Tarang, known to most visitors as O'Keefe's Island, is a small wooded islet visible from Colonia across the harbour. It was the home and base of David Dean O'Keefe, an Irish-American mariner who arrived on Yap in the 1870s and spent the next two decades running a trading operation that made him both wealthy and, in Yapese memory, a genuinely significant figure in the island's history. The ruins of his house and compound remain on the island, accessible by boat from Colonia.
O'Keefe's innovation was simple but consequential. Traditional Yapese expeditions to quarry limestone in Palau used large outrigger canoes that could carry relatively small stones — the voyage was dangerous, and the canoes had limits. O'Keefe provided Western trading ships that could transport much larger discs, dramatically increasing the size and number of Rai stones arriving on Yap. In exchange he received copra and sea cucumber, which he sold into the wider Pacific trade network. For the Yapese, the arrangement produced stone money in quantities that had previously been impossible; for O'Keefe, it produced a comfortable living and a kind of informal suzerainty over his island. He died at sea around 1901, and his descendants lived on Yap for decades afterward. A visit to the island requires arranging a boat from Colonia, but it is short and the ruins are worth the trip.