw some signs of human occupation. They noticed not only breadfruits that must have been brought by people but also the stone structures made by the first inhabitants of the island. Near the edge of Bounty Bay, they found a quadrangular stone platform with stone monuments in every corner. Some human bones were found also while digging the foundations of houses and preparing cultivations. But the island was uninhabited, and at that time, nobody could say who the natives of the island were.

The first people came to the island around the 11^th century. They were Polynesians, probably from Mangareva Island or Tuamotu atolls. There were many archaeological findings on the islands, such as hewn stone gods, faces carved in the cliff that are representations of animals and men, burial sites yielding human skeletons, earth ovens, stone adzes, gouges and other artefacts of Polynesian workmanship. Those archaeological findings may suggest that different people from different islands may have come to Pitcairn at different times in the past.

Furthermore, not only material culture confirms the relation between Pitcairn and other Polynesian islands. People from Mangareva (about 500 km from Pitcairn), knew about the island. They called it Heragi, and even mentioned Pitcairn in one of their legends:

Hina-poutunui was told by her mother to air a bark cloth garment in the sun and to watch it lest it rains. Hina was careless, and the garment was spoiled by a shower of rain. Hina was promptly expelled from home and went down to the seashore to seek transport to some other island. No canoe being available, she asked various lagoon fishes whether they had crossed the horizon, but each replied in the negative. She asked a deep-sea turtle, and he replied, ‘Yes! Get on my back and I will take you wherever you want to go.’ Hina mounted the turtle and was carried to Heragi. When Hina landed, she saw both banana and plantain trees in fruit. She bent down a bunch of bananas, and the fruit of bananas have drooped down ever since, whereas the untouched fruit of the plantain remains erect. Tinirau, a chief of the island, married Hina. They had a daughter named Toa-tutea, who went to Tahiti and after various adventures returned to Mangareva. On her death, she was buried on Kamaka on the side of the island facing her birthplace in Heragi.

There must have been a regular connection between Pitcairn and Mangareva. Maybe Pitcairn was just a dependent colony of Mangareva along with Henderson Island (which was also temporarily inhabited by Polynesians, but only some bones remained, and no other artefacts). But there is still the question: why did they disappear?

Stone tools (Pitcairn Island)

Petroglyphs (Pitcairn Island)

Stone sculptures from Tahiti (left) and Pitcairn (Right)

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We will never know what exactly happened to the natives from Pitcairn Island. They could die out from a disease. They could be exterminated by invaders from other islands. Or maybe they set off searching for new, better lands. There are many other options and all of them seem to be probable.