Who were the first people to reach Polynesia?

In this post we will look into the possible migration from Austronesia and Melanesia to America as proposed by Paul Rivet, but looking at an early timeline, since Polynesians reached the islands of the Pacific between 700 and 1200 AD, while America was peopled over 15,000 years ago.

This implies that there must have been an earlier group of people living in this region before the arrival of Polynesians 1300 to 800 years ago.

The First People in Polynesia

The Polynesians consiered that there was an original race of people inhabiting the islands they reached during their expansion across the Pacific Ocean, they called them Manahune. These mythical beings are very human in many ways, and suggest that they were possibly members of some previous wave that peopled Polynesia.

William Halse Rivers (1864-1922) proposed in 1914 (The History of Melanesian Society) that there had been two waves of people that populated Polynesia the first wave became the serfs, or commoners, enslaved by the second wave people, who became their overlords.

"Even with the available evidence, however, there is much which points to the two-fold nature of Polynesian culture. If the distinction between chiefs and commoners in Melanesia has been the result of the fusion of two peoples, the chiefs being the representatives of an immigrant people, it will be difficult to withhold a similar explanation of the two orders of chief and commoner in Polynesia." (p.280)

I have found references on the pre-Polynesian people that are said to have inhabited New Zealand. One of such sources states that "... This is the forbidden pre-Maori history with reports being withheld and access being denied to evidence of its first inhabitants who were annihilated by the arriving Maori. The Ngati Hotu tribe of New Zealand, described as being light-skinned, with light eyes and reddis hair, were the last surviving pre-Maori Urukehu.'They say we do not exist. They say we are an extinct race. My people still carry the red and blond hair, blue-green eyes, and fair skin of our ancestors. We are the Ngati Hotu." No reference is given for this quote, and it sounds as if it wass conspiracist, racist and pure pseudoscience.

The Urukehu, however, were real. The Encyclopedia of New Zealand - Te Ara, managed and updated by Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington, New Zealand. Includes an entry on them, and the following image:

Uurukehu. Source

"This photograph is from "The old-time Maori" (1938), by Mākereti Papakura. She notes that the blonde, fair child and the father, Tonihi (right), are both Urukehu. While some believe that Urukehu (fair-headed, fair-skinned Māori) are the offspring of the fairy people patupaiarehe, Mākereti Papakura believed that this light-skinned strain dates back to the traditional Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki, and that albino Māori are the product of the union between Māori and patupaiarehe. She describes patupaiarehe as ‘supernatural children of the mist ... seen in indistinct form in the passing mist. ... They are fair, and are clothed in flimsy white like the web of the pūngāwerewere [spider]."

Patupaiarehe were fairy-like people, pictured below in a New Zealand stamp (source, they lived in the forests and mountains, had blue eyes, fair hair and white or red skin. They abducted women.

Finally, these Ngāti Hotu peoiple were an actual tribe that lived in the Taupō district when the first Maori poeple (priest Ngātoroirangi and explorer Tia) arrived in New Zealand, "discovering" it, and settling there: "The tribe were referred to as ‘urukehu’ (fairy people) because of their unusual red hair and fair skin" (Source).

A plausible explanation is that these fair haired people are the result of Melanesian genes. According to a paper published in Science, Melanesians "from the Solomon Islands and Equatorial Oceania have the darkest skin pigmentation outside of Africa, they also have the highest prevalence of blond hair (5 to 10%) outside of Europe." It is caused by a mutation in the TYRP1 gene, which is involved in the production of the skin and hair darkening pigment melanin. Other mutations in the TYRP1 gene can provoke albinism. This genetic trait is different to the one that causes fair hair in Europeans.

Judge W. E. Gudgeon in his work Maori migrations to New Zealand, 1892, (p. 217) mentions that "It can hardly be doubted that there were many tribes of Polynesian descent in occupation of this country when the crew of the Arawa entered the river at Maketu, Bay of Plenty... Among other well-known tribes now extinct, but who are regarded by the Maoris as Autocthones, are the following : Ngati-Eahnpungapunga, Nga-Marama, Te Elawerau, Marangaranga, Ngati-Hotu, Maruiwi, Te Baupongaoheohe, Te Tururumauka, Te Aruhetawiri, Te Aoraorn, Waitaha-Torauta, Whatumamoa, and many others ; some of whom are still tribes such as Ngati-Mahanga, NgatiUepohatu, Nga-Potiki, &c." So clearly, Gudgeon believed that the Polynesians reached New Zealand over a long period of time, and among the first arrivals, these "Authoctones" were the Ngati-Hotu.

