Foreign traders first judge it safe to leave a party ashore on Yap.

What happened

Hezel writes that Yapese discouraged early visitors, “even to the point of massacring ships’ crews whenever possible.” The trading captains Andrew Cheyne and Alfred Tetens, the first foreigners to visit Yap regularly, were both attacked there.

Why it matters

Unlike Pohnpei and Kosrae, Yap had virtually no beachcombers, and its regular contact with foreigners came only with the traders of the 1860s and 1870s.