History of the Pitcairn islands

The first times

The island of Pitcairn was inhabited with the Préhistoire by Polynésiens. The archeologist Marshall Weisler, researcher of the Université of Berkeley discovered with beginning of the year 1990 of stuctures of temple, the Pétroglyphe S and the stone tools which testify to an old civilization. Objects indicate that the local population practiced exchanges with other islands of Polynesia, and that this trade brutally stopped around the year 1500.

According to its research, the disappearance of the inhabitants of Pitcairn and its neighbor the island Henderson is related to the ecological catastrophe which precipitated the fall of Mangareva, located at 400 kilometers, which was their principal economic partner.

The arrival of Europeans

Europeans take note of the island and its neighbors only after the time of the Grandes discoveries. The Spanish explorer Pedro Fernández de Quirós reference mark initially the Henderson island, located 200 km at the east of Pitcairn, at the beginning of the 17th century, then the English Philip Carteret discovers Pitcairn in July 1767 at the time of a voyage of exploration on board the Swallow . He gives him the name of the first member of his crew to have seen the island, Robert Pitcairn, a fifteen year old sailor. Because of the violence of the current, the ship cannot accost.

Twenty years later, the first Europeans, revolted Bounty, will unload there, under conditions which gave place to accounts and largely popularized films.

Mutinés of Bounty

The history begins in October 1788, when the English ship Bounty makes stopover for five months with Tahiti. The crew, charmed by the beauty of the landscapes and the reception of Tahitiens, agrees to leave the places only with regret.

Once at sea, exceeded by the brutality of the captain William Bligh, part of the sailors, carried out by the second Fletcher Christian, mutine on April 28th, 1789. After having given up at sea the Bligh captain and 18 men who were faithful for him, mutinés initially decide to settle on the island of Tubuai, It is a failure. Bounty, ordered by Fletcher Christian, then turns over to be supplied in Tahiti. Some men are unloaded and the crew, reduced to eight sailors, is joined by 18 Polynesians, including 12 women and some children.

The mutineers, sought by the Royal Navy, then put the course on on the island of Pitcairn where they arrive in January 1790. The ship then is dismembered and burned in bay of Bounty Bay to avoid any attempt at return. Still today, the islanders celebrate each year this act symbolic system by setting fire to an effigy of the boat.

The installation on the island causes tensions, the sailors tending to regard the Polynesians as their servants. In 1794, the Polynesians raise themselves and several English, whose Fletcher Christian, are assassinated. The widows of the killed sailors revolt then and carry out the survivors. Finally, there will remain nothing any more but one English, John Adams, which reigned on a family made up of ten women and a score of children.

New discovery

It is in 1808 that the existence of the population of Pitcairn is revealed, when the American Baleinier Topaz makes stopover on the island to supply itself out of water. Adams dies twenty years later at the 65 years age. Meanwhile, some inhabitants left Pitcairn to be established in Tahiti or on the island Norfolk, but several of them returned in the island.

In 1853, one counted 170 descendants of revolted of Bounty. Some British colonists came to be added to the community pitcairnaise, then travellers of all kinds gradually visited the island.

Even if the usual language were pitcairnais it, a creole language derived from the English and interfered Tahitien, Adams attempted to teach English with the children while being pressed on a Bible recovered in the remains of Bounty. The missionary S British, made at the end of the 19th century, tried to restore the use of English in the island. Pitcairnais is always taught, at the same time as English, in the only school of the island.

Much Pitcairnais has still today the name of Christian and Adams.

The annexation of Great Britain

Pitcairn was annexed by the Great Britain in 1838. It passed in 1952 pennies the administration of the islands Fiji then, in 1970, under the authority of a governor appointed by the High-Command of New Zealand. The island preserved the distribution of the grounds established by Fletcher Christian in 1790 and part of the laws instituted by John Adams.

British sovereignty was the subject of a questioning in 2004 at the time of the lawsuit of the Islands Pitcairn, the lawyers affirming that mutinés of Bounty, from which the current population goes down, would have repudiated their British citizenship by setting fire to the ship in 1790.

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