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A large part of Pitcairn Island’s early history will forever remain a mystery. The full history of both the earlier Polynesian community and of the Bounty settlers will never be completely known. [See "Pre-Mutineer History"] Differing theories and contradicting stories concerning the events that took place after the mutineers arrived at Pitcairn, have been told. Whether any of these stories were offered as a deliberate attempt to disguise the truth, especially the whereabouts and fate of Fletcher Christian, is again uncertain. Over 2,000 books and articles have been written, and no fewer than five major movie productions have been made about the most famous mutiny. Pitcairn Island’s First Inhabitants Upon arrival at Pitcairn Island in January 1790, the crew of Bounty discovered the island had previously been inhabited. Many relics of a Polynesian civilization were found scattered around the island. Roughly hewn stone gods, which guarded sacred sites, representations of animals and men carved into cliff faces, burial sites yielding human skeletons, and earth ovens, stone adzes, gouges and other artefacts of Polynesian workmanship were discovered. The stone gods were deliberately destroyed when pushed off cliffs into the sea, and although many stone adzes have been given away or removes, some are still being found today. The carved pictures in the cliff faces can still be seen at such sites as Down the Gods and Down Rope ...

Read the rest of this fascinant story, including the following topics:

Discovery by Europeans 1767

Mutiny on HMAV Bounty 1789

Settlement by the Mutineers 1790

John Adams and the Community 1800

Discovery of the Community 1808 and 1814

Successors to John Adams

Unsuccessful Emigration to Tahiti 1831

A Dictator Steps In 1832

Pitcairn’s First Constitution 1838

A Time of Tranquillity 1838-1848

Emigration Again: To Norfolk Island in 1856

Return to Pitcairn 1859 - 1864

A Subsistent Existence

The Islanders Settle Down

Fresh Settlers Create a Bar to Any More 1882

A Change of Religion 1886

Parliamentary Government 1893

The Influence of James McCoy 1870 - 1907

Further Constitutional Revision

The End of Isolation

Full story: http://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/pitcairn/history.shtml

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Conversion was greeted with great pleasure by the Seventh-day Adventists in America and they raised funds for a missionary ship, which sailed for Pitcairn in 1890. The islanders were baptized in one of the rock-bound coastal pools, and the pigs were killed to remove the temptation of eating pork. But few other changes were needed: all were already total abstainers, most were vegetarian, except for occasional meals of goat, which is not forbidden by Adventist discipline, and few smoked ... The former law providing for the imprisonment of dogs for chasing cats was also altered by substituting the penalty of death for that of imprisonment, for the offending dog ...