Austronesian peoples are believed to have settled in the Fijian islands some thirty-five hundred years ago, with Melanesians following around a thousand years later.

Most authorities agree that they originated in Southeast Asia and came via Indonesia.

The first settlements in Fiji were started by voyaging traders and settlers from the west about five thousand years ago.

Pottery art from Fijian towns shows that Fiji was settled before or around 3500–1000 BCE, although the question of Pacific migration still lingers.

Lapita pottery shards have been found at numerous excavations around the country.

It is believed that the Lapita people or the ancestors of the Polynesians settled the islands first but not much is known of what became of them after the Melanesians arrived; they may have had some influence on the new culture, and archaeological evidence shows that they would have then moved on to Tonga, Samoa and even Hawai'i.

Aspects of Fijian culture are similar to Melanesian culture to the western Pacific but have stronger connection to the older Polynesian cultures such as those of Samoa and Tonga.

Trade between these three nations long before European contact is quite obvious with canoes made from native Fijian trees found in Tonga and Tongan words being part of the language of the Lau group of islands.

Pots made in Fiji have been found in Samoa and even the Marquesas Islands.

Abel Tasman's ships, while passing the Fiji Islands, come close to being wrecked on the dangerous reefs of the northeastern part of the Fiji group.

He charts the eastern tip of Vanua Levu and Cikobia before making his way back into the open sea, eventually turning northwest to New Guinea.

Thomas Baker has the distinction of being the last missionary to be killed and eaten in Fiji, his fates shared by seven other Fijian Christian workers.

Two men escape the massacre.

After Baker's death, Davuilevu mission will be temporarily closed for the following year.

Baker was born at Playden, Sussex, England, on February 6, 1832.

His father Jeremiah was a carpenter and in 1838, despite his wife's feelings, had taken the family to New South Wales, arriving at Port Jackson on March 17, 1839.

Baker had married Harriet Moon and was accepted as a probationary Methodist minister in February 1859 to be sent to a mission field.

He had arrived there with his wife a month later.

After being in Fiji for six years, he had settled his family into the new Methodist mission station at Davuilevu on the Rewa River.

In July, 1867, he leads a party to spread the gospel in the interior of Viti Levu, passing through the Taukei ni Waluvu's Christian enclave on the east bank of the Wainimala river.

In Methodist folklore, the tabua (whale's tooth) sealing the plot to ambush the party had preceded him along the non-Christian west bank of the Wainimala river.

Levuka had remained the Fijian the capital until 1877, when the administration had been moved to Suva, prompted by concerns that the six hundred-meter high cliffs surrounding Levuka give it no room for expansion.

The move is made official in 1882.