Kosrae paramount chiefdom

Origins

Between about 1250 and 1400 the chiefdoms of Kosrae, the easternmost of the Caroline Islands, were probably unified under a single paramount ruler, the Tokosra. The capital was built on Leluh, a small island off the east coast that was enlarged with coral fill and covered with walled compounds of stacked basalt columns over the following centuries.

Rule and society

Kosrae was among the most centralised societies in Micronesia. The Tokosra held ultimate title to land, and high chiefs living at Leluh administered the island's districts, drawing food from commoners who farmed breadfruit, taro and bananas on the main island. Royal tombs stood inside high walls, and canals ran through the town. Pohnpeian tradition makes Kosrae the homeland of Isokelekel, who overthrew the Saudeleur dynasty.

Decline and legacy

Whalers, beginning in the 1830s, brought epidemics that reduced the population to a few hundred by the 1870s. American Protestant missionaries arrived in 1852, and the old kingship lost its authority. Kosrae passed to Spain in 1885, Germany in 1899 and Japan in 1914, and is now a state of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.