Tabiteuea

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Tabiteuea is the name of an atoll in the Pacific archipelago of the Gilbert Islands. The atoll is part of the nation of Kiribati and is located south of the capital atoll of Tarawa.

Tabiteuea means to Kiribati "land without chiefs ". This is due to the fact that the population of the islands was set always egalitarian.

The atoll consists of many small islands and two major islands that stretch on the east side of the atoll from northwest to southeast. The northern island Nuribenua has an area of ​​26 km ² and in 2001 a population of 2,990 people. The southern island Buariki is 12 km ² and has 1,293 inhabitants. The North Island Nuribenua is connected directly to the south of the airfield to the south, slightly smaller island Tauma on a narrow spit of land.

Due to the distance of the two main islands to each other, there are on this atoll two airfields: Tabiteuea North and South Tabiteuea.

At the end of the 19th century the islands were the scene of a religious war, when the population converted to Christianity in the North Island captured the South Island, whose population was not converted, but still practiced the traditional religion.

Literature

• Gerd Koch: Material Culture of the Gilbert Islands. Nonouti, Tabiteuea, Onotoa. Museum of Ethnology, Berlin 1965.
• William H. Geddes: Social individualisation on Tabiteuea atoll. In: The Journal of the Polynesian Society. Vol 86, 1977, No. 3, pp. 371-392.
• Henry E. Maude: Tioba and the Tabiteuean religious wars. In: The Journal of the Polynesian Society. Vol 90, 1981, No. 3, pp. 307-336.