1/4 'Ata is a tiny, remote island with sheer cliffs. Why would its inhabitants build a fort? Archaeologist David Burley is one of the few living humans to have visited 'Ata. In an article for Matangi Tonga, he cites my book The Stolen Island, & suggests it might hold an answer

2/4 'Ata was evacuated after a raid by NZ & Tasmanian slavers in 1863. Its people had lived in a village called Kolomaile, in the island's tiny interior plateau. Burley excavated their pottery & adzes, but was puzzled by the fort known as Kolomaile Kolotau https://matangitonga.to/2020/04/16/ata-archaeology

3/5 Burley turns to an 1854 article by anti-imperial journalist Charles St Julian, which I quoted in The Stolen Island. After describing how Wesleyan war king Tupou I had unified Tonga, St Julian called 'Ata a last redoubt of heathenism. He said Tupou would 'convert' the island

4/5 By the time 'Ata was raided & depopulated in 1863, the island boasted a church. John Thomas, the stern missionary who converted Tupou I in the '20s, even visited the place to hold a service. Did Tupou I take 'Ata by force, & did the inhabitants built a fort to resist him?

5/6 In the late medieval era Tonga was the centre of a maritime empire. By the time Tupou I took power, tho, civil war had fragmented the realm. Peter Suren, who has studied the remote northern island of Niuafo'ou, believes it was reconquered by Tupou I in the 1850s.

6/6 Tupou I is a saint in Tonga, & Burley has suggested rather than stated outright that he conquered 'Ata. But the idea doesn't seem far fetched. In 2013 I was given a memorable tour of Pea, a pagan stronghold that Tupou I besieged & conquered in 1852: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2014/03/taniela-vao-and-tongan-art-of-time.html