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Appendix II: The Marquesas
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[221] appendix ii The Marquesas mary k. bercaw edwards Introduction Herman Melville’s arrival on the island of Nukahiva in the Marquesas in 1842 occurred on the eve of catastrophic change. The French had just established control of this group of Pacific islands, a control that would lead to the decimation of the population and the consequent loss of cultural history.The following discussion will look at the sources of information for Marquesan history before 1842. From these sources, scholars have depicted the Marquesas as they appeared at the time of Melville’s arrival. The divisions and alliances between three of the major population groups on Nukahiva—the Taipi, Hapaa, and Teii—will be delineated. Finally, the French annexation of the Marquesas in 1842 and what followed from that event will be briefly discussed. This essay is indebted to the work of Greg Dening, Nicholas Thomas, Edwin N. Ferdon, and Robert C. Suggs, as well as to the chroniclers of early contact between Europeans and Marquesans. Pre-1842 Sources The Marquesas are a group of twelve islands in Eastern Polynesia.The large islands of Nukahiva, Ua Huka, and Ua Pou comprise the northern group and Hiva Oa,Tahuata,and Fatuiva the southern.Their inhabitants are Polynesian, but when they first came to these tall, steeply-sided, volcanic islands is the subject of much debate.The history of the islands before European contact is known only from oral sources: from the long genealogies of the people, who called themselves simply “Te Enata,” the Men. The scholar of the Marquesas, however, depends largely on written sources. These were written by outsiders: soldiers, explorers, ships’ officers, missionaries, beachcombers, priests, government officials, and Europeanbased scholars who interviewed former Marquesan inhabitants, both native and non-native.Pre-1842 sources are especially important.The 1863 law which [222] Herman Melville’s Whaling Years forbade war, killing, the purchase of guns and liquor, the embalming of the dead, drums, tattoos, traditional songs, naked bathing, pekio (secondary husbands ), and polygamy, among other things, also codified the destruction of Marquesan culture which had begun in 1774 and accelerated with the French annexation of the islands in 1842. With the destruction of the culture came the loss of most of its history. The first European contact with the Marquesas islands occurred in 1595 when four Spanish ships, led by Alvaro de Mendaña, arrived at Fatuiva. The islanders eagerly paddled out to see the ships hove-to outside the reef. Forty men and boys came aboard the vessels, and the Spaniards, angered and frightened by the islanders’ curiosity and the theft of small articles, fired on them with cannons. Eight or nine were killed. At Tahuata, the Spaniards continued killing the Marquesans. One young man was killed in the water with a child in his arms.The soldier who killed him said “with great sorrow,” per Pedro Fernández de Quirós, the pilot on board who penned the extant narrative of the visit, “that the Devil had to take those who were ordained to be taken” (no. 14, 21). The violence of the Spaniards left no legacy on the islands, however, and the only enduring reminder of their visit is the name of the group. Mendaña named them Las Marquesas de Mendoza after his patron, Don García Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis de Cañete, Viceroy of Peru.They have been known as the Marquesas ever since. It would be 180 years before another outsider, Englishman James Cook, reached the Marquesas. He arrived on April 8, 1774, and stayed only four days at Tahuata. Despite his short stay, Cook managed to leave a trail of violence behind him. On the first day, an islander was shot and killed for stealing a stanchion. Cook’s visit was recorded by the naturalists traveling with him, Johann Reinhold Forster and his son George.Their descriptions and drawings capture that moment just before Marquesan culture was changed irretreviably by contact with “Te Aoe,” the Strangers. The French first took possession of the Marquesas in 1791, when Etienne Marchand came to Tahuata. Like many of those to follow, he and his men were attracted to the women who swam out to the ship. He took one to his cabin, and later wrote that the girls were “victims of a holy debt” (quoted in Dening, 21). From Tahuata, Marchand sailed to Ua Poa, which Joseph Ingraham had earlier visited in the Hope. Ingraham had called at Tahuata, then sailed north, past Nukahiva, making the...