VulcanSpirit - The Polynesians

The Polynesians

VulcanSpirit

Richard & Alison Brunstrom

Fri 8 Jun 2012 05:59

There were about 100 000 Polynesian people living in the fertile Marquesas at the time the French arrived in 1791. Polynesians went on from here to discover and settle Hawai'i (the glottal stop is a Polynesian standard), Easter Island and South America. That they reached South America, 4000nm away, is astonishing but now certain; the biological evidence is conclusive. Modern research shows that the sweet potato Ipomoea batatas, a native of the Americas (surprisingly to me, it's a convolvulus) was growing in the Cook Islands by 700AD, while the coconut Cocos nucifera, a native of the Phillipines, was growing in Ecuador when the Spanish arrived. And the South American bottle gourd Lagenaria siceraria was growing in Polynesia by 1000AD. It is just about possible that the coconut reached South America under its own steam, but the other two plants just couldn't cross an ocean. Books have been written about how the Polynesians managed to navigate thousands of miles of ocean in canoes, but even when you know how they did it it's still amazing and makes our modern efforts, challenging though they seem to us, look utterly feeble by comparison.

Polynesians were a very warlike lot, and the Marquesans notoriously so. On European contact almost perpetual war was in being between the many tribes, and cannibalism was normal. One school of thought holds, persuasively, that cannibalism was due in large measure to a meat shortage caused by religion. Polynesians had only three significant sources of meat - fish, poultry and pigs. There were not enough fish and poultry, and pigs although plentiful were reserved for holy feasts - so eating each other looked like a good source of protein. The constant warfare helped of course, but you also ate your relatives when they died (the priest ate granny's eyes and brain raw, the tribe ate the rest). Cannibalism was still being practised here until the twentieth century - the locals say that they went from cannibalism to the Internet in 80 years!

But the Marquesans didn't last long after colonisation in 1842. A small party of Marquesans was taken in slavery to Chile in about 1860. The French sent a rescue mission, slavery having been abolished in France, and a dozen or so were recovered. Half died on the trip back, and the remaining six were returned to two of their native islands. Unfortunately it turned out that they had smallpox; the consequences were devastating. A census in 1921 showed just 2094 Marquesans; 98% had died from smallpox and influenza. The population has crept back up to about 8000 now but the islands are full of ruins showing just how large the population once was.

Here is a restored site;

This was the dance arena, with thatched houses around it. All wooden structures were built on dry-stone platforms, some very large, called pae-paes. As the population increased these platforms became much bigger and taller, using huge stones many of which had been brought from the beach 3km away, a quite prodigious feat (Polynesians tended not to build near beaches because of tsunamis).

Here is the Chief's ceremonial pae-pae, in the centre, behind the tree:

to the left of the chief's paepae is another lower platform. This was used to make drums. two sorts of skin were used - shark and human!

And here is our guide, Jerome, with a relatively small local girl. Jerome was French army and met his French-born Marquesan wife in France. She then inherited her parents' place and they moved to Ua Pou (pronounced Wah Pooh) where they run a Pension and he does guiding. As you can see he has 'gone native'. He speaks fluent Marquesan (undergoing a revival, much like Welsh) and has got himself tattooed (although a real Marquesan warrior would be tattooed from head to foot). In fact, he's become the local tattooist and is in great demand.