Early History of Tonga: First People, Early Kings and Archaeology | Sea Life, Islands and Oceania

NAMES, GEOGRAPHY AND IDENTITY OF TONGA

Tonga is an archipelago of more than 170 islands in the South Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and New Zealand. It is the only remaining Polynesian monarchy. It was a British protectorate from 1900 to 1970 and has been a constitutional monarchy since 1875. In 1970 Tonga became an independent country, within the British Commonwealth of Nations.

The islands of Tonga have a total area of approximately 699 square kilometers (270 square miles) and are located east of Fiji about 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles0 northeast of Sydney, Australia. Only 36 of the islands are inhabited. They are mainly coral atolls, but the western group are volcanic, with some of them still highly active. The islands are divided into three groups: Vava’u in the north, Haapai in the center, and Tongatapu in the south. The latter is the largest island. It is where the capital, Nukualofa, is located and is home to two thirds of Tonga’s population.

Official Name: Kingdom of Tonga; conventional short form: Tonga; local long form: Pule'anga Fakatu'i 'o Tonga; local short form: Tonga; Former name: Friendly Islands, because of the friendly reception given to Captain James Cook and other explorers in the 18th century. Source of the Name: The name "Tonga" is composed of “to” (“to plant”) and “nga” (a place). It also means "south" in the Tongan language — a reference to its geographic position in relation to central Polynesia. Tonga means “south” in numerous Polynesian languages. [Source: CIA World Factbook 2023]

Name of the People and: noun: Tongan(s); adjective: Tongan (pronounced TAHN-guhn). Tonga is one of the world's last remaining constitutional monarchies. Tongans have traditionally been closely linked through family. Many family members have relocated to the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, working and purchasing there and sending money back to relatives in Tonga. [Source: J. Williams, “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life”, 2009, Encyclopedia.com]

First People in Tonga

The first humans arrived in Tonga around 1000 B.C. According to the most recent archaeological findings, they are believed to have arrived from Fiji. The first inhabitants were Polynesians, originally from what is now Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. Carbon-14 dating of artifacts on Tongatapu produced a date of 1140 B.C. but many scholars don’t accept this date.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the islands of Tonga were settled around 830 B.C., but the Polynesians are believed to have arrived some 400 years after that. Some scholars believe the inhabitants originally came from what is now Samoa. [Source: Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., Columbia University Press]

Early Tongan established a culture based on fishing and agriculture and were bound together by a semi-democratic systems based on extended family groups headed by a headman. They were great navigators, who are believed to have used the winds, currents, waves, sea bird clouds and stars to get around to islands often separated by long long expanses of open sea.

The Tongan creation myth describes how the islands were fished from the ocean by Maui, one of the three major gods. Another tale describes how 'Aho'eitu became the first king (Tu'i Tonga). He was part human and part god, being the son of a woman and the god Tangaloa. The Tu'i Tonga represented both the Tongan people and divinity, which is still a strong metaphor today. [Source: Giovanni Bennardo, “Countries and Their Cultures”, Gale Group Inc., 2001]

Lapita People

According to Archaeology magazine: The site of Nukuleka in Tonga is the oldest known site occupied by the Lapita peoples who initially settled remote Oceania, but it has been difficult to date the first settlement precisely. Scientists have now used uranium-thorium dating on thirteen small coral files to find that people of the Lapita culture arrived between 2,830 and 2,846 years ago, nailing down the founding event of Polynesia with unprecedented precision. [Source: Samir S. Patel, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2013]

The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 B.C.. The ''Lapita Culture'' is named after a site in New Caledonia. The Lapita intermarried with the Papuan populations to various degrees, and are the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia. [Source: Wikipedia]

According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Archaeologists have been able to trace their influence and probable movements thanks to discoveries on numerous islands of a relatively sudden and widespread appearance of their trademark a distinctive kind of pottery, characterized by small dentate toothlike) patterns stamped into the clay and simple line incisions, often in complex geometric designs. [Source:“Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1991 |~|]

Scholars theorize Lapita blood and culture organization became dominant in Fiji and pushed out the first settlers first to the Lau islands of Fiji and then to Tonga. From Tonga, the "Lapita" people, who evolved into Polynesians, colonized of the South Pacific, inhabiting the islands of Samoa, Niue, Rarotonga, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Tumaotus, Easter Island, Pitcairn, Hawaii and New Zealand.

Early Kings of Tonga

During the tenth to twelfth centuries, a line of Tongan kings and queens (known as the Tuʻi Tonga) was established, and Tongan chiefs gained power throughout the South Pacific. The islands’ politics were probably highly centralized under the Tu’i Tonga by A.D. 950. Local traditions have carefully preserved the names of the Tongan sovereigns for about 1,000 years.

