visit about 30 years previously. Because of Pukapuka's isolation, few vessels visited before 1857 when the London Missionary Society landed teachers from Aitutaki and Rarotonga. Luka Manuae of Aitutaki later wrote an extended account of the first days of contact 5–8 December 1857: No te taeanga o te tuatua a te Atua ki Pukapuka ("The arrival of the Word of God at Pukapuka", dated August 1869). Some lineages wanted to kill the newcomers in revenge for an incident that had happened a month earlier, but Vakaawi, chief of Yālongo lineage, protected them. In the following days, the island accepted Luka's Christian message, largely because of an encounter when two dead people were apparently raised back to life. In 1862 Rev. William Wyatt Gill found most of the people on the island converted to Christianity. A raid in 1863 by Peruvian slave traders took 145 men and women, of whom only two returned, Kolia and Pilato (Malowutia). The London Missionary Society barque John Williams was wrecked on the western side in May 1864. In 1868 the buccaneer Bully Hayes took about 40 people to go on a labour scheme, but none of them returned home. Pukapuka was proclaimed a British protectorate in 1892 and was included in the Cook Islands boundaries under the control of New Zealand in 1901. World War II Three U.S. Navy fliers from the arrived on Pukapuka in February 1942. Harold Dixon, Gene Aldrich, and Tony Pastula survived 34 days on the open ocean in a tiny raft, beginning their odyssey with no food or water stores and very few tools. They were found by Teleuka Iotua huddled in a hut belonging to Lakulaku Tutala on Loto Village's reserve, where he gave them coconuts to drink. He then went and got more help. Shortly after their arrival a cyclone struck the island and caused widespread damage. Their story was told in the book The Raft by Robert Trumbull, published by Henry Holt and Co. in 1942, and released as a motion picture Against the Sun in 2014. Post World War II Pukapuka was hit by Cyclone Percy in February 2005 — a Category Five cyclone that destroyed the taro gardens, brought down thousands of trees, and damaged three-quarters of the houses. Treaty From 1856 to 1980, the United States claimed sovereignty over the island under the Guano Islands Act. On 11 June 1980, in connection with establishing