Editing History of Tuvalu (section)

==Pre-Christian beliefs==
Laumua Kofe (1983) describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.<ref name="SJM">{{cite book |last1= Whitmee |first1= Samuel James |title= A missionary cruise in the South Pacific being the report of a voyage amongst the Tokelau, Ellice and Gilbert islands, in the missionary barque "John Williams" during 1870|year=1871|publisher= J. Cook & Co, Sydney }}</ref><ref>Kofe, Laumua "Old Time Religion" in ''Tuvalu: A History''</ref>

In 1896 [[William Johnson Sollas|Professor William Sollas]] went to [[Funafuti]] as the leader of the ''Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society'', and with the assistance of Jack O'Brien (as interpreter), he recorded an oral history of Funafuti given by Erivara, the chief of Funafuti, which he published as ''The Legendary History of Funafuti''.<ref name="Sollas">{{cite journal |author= Sollas, William J.|url= https://www.nature.com/articles/055353a0.pdf  |title= The Legendary History of Funafuti|journal= Nature|volume= 55|issue= 11 |year= 1897 |pages=353–355 |doi= 10.1038/055353a0 |doi-access= free }}</ref> Erivara provided an account of the kings (chiefs) of Funafuti and a description of the spiritual beliefs before the introduction of Christianity. The beliefs evolved over time. In the beginning the people worshipped the powers of nature, such as thunder and lightening, as well as birds and fishes.<ref name="Sollas"/> Then the [[Animism|worship of spirits]] became the belief system, such as Tufakala who was named after a variety of seagull. Eventually the belief system was centred on the priests or spirit-masters (''vaka-atua'' or ''vakatua''), who were the intermediaries between the people and spirits, [[Deity|deities]] and [[Fetishism|fetish]] objects, such as an unusual red stone called the Teo.<ref name="Sollas"/>   Another fetish object was a hat made out of red, white and black pandanus leaves and adorned with white shells, called the Pulau, which was said to be the hat of Firapu, an ancestor who had been deified.<ref name="Sollas"/>  Daily activities such as fishing and cultivation of crops were connected to ceremonies involving the fetish objects and to specific spirits or deities. The ''vaka-atua'' were also the healers.<ref name="Sollas"/> Erivara described the destruction of the fetish houses, and the influence of the ''vaka-atua'', by the trader Jack O’Brien in the decade before the arrival of Christian missionaries on Funafuti.<ref name="Sollas"/>