Tau Island

Tau Island, is part of the The Manu'a group of islands, located 10 miles east of Ofu Island. It is the most populated of the Manu'a Islands, yet with just a few sleepy villages of a few hundred families totaling fewer than 800 people, Tau is unspoiled by modern influences. Many Samoans believe that Manu'a was the first land to be created and that Tau was the birthplace of the Polynesian people. Tau was also the site of anthropologist Margaret Mead's landmark study Coming of Age in Samoa. The National Park of American Samoa's Tau Unit, the largest of the three park units, occupies 8.3 square miles out of the island's 17.1 square miles and include 3,170-foot (970 m) Lata Mountain, the highest point in American Samoa.