The history of the Pitcairn Islands begins with the colonization of the islands by Polynesians in the 11th century. Polynesian people established a culture that flourished for four centuries and then vanished. They lived on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, and on Mangareva Island to the northwest, for about 400 years.
In 1790, nine of the Englishmen from the Bounty led by Fletcher Christian, along with the 18 native Tahitian men and women settled on Pitcairn Island and set fire to the Bounty. Christian's group remained undiscovered on Pitcairn until 1808, by which time all but one of the mutineers and all of the male Tahitians were dead. The remaining women and children were led by John Adams.
Polynesian society
The earliest known settlers of the Pitcairn Islands were Polynesians who appear to have settled on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands by at least the 11th Century, and on the more populous Mangareva Island to the northwest, for several centuries. These first inhabitants may have maintained a trading relationship with Mangareva, in which they exchanged basalt, volcanic glass (obsidian) and oven stones for goods, including coral and pearl shells. Most trade occurred within the Pitcairn Islands; however, material from Pitcairn Island has been discovered on the Tuamotus and Austral Islands in French Polynesia. The alkaline basalt found at Tautama (on the south-east of Pitcairn Island) was used by early Polynesians to create some of the highest quality adzes in Polynesia; however, the adzes were not traded widely, likely due to the remoteness of the islands. It is not certain why this society disappeared, but it is probably related to the deforestation of Mangareva and the subsequent decline of its culture; Pitcairn was not capable of sustaining large numbers of people without a relationship with other populous islands. By the mid-1400s, the trade routes between the islands and French Polynesia had broken down. Important natural resources were exhausted and a period of civil war began on Mangareva, causing the small populations on Henderson and Pitcairn to be cut off and eventually become extinct.
The islands were uninhabited when they were rediscovered by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, working in the employ of Spain, in January 1606. The British rediscovered the island on 3 July 1767 on a voyage led by Captain Philip Carteret, and named it after the fifteen-year-old Robert Pitcairn (a son of the soldier John Pitcairn) who was the crew member who first spotted the island; he was lost at sea three years later. Carteret, who sailed without the newly-invented marine chronometer, charted the island at , and although the latitude was reasonably accurate, his recorded longitude was incorrect by about 3° () west of the island. When the Bounty mutineers arrived on Pitcairn, it was uninhabited; however, a large number of archaeological items remained, such as marae, tiki carvings, adzes and adze flakes, rock carvings and petroglyphs.
The Polynesians that disappeared may have later migrated to a bigger island further to the southeast at Easter Island, where it has been noted that the jumping-off points for the early Polynesian colonization of Easter Island originally from Mangareva are more likely to have been from Pitcairn and Henderson, which lie about halfway between Mangareva and Easter. It has been observed that there is great similarity with the Rapa Nui language and Early Mangarevan, similarities between a statue found in Pitcairn and some statues found in Easter Island, the resemblance of tool styles in Easter Island to those in Mangareva and Pitcairn, and correspondences of skulls found in Easter Island to two skulls found in Henderson, all suggesting Pitcairn and Henderson islands to have been early stepping-stones from Mangareva to Easter Island, which in 1999, a voyage with reconstructed Polynesian boats was able to reach Easter Island from Mangareva after merely a seventeen and a half day voyage.
English and Tahitian settlement
After leaving Tahiti on 22 September 1789, Christian sailed Bounty west in search of a safe haven. He then formed the idea of settling on Pitcairn Island, far to the east of Tahiti; the island had been reported in 1767, but its exact location was never verified. After months of searching, Christian rediscovered the island on 15 January 1790, east of its recorded position. This longitudinal error contributed to the mutineers' decision to settle on Pitcairn.