[8] In the traditional account of the Kwara'ae, their founding ancestor arrived about twenty generations ago, landed first on Guadalcanal, but followed a magical staff which led him on to the middle of Malaita, where he established their cultural norms.

More precisely the sighting was due to a local voyage done by a small boat, in the accounts the brigantine Santiago, commanded by Maestre de Campo Pedro Ortega Valencia and having Hernán Gallego as pilot.

[10] In his account, Gallego chief pilot of Mendaña's expedition, establishes that they called the island Malaita after its native name and explored much of the coast, though not the north side.

After it was re-discovered in the late 18th century, Malaitans were subjected to harsh treatment from whaling boat crews and blackbirders (labour recruiters).

[12] From the 1870s to 1903 Malaitan men (and some women) comprised the largest number of Solomon Islander Kanaka workers in the indentured labour trade to Queensland, Australia and to Fiji.

However, some of the earliest missionaries were Malaitans who had worked abroad, such as Peter Ambuofa, who was baptised at Bundaberg, Queensland in 1892, and gathered a Christian community around him when he returned in 1894.

[23] The government began to pacify the island, registering or confiscating firearms, collecting a head tax, and breaking the power of unscrupulous war leaders.

One important figure in the process was District Commissioner William R. Bell, who was killed in 1927 by a Kwaio, along with a cadet named Lillies and 13 Solomon Islanders in his charge.

A massive punitive expedition, known as the Malaita massacre, ensued; at least 60 Kwaio were killed,[24] nearly 200 detained in Tulagi (the protectorate capital),[25] and many sacred sites and objects were destroyed or desecrated.

Auki became the temporary capital when Tulagi was seized by the Japanese, and it too was briefly raided by Japan, but little fighting happened on the island.

Malaitans who fought in battalions, however, brought a new movement for self-determination known as Maasina Ruru (or "Marching Rule"), which spread quickly across the island.

Participants united across traditional religious, ethnic, and clan lines,[28] lived in fortified nontraditional villages, and refused to cooperate with the British.

[34] The council was shown not to be simply a means of appeasement, but submitted nearly seventy resolutions and recommendations to the High Commissioner in its first two years of existence.

Malaita remains the most populous island in the country, and continues to be a source for migrants, a role it played since the days of the labour trade.

[38] After the Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 2019, with a delegation led by prime minister Manasseh Sogavare being received with great hostility and the provincial government refusing to discuss the topics Sogavare had originally arrived to discuss, instead airing concerns over the diplomatic switch.

Geologically, Malaita has a basaltic intrusive core, covered in most places by strata of sedimentary rock, especially limestone and chert, and littered with fossils.

[42] Malaitan hydrology includes thousands of small springs, rivulets, and streams, characteristic of a young drainage pattern.

Nearer the coasts, rivers are slower and deeper, and form mangrove swamps of brackish water, along with alluvial deposits of gravel, sand, or mud.

The wet black soil, too poorly drained for most horticulture except taro, is found in valleys or at the foot of slopes.

Along the coast is either a rocky or sandy beach, where pandanus, coconuts, and vines predominate, or a swamp, supporting mangrove and sago palms.

In this zone is also the most intense human cultivation, which, when abandoned, a dense secondary forest grows, which is nearly impassably thick with shrubs and softwoods.

Above about 2,500 feet (760 m) is a cloud forest, with a dense carpeting of mosses, lichens, and liverworts, with cycads as the dominant tall plant.

Malaitans once believed in anthropoid apes that lived in the centre of the island, which are said to be 4.5 to 5 feet (1.4 to 1.5 m) tall and come in troops to raid banana plantations.

However, in 1948 it was revived at settlements on several islands, including Fanalei, Walande (10 km to the north), Ata'a, Felasubua, Sulufou (in the Lau Lagoon) and at Mbita'ama harbour.

In 2010, the villages of Fanalei, Walende, and Bitamae signed a memorandum of agreement with the non-governmental organization, Earth Island Institute, to stop hunting dolphin.

The skin varies from rich chocolate to tawny, most clearly darker than Polynesians, but not generally as dark as the peoples of Bougainville or the western Solomons, whom Malaitans refer to as "black men".

According to Harold M. Ross, from north to south along the island's axis, the linguistic groups are roughly the Northern Malaita languages (more properly a collection of dialects without a standard name, generally To'abaita, Baelelea, Baegu, Fataleka, and Lau), Kwara'e in the hilly area between the ridges, Kwaio in about the geographic centre of the island, and ꞋAreꞌare to the south.

[60] Congregations of local descent groups propitiate their ancestors at shrines, led by ritual officiants (fataabu in northern Malaita).

[63] Many Malaitans have been active in the Solomon Islands Christian Association, a national inter-denominational organization that set a precedent for cooperation during the period of independence.

Several of the groups, including the ꞋAreꞌare, famous for their panpipe ensembles, are among SSEC members whose traditional music is no longer performed for religious reasons.