Archaeological field research on Swains Island has been largely limited to only a few surveys, in part due to the private ownership of the island since it was first claimed by the Jennings family. Whalers from
New England began visiting the island as early as 1820 to load fresh water from the atoll's lagoon. (The per-acre price is .) Jennings arrived on Swains on 13 October 1856 and began work to establish a copra plantation. One of the Frenchmen later returned, but did not care to share the island with Jennings and left. Swains was considered a semi-independent
proprietary settlement of the Jennings family (although under the U.S. flag), a status it would retain for approximately 70 years. It was also claimed for the U.S. by the United States Guano Company in 1860, under the
Guano Islands Act. Jennings also played an instrumental role in helping
Peruvian
"blackbird" slave ships depopulate the other three Tokelau atolls. After Jennings died in 1878, his wife Malia took over management of the island's coconut plantation until her death in 1891. At that point, their son Eli Jennings Jr inherited the island and its copra industry. The demand came despite the noting during its 1889 cruise through the
Union and
Phoenix Islands that the American flag was flying over Swains. Jennings paid, but brought the matter before the
U.S. State Department and his money was ultimately refunded in 1911 when the
British government conceded that Swains was an American possession. In the subsequent years, the United Kingdom again questioned the U.S. State Department about the status of Swains Island and, in 1913, the governor of American Samoa recommended that the island be officially annexed. While the Departments of State and War did not object, it was unclear how such an annexation should occur. arrived on the to raise the U.S. flag formally over Swains Island. At that time, about 100 people lived on the island and Alexander Jennings was its managing owner. With the island's status settled, the
U.S. Navy established a radio station on the island in 1938. Copra—dried coconut meat used to produce coconut oils for food, soap, lubricants, and other products—was the sole commercial product of Swains Island. Copra production on the island involved workers husking mature coconuts in the field. The husks were left in the groves to improve the soil and the husked nuts were carried by jeep or tractor-drawn wagons to centralized drying sheds, where the nuts were cracked and the coconut meat spread out to dry in the sun. The resulting copra was taken by long boat across the reef to waiting vessels that took the copra to market. Most of the plantation workers were Tokelauan. While some ties were maintained with Fakaofo, the immigration of workers from the Samoas, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and other islands led to a divergence of language and culture between Swains Island and the islands of Tokelau. In 1953, labor troubles arose on Swains when Tokelauan-hired workers decided to claim "
squatters' rights" to the atoll by virtue of having lived on it year-round. The Jennings family maintained a legal obligation to remove workers from the island for at least one day each year. Jennings also accused the workers of engaging in slowdowns, reducing the island's copra production. In response, Alexander Jennings
evicted 56 workers and their families from the island, leading the governor of American Samoa to intervene. Territorial officials visited the island in late 1953 and, on January 21, 1954, Gov.
Richard Barrett Lowe issued an
executive order acknowledging Jennings's property rights to Swains Island, while instituting a system of labor contracts and a local governmental structure to protect the rights of his employees. In 1960, the
American Samoan constitution guaranteed the islanders a non-voting delegate to the
Fono. In 2025, a constitutional amendment granted the delegate the right to vote in the
Fono's lower house. In 1966, Swains Island was heavily affected by a late January cyclone. Several buildings were blown away and a
United States Air Force plane air-dropped 15
parachute-loads of food to the 136 people on the island. Nearly two years later, in December 1967, another storm hit the island, destroying crops and damaging buildings. The island was producing about of copra per year at the time of its labor struggles in the mid-1950s, although its owners estimated about could be produced. Commercial copra production on the island ended in 1967, but some of coconut groves continue to grow on the island. In 2017, Swains Island Representative Su’a Alexander Eli Jennings proposed growing breadfruit to revive the island's agricultural activities. The breadfruit, along with native bananas, would be processed using solar dehydrators into gluten-free flour.
Recent sovereignty and trade issues On 25 March 1981,
New Zealand, of which Tokelau is a
dependency, confirmed U.S.
sovereignty over Swains Island in the
Treaty of Tokehega, under which the United States surrendered territorial claims to the other islands of Tokelau. In the draft
constitution that was the subject of the
2006 Tokelau self-determination referendum, however, Swains Island was claimed as part of
Tokelau. American Samoa had not yet taken an official position, but the governor of American Samoa,
Togiola Tulafono, said that he believed his government should do everything it can to retain control of the island. Tokelau's claim to Swains is generally comparable to the
Marshall Islands' claim to
Wake Island (also administered by the U.S.). The re-emergence of this issue in the mid-2000s was an unintended consequence of the
United Nations' efforts to promote
decolonization in Tokelau in the early 2000s. In 2007,
Tokelau's regional parliament, the
General Fono, considered the
adoption of a new flag for their nation with four stars arranged in the general shape of Tokelau's three islands along with Swains Island at a proportional distance to that of the others. Ultimately a compromise was adopted whereby the four stars were retained, but arranged to represent the
Southern Cross. During a 2007 visit to Tokelau, Suʻa Alexander Jennings, Swains Island representative to the American Samoa legislature, indicated a desire for better
trade links between Swains and its neighbor, saying that he believed the then-head of government of Tokelau,
Kuresa Nasau, was also interested in improved relations.
Cyclone Percy 2005 In February 2005,
Cyclone Percy struck the island, causing widespread damage and virtually destroying the village of Taulaga, as well as the old Jennings estate at Etena. Only seven people were on the island at the time.
United States Coast Guard airdrops ensured that the islanders were not left without food, water and other necessities. A U.S. Coast Guard visit in March 2007 listed 12 to 15 inhabitants and showed that the island's trees had largely survived the cyclone.
Amateur radio Due to its
remoteness, Swains Island is considered a separate amateur radio "entity" and several visits have been made by
ham operators. The DXCC Country code is 515, ITU Zone 62, and CQ Zone 32. Swains Island was first "discovered" as a possible
amateur radio "entity" for American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Award purposes by Kan Mizoguchi (JA1BK) in 2005. He led a ham radio
DXpedition there in 2005; however, the ARRL did not accept it for credit. Eventually the ARRL decided to approve Swains Island as a new "entity" based on the separation distance between it and American Samoa. Once accepted, Mizoguchi led DXpedition KH8SI to the island, which qualified as the first valid operation on Swains. 16,390 contacts were made. The 2007 DXpedition N8S made more than 117,000 contacts worldwide. This set a new world record for an expedition using generator power and tents for living accommodations; the record was broken by the 2012 DXpedition to
Malpelo Island. In 2012, Swains Island hosted the DXpedition NH8S from September 5–19. A total of 105,391 radio contacts were made. In 2023, DXpedition W8S was hosted on the island from October 4–17 with 10 international operators. ==Island government==