I doubt we will find any future research on this matter, because the Maori, like the Mapuche of Chile, the U.S. and Canadian First Nations, and the Australian Aboriginals, don't like any theory that suggests that there were other people who reached "their" homeland before they did, and are willing to defend their status as "First People" by denying those theories and literally burying the evidence (Mungo man reburied and Kennewick man reburied).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

"White Indians" in Panamá first reported in 1699, they are Albinos

Lionel Wafer (~1640-1705) was a Welshman who set sail to explore the world, at first he visited the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia as a ship's surgeon, and later, as a buccaneer and privateer. In search of adventure and wealth, he joined a privateering expedition led by Edmund Cooke, Sharp and Dampier, in 1680. In Amereica he was wounded in an accident and left behind by the members of his group. The native Guna people took care of his wounds and he recovered and learned their language and customs. Eventually he made his way back to "civilization", firts to the colony of Pennsylvania and later, to England where he wrote about his adventures. Below is an extensive quote from a text about the White Indians among the Guna natives.

Source: Wafer, Lionel. 1699. A new voyage and description of the isthmus of America. London: James Knapton. (See p.134. Another online source - facsimile)

"Their Natural Complexion is a Copper-colour, or Orange-tawney; and their Eye-brows are naturally black as Jet...
White Indians.
There is one Complexion so singular, among a sort of People of this Country, that I never saw nor heard of any like them in any part of the World. The Account will seem strange, but any Privateers who have gone over the Isthmus must have seen them, and can attest the main of what I am going to relate; tho' few have had the opportunity of so particular an Information about these People as I have had.
Milk-white Skins,
They are White, and there are of them of both Sexes; yet there are but few of them in comparison of the Copper-colour'd, possibly but one to two or three hundred. They differ from the other Indians chiefly in respect of Colour, tho' not in that only. Their Skins are not of such a White as those of fair People among Europeans, with some tincture of a Blush or Sanguine Complexion; neither yet is their Complexion like that of our paler People, but 'tis rather a Milk-white, lighter than the Colour of any Europeans, and much like that of a white Horse.
Down, and Hair.
For there is this further remarkable in them, that their Bodies are beset all over, more or less, with a fine short Milk-white Down, which adds to the whiteness of their Skins: For they are not so thick set with this Down, especially on the Cheeks and Forehead, but that the Skin appears distinct from it. The Men would probably have white Bristles for Beards, did they not prevent them by their Custom of plucking the young Beard up by the Roots continually: But for the Down all over their Bodies, they never try to get rid of it. Their Eye-brows are Milk-white also, and so is the Hair of their Heads, and very fine Withal, about the length of wix or eight Inches, and inclining to a Curl.
Smaller than the other Indians. Moon-ey'd Active by Moon shine.
They are not so big as the other Indians; and what is yet more strange, their Eye-lids bend and open in an oblong Figure, pointing downward at the Corners, and forming an Arch of Figure of a Crescent with the Points downwards. From hence, and from their feeing so clear as they do in a Moon-shiny night, we us'd to call them Moon-ey'd. For they see not very well in the Sun, poring in the clearest Day; their Eyes being but weak, and running with Water if the Sun shine towards them; so that in the Day-time they care not to go abroad, unless it be a cloudy dark Day. Besides they are but a weak People in comparison of the other, and not very fit for Hunting or other laborious Exercise, nor do they delight in any such. But notwithstanding their being thus sluggish and dull and restive in the Day-time, yet when Moon-shiny nights come, they are all Life and Activity, running abroad, and into the Woods, skipping about like Wild-Bucks; and running as fast by Moon-light, even in the Gloom and Shade of the Woods, as the other Indians by Day, being as nimble as they, tho' not so strong and lusty.
Of Copper-colour'd Parents,
The Copper-colour'd Indians seem not to respect these so much as those of their own Complexion, looking on them as somewhat monstrous. They are not a distinct Race by themselves, but now and then one is bred of a Copper-colour'd Father and Mother; and I have seen a Child of less than a Year old of this sort. Some would be apt to suspect they might be the Offspring of some European Father: But besides that the Europeans come little here, and have little Commerce with the Indian-women when they do come, these white People are as different from the Europeans in some respects, as from the Copper-colour'd Indians in others. And besides, where an European lies with an Indian-woman, the Child is always a Mostese, or Tawney, as is well known to all who have been in the West-Indies: where there are Mostesa's, Mulatto's, &c. of several Gradations between the White, and the Black or Copper-colour'd, according as the Parents are; even to Decompounds, as a Mulatto-Fina, the Child of a Mulatto- man, and Mostesa-woman, &c. and Parents of such.
But neither is the Child of a Man and Woman of these white Indians, white like the Parents, but Copper-colour'd as their Parents were. For so Lacenta told me, and gave me this as his Conjecture how these came to be White, That 'twas through the force of the Mother's Imagination, looking on the Moon at the time of Conception; but this I leave others to judge of. He told me withal, that they were but short-liv'd.

Albino Guna people. Source

But what Wafer ignored, was that the Guna people have one of the highest global rates of albinism in the world (1 in 160 to 1 in 200 people are albino) (source). The cause is their geographic isolation and their endogamic marriages. This online video in Facebook, shows Guna albinos.

The type of albinism of these people is the oculocutaneous albinism type II, or OCA2. Unfortunately consanguineous marriages also leads to other genetic diseases. (Source{).

So these people aren't white or Caucasian or European, they are albinos.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©