Sparse remnants of trails and other artifacts indicate a sporadic early Polynesian presence. A canoe, a blue head, pieces of bamboo, and other relics of early settlers have been found there. The island's prehistoric settlement may have begun about 1000 BC when eastern Melanesians traveled north and may have extended down to Rawaki, Kanton, Manra and Orona of the Phoenix Islands, 500 to 700 km southeast. K.P. Emery, an ethnologist for Honolulu's Bernice P. Bishop Museum, indicated that settlers on Manra Island were apparently of two distinct groups, one Polynesian and the other Micronesian, hence the same might have been true on Howland Island, though no proof of this has been forthcoming. The hard way of life on these isolated islands along with unreliable fresh water supplies may have led