Teng Koata

• Native Magistrate, Gardner Island.
• May have been a Catholic.
• Involved in finding the bones on Niku.

Telegram from Gallagher to the Acting Administrative Officer, Central Gilbert Islands District, Tarawa, September 23, 1940.

Please obtain from Koata (Native Magistrate Gardner on way to Central Hospital) a certain bottle alleged to have been found near skull discovered on Gardner Island. Grateful you retain bottle in safe place for present and ask Koata not to talk about skull which is just possibly that of Amelia Earhardt. [sic]

Gallagher.

• When Ward Goodenough, University of Pennsylvania, did a brief ethnographic study in Kiribati in the 1950s, his principal informant was Koata. Dr. G. says Koata had very little to say about his time on Niku, but that he had a son who was last heard of on Ocean Island, where he'd been interviewed by a Norwegian anthropologist.