A Selection of Maritime History Books
° Fatu Huku ° Hiva Oa
The islands are, for the most part, high and craggy, with jagged peaks rising in places to some 4,000 feet (1,200 metres). The largest (77 square miles [200 square km]) and most populated island of the southeastern group is Hiva Oa, the burial place of the French artist Paul Gauguin and the Belgian singer Jacques Brel; the group also includes Fatu Hiva and Tahuata, each about 23 square miles (60 square km) in area, and the uninhabited Motane and Fatu Huku. The northwestern group comprises Nuku Hiva, Ua Pou, Ua Huka, Eiao, and Hatutu.
French Polynesia is a collection of 118 islands covering a vast area of the southeastern Pacific Ocean and divided into five scattered archipelagos: Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, Tuamotu Archipelago, Gambier Islands, and the Tubuai Islands. The capital is Papeete, Tahiti (Society Islands). The larger islands are volcanic with fertile soil and dense vegetation. The more numerous coral islands are low lying. The climate is tropical. Missionaries arrived in Tahiti at the end of the 18th century, and in the 1840s France began establishing protectorates. In 1880–82, France annexed the islands and they became part of its colony of Oceania.
Also included are American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue, Pitcairn (famous for the Mutiny on the British ship HMS Bounty), Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu.The Marquesas are the most remote, rugged and inaccessible island group in Polynesia. The islands are geologically young, volcanic upwellings with no protective rings of coral reef to interrupt the endless waves breaking on the shores. Razor-sharp peaks separate each island into a series of isolated valleys where exotic birds nest.
The Marquesas are believed to have been inhabited as early as 340 BCE. The southeastern islands were sighted in 1595 by the Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, who named them for his patron, the marqués de Mendoza, viceroy of Peru. Capt.
James Cook visited Fatu Huku in 1774.
By the end of March, the ship was in their reported latitude, 9 degrees 30' S. Cook altered course and began to run down his longitude to the west. The first island -- or rather the large rock Fatu Haku -- was sighted on April 6 by the sixteen year old midshipman Alexander Hood, and called Hood's Island by the captain; then another, as the weather turned squally for the first time on the run. Next morning there were a third and a fourth, and Cook knew he had found what he was in search of . . .
In 1791 the American sea captain Joseph Ingraham sighted the northwestern group and named them Washington Islands. The whole group, annexed by the French in 1842, now forms an administrative subdivision of French Polynesia, with headquarters at Hakapehi (Tai-o-hae) on Nuku Hiva. Because the islands lack coastal plains and coral reefs, habitation is largely restricted to the narrow valleys where streams run down from the mountains.
In 1886, Gauguin began his lifelong migration between regions of French Polynesia and Paris often surviving on little or no money. Disappointed with Impressionism and influenced by folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards Cloisonnism and then Synthetism and Primitavism. Gauguin is considered to be the first artist to achieve broad success using the Primitive technique. Paul Gauguin lived on the island of Hiva Oa for the last two years of his life. The painting above is of "Two Women on the Beach."
Gauguin’s paintings significantly influenced Modern art movements and artists including Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Fauvism, Cubism, and Orphism. Gauguin also created two- and three-dimensional sculptures and functional objects ranging from portrait busts and architectural reliefs to objects such as vases, knife handles, and wine casks. He was also an influential supporter of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
Gauguin died on May 8, 1903 and remains buried at Calvary Cemetery – Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.
Wellsboro Gazette, Thursday, December 8, 1921
Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, USA
ISLANDERS QUIT TATTOOING
Only One Master of Art Left In Marquessa, Says Traveler.
There is only one "'tahuva" (master tattooer) left in the Marquesas islands, where a generation ago they were the most numerous and skillful of all the artisans, says Dr. Ralph Linton, assistant in archeology at the Bishop museum, Honolulu, who has returned after ten months of investigation and research in the South seas.
Of all the things he saw while in the Marquesas, the marvelous tattooing displayed by the natives was one of the most interesting.
The men were formerly tattooed all over the body, even inside the nistrils and on the scalp, and the hair was shaved off in patches to reveal the artistic work.
Wellsboro Gazette, March 15, 1923
Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, USA
SOUTH SEA TRIBES FROM ASIA
Marquesans Are Trace Back to India
by Hawaiian Scientist After Investigation
Honolulu, Hawaii.—The flora of the Marquesas Islands prove that the Polynesian race came out of southeastern Asia to its present habitations in the islands of the Pacific, in the opinion of Forrest Brown, botanist of the Bishop museum, who has just returned from 17 months of investigation in the Marquesas in connection with the museum's effort to establish the origin of the Polynesians.
The presence in the Marquesas of the sweet potato and the papaia led Professor Brown to the theory that the Marquesas visited Aemrica, as these plants probably had been obtained in semi-tropical Central America. The food plants most common to the Marquesas came, however, from southeastern Asia, probably by way of Malay, Java and India.
Professor Brown said that the original Polynesians probably had inhabited the coasts of southeastern Asia and had been forced to seek new homes in the Paciifc by the pressure of tribes and clans from the interior which drove them literally into the ocean. They took their food plants with tem when the migrated, he said. He is not ready to express an opinion as to the route or routes taken by the Polynesians during their migrations, which finally landed them in Hawaii.
