History of the Pacific Islands islands to create Polynesia. During pre-European-contact times there was frequent canoe voyaging between the islands as Polynesian navigation skills are recognised to have allowed deliberate journeys on double-hull sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited; thus the name, Tuvalu, means "eight standing together" in Tuvaluan. The pattern of settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread out from the Samoan Islands into the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone to migration into the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia. In 1568 Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña
High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands Territory of the Pacific Islands. The islands are now part of Palau, Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. The following is a list of the High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, as well as their predecessors during the American occupation of the territory between 1944 and 1947. High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands The High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was an official who ruled the American Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trusteeship in the Pacific Ocean under the administration