It seems that some ten centuries before Christ, the Lapita people became the first to settle in the Samoan islands.a Bold explorers and master navigators, these earliest Polynesians evidently migrated into the Pacific from southeast Asia. Following the sea winds and currents, they sailed huge double-hulled canoes over greater areas of ocean than had any people before them. Deep in the heart of the South Pacific, they discovered a small group of islands that they named Samoa.

Over the centuries their descendants spread eastward across the Pacific to Tahiti, then to Hawaii to the north, New Zealand to the southwest, and Easter Island to the southeast. Today, this vast triangular region is called Polynesia, meaning “Many Islands,” and its inhabitants are called Polynesians. Samoa is therefore spoken of as the “Cradle of Polynesia.”