Since the Tongan language was not written down until the 19th century, the early history of Tonga is based on oral tradition. Tonga's lineage of absolute hereditary kings dates back to the 10th century ruler Ahoeitu. During the 14th century, the 23rd sovereign, Kau'ulufonua, retained his sacred powers but relinquished much of his governing authority to his brother Ma'ungamotu'a, who he then referred to as Tu'i Ha'atakalaua. [Sources: “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations”, Thomson Gale, 2007; “Countries of the World and Their Leaders Yearbook 2009]

Sometime later, this process was repeated by the second royal line, thus resulting in three distinct lines: the Tu i Tonga with spiritual authority, which is believed to have extended over much of Polynesia; the Tu i Ha atakalaua; and the Tu i Kanokupolu. The latter two had temporal authority for carrying out much of the day-to-day administration of the kingdom.

In the 17th century, Fotofili, the seventh temporal king, gave executive power to his brother Ngala, known as the Tu'i Kanokupolu. From then on, the power gradually went to the Tu'i Kanokupolu and his descendants. He founded the current dynasty. According to tradition, in the mid-19th century, after the death of the Tu'i Tonga, the powers were given to the 19th Tu'i Kanokupolu, Taufa'ahu Tupou.

Early Tongan Kingdom

A major religous-political center with monumental architecture existed on Tongatapu, where the political hierarchy was legitimized in ceremonial events, particularly chiefly funerals and the regular presentation and redistribution of tribute from islands within and beyond Tonga. [Source: Geoffrey R. Clark, Christian Reepmeyer, Nivaleti Melekiola, and Helene Martinsson-Wallin, PNAS, July 7, 2014]

A study in PNAS reported: In the first half of the second millennium A.D., a powerful and complex society emerged in the Tonga Islands that was unique in the Pacific for the way it aggregated an entire archipelago under a single political system. Considered a maritime empire/chiefdom, Tonga has recently been categorized as a primary/archaic state that, along with the late-prehistoric polities of the Hawaiian Islands, were the most complex societies in prehistoric Oceania. The ancient Tongan state/chiefdom was headed by the paramount Tui Tonga (Lord of Tonga) and administered by closely related chiefly families, and it was exceptional in Polynesia for a network of political and economic relationships that extended to other islands and archipelagos.

The prehistoric peak population of Tonga is estimated to be around 30,000–40,000 people, about half of whom lived on the southern island of Tongatapu (Sacred Tonga), where the central places of the Tongan polity were raised. Tongatapu is a limestone island and all volcanic rock artifacts, including adzes, flakes, grindstones, hammer stones, and cooking stones found in archaeological contexts, were imported from volcanic islands within, or beyond, the Tongan archipelago.

The first paramount center to contain chiefly stone architecture, which signals increasing hierarchical organization, was located in eastern Tongatapu and built around A.D. 1300 before being abandoned two to three generations later. After Heketa, the chiefdom relocated to Lapaha on the shores of the Fanga Uta Lagoon around A.D. 1350–1400, where the Tongan state reached its greatest extent. Manifested by a monumental central place covering more than 50 hectares, the principal monumental structures were stepped royal tombs of the paramount Tui Tonga family, which were faced with slabs of beach rock and reef limestone, some weighing more than 20 tons. Lapaha has 27 stone-faced burial structures that contain more than 2500 tons of quarried and transported carbonate stone. Radiocarbon dates, architectonic features, and chiefly genealogies indicate the first royal tombs were built A.D. 1300–1400, with the last constructed ∼A.D. 1760. Additional constructions marking the chiefly center include ditch systems, roads, earth burial mounds, sitting platforms, bathing wells, standing stones, and a large area of reclaimed land containing a canoe harbor and wharf, which highlight the importance of maritime transport to the polity.

Empire of the Early Kings of Tonga

What some historians have called a Tongan empire existed between A.D. 1200 and 1500. By 1200, the Tu’i Tonga had expanded his influence throughout Polynesia and into Melanesia and Micronesia. Tongans were fierce warriors and skilled navigators. For centuries they exercised political and cultural influence over several neighboring islands. The Tongan realm reached its zenith in the 13th century, when its control extended over part of the Lau group in Fiji, Rotuma, Futuna, 'Uvea, Tokelau, Samoa, and Niue.

