Editing Rotuma (section)

===European contact===

[[Tupaia (navigator)|Tupaia]]'s Map is among the most important artifacts to have come from late 18th-century European–Indigenous encounters in the South Pacific region and features, in Epeli Hau‘ofa's terms, a "sea of islands" extending for more than 7,000&nbsp;km from Rotuma in the west to Rapa Nui in the east and more than 5,000&nbsp;km from Hawai‘i in the north to New Zealand in the south. The earliest known confirmed [[Europe]]an sighting of Rotuma was in 1791, when [[Captain (naval)|Captain]] [[Edward Edwards (Royal Navy officer)|Edward Edwards]] and the crew of [[HMS Pandora (1779)|HMS ''Pandora'']] landed in search of sailors who had disappeared following the [[Mutiny on the Bounty|Mutiny on the ''Bounty'']]. Some scholars have suggested that the first European to sight the island was, instead, [[Pedro Fernandes de Queirós]]; his description of an island he sighted is consistent with the characteristics and location of Rotuma. However, this possibility has not been conclusively substantiated.