the Gambier Islands with his ship HMS Blossom during a long voyage of exploration to the Pacific and Arctic of North America. In 1834 the missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts Honoré Laval and François Caret arrived in the islands to found the first Catholic mission in Polynesia, after the failed attempt of the Spaniards in Tahiti in 1775. The two priests ended up being protagonists of the French union of Tahiti. At first, King Maputeoa, the last king of Mangareva, resisted, but after attributing the recovery from a serious illness to the new god, he increasingly submitted to the influence of the Christian missionaries and was baptized in 1836. First with the acquiescence and then with the active support of the ruler, the Picpusians deployed an extensive development program for the islands. Encouraged by their success, after baptizing the entire population of the Gambier Islands, they moved to Tahiti in 1836. On this island, since Wilson's expedition, there was a Protestant mission led by Pritchard, who was also British consul and advisor to Queen Pomare Vahine. Pritchard succeeded in expelling the Catholic missionaries, provoking a diplomatic conflict. France sent Admiral Dupetit-Thouars to try to remedy the matter. The admiral ended up establishing a protectorate, and later the annexation of Tahiti. Meanwhile, the Gambier Islands suffered a strong earthquake and tsunami in 1837. Laval and Caret returned to the archipelago and established a theocratic regime. But, most notably, they taught the inhabitants of the islands to read and write, and protected them from European traders and whalers. According to a phrase of Father Laval, "civilization leads to contentment". On the other hand, religious zeal led them to systematically replace all the idols and temples, and in their place they ordered the construction of more than a hundred stone buildings: churches, chapels, convents, seminaries, cemeteries, vicarages, triumphal arches. The cathedral of St. Michael in Mangareva alone could accommodate more than 2,000 people. The population, which was over 2,000 when Laval and Caret left, dropped to 500 at the end of the 19th century due to disease and emigration. Many laborers were sent from Mangareva to Tahiti to build the cathedral of Papeete in 1856. The recruitment of labor for the large-scale projects depopulated the smaller Gambier Islands and led according to some sources to famine, as daily food procurement was neglected. This and the spread of previously unknown infectious