The earliest days have not been well documented, but the first inhabitants of the Cook Islands are believed to be part of the the last Polynesian Migration from Asia that started around 1500BC.

The northern island of Pukapuka was the first island of the Cooks to be discovered by Europeans, as it was sighted first by the Spanish Captain Alvaro de Mendana on August 20, 1595.

Another Spaniard, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros on March 2, 1606, stopped for provisions at Rakahanga. There was no further European contact for over 150 years until the voyages of English explorer and Naval Captain James Cook, after whom the island group takes its name.

While he only ever landed at Palmerston island, in 1824 Russian cartographer Von Krusentstern changed the existing name of Hervey's Islands to honor Cook, who had been killed in Hawaii in 1779.

Reverend John Williams of the London Missionary Society arrived in Aitutaki in 1821 and in Rarotonga in 1823 and set about converting the natives to Christianity.

An Imperial Order in Council in the New Zealand Parliament on May 13, 1901, permitted the annexation of the Cook Islands to New Zealand and came into effect on June 11, 1901.

On August 4, 1965, after adoption of a Report by the Cook Islands Legislative Assembly, the Administrator of the Government of New Zealand at the time signed the Proclamation to declare the Cook Islands a Self Governing State.