American Samoa – Polynesian traditions under the U.S. flag
The islands of American Samoa were settled by Polynesian seafarers thousands of years ago. Oral tradition tells of the powerful Tui Manuʻa, paramount chiefs of the Manuʻa islands whose prestige reached across a wide network of Polynesian communities, with trade in fine mats, tools and treasured goods linking Samoa with Tonga, Fiji and other islands.
European contact began in the eighteenth century: the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen sighted the islands in 1722, followed by French and British explorers. In the nineteenth century missionaries arrived and Christianity spread widely, while whalers and traders visited the sheltered harbour of Pago Pago. Rivalry between Germany, Britain and the United States over the Samoan islands ended with the agreement of 1899 that divided the archipelago. The eastern islands passed to the United States, with Tutuila's chiefs ceding their island in 1900 and Manuʻa following a few years later.
For half a century American Samoa was administered by the U.S. Navy, which used Pago Pago as a naval station. Responsibility later passed to the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the territory gained its own constitution and, eventually, an elected governor and legislature. Its people are U.S. nationals, and many have served in the U.S. armed forces or live on the mainland and in Hawaii.
Today American Samoa is shaped by faʻa Samoa, the Samoan way of life with its extended families and chiefly system, alongside its close ties with the United States.
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