[3] On 21 June 1665 John Byron sighted Pukapuka, calling it Islands of Danger, as he was unable to land due to high surf.

[1] French captain Pierre François Péron named the atoll Îles de la Loutre ("Islands of the Otter") when he visited on 3 April 1796.

The three villages are located on the crescent-shaped bay of the northernmost islet of the atoll: Yātō (West), Loto (Central) and Ngake (East).

In daily life, the islanders frequently call them Tiapani (Japan), Malike or Amelika (United States) and Ōlani (Holland) respectively.

[3] The atoll served as a connecting hub between West and East Polynesia – a role that is reflected in Pukapukan material culture, and language, which is Samoic with a Tokelauan influence.

Pukapukan traditions speak of frequent passages to Tuvalu, Tokelau, Niue, Tonga, Rarotonga and Tahiti, and basalt used for many of their adze blades can be geochemically traced to a quarry on Tutuila (Samoa).

Oral traditions refer to at least two episodes of civil war, and inundation of the atoll from a major tsunami or cyclone, in which only two women and 15 men survived.

[3] The island was first discovered by Europeans in 1595, when the Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña saw it on the feast day of Saint Bernard and named it San Bernardo.

According to oral tradition, an unknown ship called at Pukapuka in the mid 18th century, and when the Yalongo lineage chief Tāwaki boldly took the captain's pipe out of his mouth, he was shot.

In the following days, the island accepted Luka's Christian message, largely because of an encounter when two dead people were apparently raised back to life.

[10] Harold Dixon, Gene Aldrich, and Tony Pastula survived 34 days on the open ocean in a tiny 4 by 8 foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) raft, beginning their odyssey with no food or water stores and very few tools.

They were found by Teleuka Iotua huddled in a hut belonging to Lakulaku Tutala on Loto Village's reserve, where he gave them coconuts to drink.

Their story was told in the book The Raft by Robert Trumbull, published by Henry Holt and Co. in 1942, and released as a motion picture Against the Sun[11] in 2014.

The entire population is said to be descended from seventeen men, two women and an unknown number of children who survived a catastrophic storm and tsunami in the 17th century.

The American writer Robert Dean Frisbie settled on Pukapuka in 1924, married a native woman, and raised his family on the island.