Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sighted Tahiti on 18 June 1767, received by Queen Purea and is considered the first European visitor. (A later report of an earlier sighting of Tahiti by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, serving the Spanish Crown, in 1606, is likely to have been mistaken with a sighting of La Sagitaria Island (Rekareka), to the SE of Tahiti.) Read more