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To be found on the world map between French Polynesia and Fiji, appearing as little dots scattered around the Pacific Ocean, the Cook Islands consist of 15 beautiful islands and atolls of very different size and appearance.
The actual land area of the Cooks is surprisingly small, with no more than 240 square km. What the islands lack in land size, they more than make up for in being so widespread over the Pacific Ocean, covering an area of nearly 2 million square km. The total population of the Cook Islands is (approximately) 19,000 people.
The fertile Southern Group - which includes the main island Rarotonga, counts for nearly 90% of the land area and people of the Cook Islands. Rarotonga is the largest, and Takutea is the smallest of this Island Group.
The earliest days have not been well documented, but the first inhabitants of the Cook Islands are believed to be part of the the last wave of Polynesian Migration from Asia that started around 1500BC. The northern island of Pukapuka was the first island of the Cooks to be discovered by Europeans, as it was sighted first by the Spanish Captain Alvaro de Mendana on August 20, 1595.
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Another Spaniard, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros on March 2, 1606, stopped for provisions at Rakahanga. There was no further European contact for over 150 years until the voyages of English explorer and Naval Captain James Cook, after whom the island group takes its name. While he only ever landed at Palmerston island, in 1824 Russian cartographer Von Krusentstern changed the existing name of Hervey's Islands to honor Cook, who had been killed in Hawaii in 1779. Reverend John Williams of the London Missionary Society arrived in Aitutaki in 1821 and in Rarotonga in 1823 and set about converting the natives to Christianity. An Imperial Order in Council in the New Zealand Parliament on May 13, 1901, permitted the annexation of the Cook Islands to New Zealand and came into effect on June 11, 1901. On August 4, 1965, after adoption of a Report by the Cook Islands Legislative Assembly, the Administrator of the Government of New Zealand at the time signed the Proclamation to declare the Cook Islands a Self Governing State.
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