Evidence indicates that, in traditional times, Tongans had large double-hulled canoes called kalia that could carry provisions for up to 200 people, and in them Tongans made extensive trading voyages between Fiji and Samoa. By about 900, much of Fiji was in the Tu’i Tongan Empire’s sphere of influence. When the Europeans began arriving in large numbers in Fiji in the early 1800s, there were distinct racial groups throughout the islands, with those on the eastern side looking like Tongans and Tahitians, and those on the western side looking like Melanesians from Papua New Guinea. The Tongan influence declined significantly by 1200, while Melanesian seafarers continued to periodically arrive in Fiji. [Source: CIA World Factbook, 2023]

According to the PNAS study: Tonga was unique in the prehistoric Pacific for developing a maritime state that integrated the archipelago under a centralized authority and for undertaking long-distance economic and political exchanges in the second millennium A.D. To establish the extent of Tonga’s maritime polity, stone tools excavated from the central places of the ruling paramounts, particularly lithic artifacts associated with stone-faced chiefly tombs, were geochemically analyzed. The lithic networks of the Tongan state focused on Samoa and Fiji, with one adze sourced to the Society Islands 2,500 kilometers from Tongatapu.[Source: Geoffrey R. Clark, Christian Reepmeyer, Nivaleti Melekiola, and Helene Martinsson-Wallin, PNAS, July 7, 2014]

In the Tongan state, 66 percent of worked stone tools were long-distance imports, indicating that interarchipelago connections intensified with the development of the Tongan polity after A.D. 1200. In contrast, stone tools found in Samoa were from local sources, including tools associated with a monumental structure contemporary with the Tongan state. Network analysis of lithics entering the Tongan state and of the distribution of Samoan adzes in the Pacific identified a centralized polity and the products of specialized lithic workshops, respectively.

The Tongan Empire began to decline in the 1300s, descending into civil wars, a military defeat to Samoa, and internal political strife that saw successive leaders assassinated. By the mid-1500s, some Tu’i Tongans were ethnic Samoan and day-to-day administration of Tonga was transferred to a new position occupied by ethnic Tongans. By the time of the first European contact in late 1700s and early 1800s, the empire had collapsed, and the authority of the Tu'i Tonga was restricted mostly to the religious realm.[Source: CIA World Factbook, 2023]

King Taufa'ahau

King Taufa'ahau united all the islands of Tonga through conquest after 50 years of civil war. Born in the village of Ha'apai and the great-great-great-great-grandfather of the present king, he was responsible for Christianizing Tonga, giving it a representative government and establishing and a British-style constitution and parliament. He ruled until his death in 1893 at the age of 96.

King Taufa'ahau also broke down the Tongan feudal system, freed the people of Tonga from the power of the chiefs and named the chiefs as hereditary nobles. He also established a law that gave every male 8¼ acres upon reaching the age of 16. Why did he chose 8¼ acres. He said the missionaries that advised him didn't understand Tongan measurements so he took out a coconut-fiber rope and said: "This is 100 “ofa” long. Let us give each able-bodied man a piece of land this long on a side." A 100 ofa square worked it to 8¼ acres.

King Taufa'ahau Story

In about 1820, King Taufa'ahau of Tonga went to Samoa for a tattooing ceremony that solemnized his coming of age. His return to Tonga was a major event there. A 1974 National Geographic attempted to recreate what happened: The location: somewhere south — or was it west or east? — of Samoa. No one knows. The king's navigators have lost their way. In dire puzzlement the navigators murmur among themselves. [Source: William R. Curtsinger, National Geographic, December 1974]

In another canoe, the aged and blind Kaho — Tuita Kahomovailahi — a navigator of low rank, asks his son Po'oi, "What are they saying?" The boy replies that the navigators are lost. Kaho orders his canoe turned into the wind. As the sail luffs and the vessel slows, he climbs onto the starboard hull and, held fast by his son, dips his hand into the sea. Then he announces, "Tell the king we are in Fijian waters." "That is the old blind one," the king's navigators scoff in disbelief.

"What should we do?" the king himself asks Kaho. "Our food and water are almost finished." Kaho requests the location of the sun. Then he says, "Tell the king that when the sun is in the middle of the sky he will see land." A few hours later the flotilla reaches Lakemba, an island in the Lau Group east of the Fijis. In gratitude, the king makes Kaho his chief navigator and a noble. From this time, he and his descendants become known as Fafakitahi-Feelers of the Sea.

Almost 150 years later Kaho's greatgrandson revealed that his ancestor's act of touching the sea was designed to impress the superstitious Tongans. Kaho knew land was near because his son had reported to him the presence of a fish-eating bird that never ventures far from land.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: CIA World Factbook, 2023; “Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1991, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated September 2023