ʻAta

In 1862, the Peruvian government had decided to invite indentured labourers to collect guano on Peru's Chincha Islands. A fleet of ships spread out over the Pacific, ostensibly to find willing migrants, but they quickly switched to plain kidnapping tactics instead. In June 1863 about 350 people lived on ʻAta in a village called Kolomaile (of which remnants were still visible a century later). Captain Thomas James McGrath of the whaler Grecian, having decided that slave trading was more profitable than whaling,[12]^: 83 [13] came along and invited the islanders on board for trading. But once almost half of the population was on board, doors and rooms were locked, and the ship sailed away. 144 people never returned.[14]

In 1929, anthropologist Edward Winslow Gifford interviewed two former residents of Kolomaile who were schoolchildren when the Grecian took its slaves; they said that "[Paul] Vehi [Mayor of ʻAta] went aboard and presumably arranged the kidnapping. When he was returned ashore, he made a proclamation that each family was to send a good-looking man aboard with provisions to sell. There was to be no selling on shore, and furthermore the selling on the ships was to take place below decks. Once the Ata people were aboard, they were sent to various rooms to select the goods they wanted in exchange. After they entered the rooms, the doors were locked."[2]^: 283 [12]^: 85

Captain McGrath

The whaler-turned-slaver Grecian next tried to kidnap more slaves from the Lau Islands, but was not successful there.[12]^: 86 At Niuafouʻou, the second island in Tonga to be affected, Grecian was able to kidnap only 30 people.[12]^: 86 [13] ʻUiha was to be the third, but there the islanders had actually been able to reverse roles and ambushed the slaver Margarita instead.[12]^: 87

Grecian never made it to Peru. Probably near Puka-Puka in the Tuamotus, it met another slaver, the General Prim, which had left Callao in March. Because Grecian never obtained a labour licence from Peru, General Prim was more than willing to take the 174 Tongans back to port,[12]^: 87 where it arrived on 19 July.[13][15]^: 145 Meanwhile, however, the Peruvian government, under pressure from foreign powers and also shocked that its labour plan had turned into a slave trade, had already cancelled all labour importation licenses on 28 April. General Prim and other ships were not allowed to land their captured South Pacific slaves on Peruvian soil, but instead the Peruvian government chartered ships to take them home.

By the time the Adelante, chartered to return the Tongans, finally left on 2 October 1863, many had died or were dying from contagious diseases. In addition, Captain Escurra of the Adelante, which had been one of the most successful slavers before the licenses were revoked, had no intention to take them home after being paid $30 per head. Instead, he marooned them on uninhabited Cocos Island, well off the route to Tahiti, claiming the 426 kanakas were affected with smallpox, endangering his crew. 200 survivors were left when the whaler Active passed along and found them on 21 October. Finally, in November, the Peruvian warship Tumbes came to save the survivors, who had dwindled to just 38. They were brought to Paita, where they apparently were absorbed into the local population.[13]

Meanwhile, in Tonga, King George Tupou I, having heard of the kidnappings, sent three schooners to ʻAta to evacuate and to resettle the remaining population of Kolomaile (about 200 people) to ʻEua, where they would be safe against future attacks.[14] Until modern times, the Vehi family were wrongfully dogged by rumours they had sold the villagers into slavery.[13][14] McGrath was arrested in Bluff, New Zealand, for tax evasion at the end of November 1863,[13] and the owner of the Grecian laid additional charges that McGrath had disappeared with the ship after being commissioned in 1861 for a whaling expedition.[16]

In June 1965 a group of six Tongan youths were stranded on the island after running away from their strict Catholic boarding school in Nukuʻalofa on Tongatapu.[17] They stole a 24-foot (7.3 m) boat on short notice and with little preparation, and drifted southwest after being caught in a storm.[18] After swimming to the island, they survived on seabirds, as well as feral chickens, wild taro, and bananas from the ruins of Kolomaile. They were rescued on 11 September 1966 by a passing lobster fisherman named Peter Warner.[19] After being returned to Tongatapu, the youths were briefly imprisoned for stealing the boat.[17]

The descendants of the original ʻAta island dwellers still live in the southern village of Haʻatuʻa on ʻEua, of which a part has received the name Kolomaile.[14] Their wish to return to ʻAta was still alive in the mid-20th century, but it is considered unlikely to happen, as the island does not have a harbour, making shipping to it a dangerous and uneconomical adventure. Currently ʻAta, still part of the kingdom of Tonga, remains uninhabited.[14]

The only mammal native to the island is Rattus exulans, the Polynesian rat. In a survey conducted in 1990, the most common seabird present was Ardenna pacifica, the wedge-tailed shearwater, with an estimated 20,000 present.[3]

The plateau of ʻAta is heavily forested with fig trees.[3]