The Ninigo Islands are a group of 31The Wuvulu Web Site - Geographical Names in the Western Islands
/ref> islands within the Western Islands of the

Bismarck Archipelago The Bismarck Archipelago (, ) is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. Its area is about 50,000 square km. History The first inhabitants o ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. Their coordinates are .

History

The first settlers on the Ninigo Islands were the

Melanesians Melanesians are the predominant and indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in a wide area from Indonesia's New Guinea to as far East as the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji. Most speak either one of the many languages of the Austronesian language fa ...

. Other groups later settled in the island group, including the

Polynesians Polynesians form an ethnolinguistic group of closely related people who are native to Polynesia (islands in the Polynesian Triangle), an expansive region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Sou ...

and

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

. These islands belong to

Micronesian outliers Micronesian outliers are some islands near New Guinea inhabited by Micronesian settlers. All of the Micronesian outliers are in the Bismarck Sea and belong to Papua New Guinea. These islands are also known under the name Western Islands The Micr ...

. The first sighting by Europeans of Ninigo islands was by the Spanish navigator Iñigo Órtiz de Retes on 27 July 1545 when on board of the

carrack A carrack (; ; ; ) is a three- or four- masted ocean-going sailing ship that was developed in the 14th to 15th centuries in Europe, most notably in Portugal. Evolved from the single-masted cog, the carrack was first used for European trade fr ...

''San Juan'' tried to return from

Tidore Tidore ( id, Kota Tidore Kepulauan, lit. "City of Tidore Islands") is a city, island, and archipelago in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, west of the larger island of Halmahera. Part of North Maluku Province, the city includes the island ...

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...

. He charted them as ''La Barbada'' (the bearded island in Spanish).Sharp, Andrew ''The discovery of the Pacific Islands'' Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960, p.31.

References

Bismarck Archipelago Archipelagoes of Papua New Guinea Manus Province {{ManusProvince-geo-stub