French Polynesia island of Rekareka to the southeast of Tahiti. Over a century later, British explorer Samuel Wallis visited Tahiti in 1767. French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville also visited Tahiti in 1768, while British explorer James Cook arrived in 1769. In 1772, the Spanish Viceroy of Peru Don Manuel de Amat ordered a number of expeditions to Tahiti under the command of Domingo de Bonechea who was the first European to explore all of the main islands beyond Tahiti. A short-lived Spanish settlement was created in 1774, and for a time some maps bore the name "Isla de Amat" after Viceroy
Tahiti rail accounts, the Tahiti rail was sufficiently well documented for there to be no doubt that it existed. The Tahiti rail has historically been confused with the extant Tongan subspecies of the buff-banded rail, "Gallirallus philippensis ecaudatus", which was also illustrated and described by the Forsters. In his 1783 description of the Tongan bird (wherein it was named "Rallus eucaudata"), the English ornithologist John Frederick Miller erroneously gave its locality as Tahiti, which led the Tahiti rail to be regarded as a junior synonym of the extant bird. He based his description on Forster's illustration (plate no.127) of the Tongan bird,