Swains Island: History
Archaeological field research on Swains Island has been largely limited to only a few surveys, in part due to the private ownership of the island since it was first claimed by the Jennings family. However, based upon oral traditions and limited field work, anthropologists estimate that the island was settled by Polynesian voyagers in the mid-1300s CE, although it may have served as a waypoint for travel between islands prior to that. Evidence of pre-contact settlement include mounds and a tupua (sacred stone). Oral histories indicate the island was later dominated by the Tokelauan atoll Fakaofo, but there are also memories of the island being depopulated by famine prior to western contact. Connections between the island and Samoa were also known.
Whalers from New England began visiting the island as early as 1820 to load fresh water from the atoll's lagoon. Settlers from Tokelau also reestablished a presence on the island by the 1800s, and the colony was well established by the time a group of Frenchmen arrived in the 1840s with the aim of establishing a copra production operation. Many Tokelauans abandoned the island at that point due to violence from the Westerners.
Captain William L. Hudson of the USS Peacock sighted the island on 1 February 1841, during the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–42. He named it Swain's Island after "a certain Captain Swain", from whom he had learned about the island's location.
Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Swains Island was visited by whalers seeking fresh water. By the mid-1850s, a group of Fakaofoans had returned to the island, and the French copra workers had left.
In 1856, an American, Eli Hutchinson Jennings (14 November 1814 – 4 December 1878), arrived on Swains with his Samoan wife, Malia, who was from Upolu. Originally from Long Island in New York, Jennings came to the Pacific as a whaler, eventually settling in Samoa, where he became involved in local struggles over lineage after the death of Tamafaiga. While in Samoa, Jennings purchased the title for Swains Island from a British Captain Turnbull, who claimed ownership of the island by right of discovery. According to one account, the sale price for Swains was 15 shillings per acre (37 shillings per hectare) — and a bottle of gin. (The per-acre price is equivalent to £70 in 2025.)
Jennings arrived on Swains on 13 October 1856 and began work to establish a copra plantation. One of the Frenchmen later returned, but did not care to share the island with Jennings and left. Swains was considered a semi-independent proprietary settlement of the Jennings family (although under the U.S. flag), a status it would retain for approximately 70 years. It was also claimed for the U.S. by the United States Guano Company in 1860, under the Guano Islands Act. However, there is no evidence that guano or guano mining was present on the island.
Jennings also played an instrumental role in helping Peruvian "blackbird" slave ships depopulate the other three Tokelau atolls.
After Jennings died in 1878, his wife Malia took over management of the island's coconut plantation until her death in 1891. At that point, their son Eli Jennings Jr inherited the island and its copra industry. Jennings had been born on Swains Island, but he was educated in San Francisco, and was referred to as "King Jennings". Jennings's descendants maintain ownership of the island to the current era. …