In 1857, the captain of the Julia, coasting along Tematagi Atoll saw armed natives follow the course of his schooner... "clad in many-coloured stuffs".
In 1966, Catholic missionary Father Victor Valleys mentioned in a letter to his bishop that he had planted 135,000 coconut trees on the islands.
Teams of workers from neighboring atolls spent three or four months a year at Tematagi harvesting copra.
The legal status of the population is not clear since the atoll remains the property of SCI, under the guise of a Catholic Mission.
This means that the correct direction of Muslim prayer (qibla) varies widely between Tematagi and its neighboring islands.