Pre-colonial Samoa

The Samoan Islands were first settled some 3,500 years ago as part of the Austronesian expansion.

European exploration first reached the islands in the early 18th century. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville named them Navigator Islands in 1768. The United States Exploring Expedition (1838–42) under Charles Wilkes reached Samoa in 1839. In 1855 J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn expanded its trading business into the archipelago. The Samoan Civil War of 1886–1894 devolved into the Samoan crisis between colonial powers, followed by the Second Samoan Civil War of 1898/9, which was resolved by partition of the islands in the Tripartite Convention, between the United States, Great Britain and Germany.

After World War I, German Samoa became a Trust Territory and eventually became independent as Samoa in 1962. American Samoa remains an unincorporated territory of the United States.

Archeologists place the earliest human settlement of the Samoan archipelago at around 2850 years before present. This date is based upon the ancient lapita pottery shards found throughout the islands; The oldest evidence being in Mulifanua. This area of Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga, contains evidence from dates of similar times, suggesting the area was settled during the same period. Samoan oral history, however, extends only as far back as AD 1000 Whatever occurred between 750 BC and AD 1000 remains a mystery, though this may have been the period of great migrations that led to the settlement of present-day Polynesia. Another mystery is that the making of pottery suddenly stopped; there is no oral tradition among the people of Samoa that explains this but some theories suggest the lack of available pottery-making materials in Polynesia meant the majority of pottery was imported during migration and not locally sourced or made.

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