Marquesan Tribal

Marquesas Islands Civilization

Marquesas was colonised as early as 300 AD by Polynesians who probably came from Samoa. Most of Polynesia, which included the early colonists of Hawaii, Tahiti, Rapa Iti and Easter Island, was populated by Marquesans, who were thought to have been withdrawn from the Marquesas more often due to extreme depopulation and drought-related scarcity than due to the almost continuous war, which ultimately became an outstanding characteristic of island people.

Nearly all the rest of Polynesia, with the exceptions of some areas of West Polynesia and the vast majority of Polynesia's runaways, was colonised by Marquesan offspring based in Tahiti. The Marquesan indigenous civilization was destroyed in the time after the adventurers of Europe arrived. Whilst the fall in Marquesan civilization is largely due to the activity of Christians, the main cause of its fall can be directly associated with the disastrous consequences of foreign illnesses, in particular the pox, which estimatedly cut the populace by 98%.

Peter Wood, the US scholar and president of the National Association of Scholars (formerly Probst of King's College in New York City and a member of the anthropology department of Boston University) also criticised the Marquesas Islands' West idealisations as a haven of free love: These Marquesan islanders, made known by Herman Melville's captive story Typee, are particularly notable.

During the arrival of Europeans on these isolated islets in the Caribbean, they often encountered shoals of young women trying to get on board to have intercourse with the mateys. Although our understanding of the Marquesans is finite, it seems that for them virtuality or modesty was not a fringe of society. Marquesan's entire existence was not free for everyone.

They were part of strict hierarchies of tribes ruled by their own costly ancestry. Marquesan's open-minded sexuality shock and horror the Westerners, as did Marquesan's full-body tats. Today, the Marquesan civilization is a mixture of the stratification of the old Marquesan civilization, with powerful influence of the important Tahitic civilization and the political important of France.

The renowned Parisian artist Paul Gauguin and the Belgium vocalist Jacques Brel spend the last years of their life in the Marquesas and are dead there. He wrote a well-known tune, Les Marquises, about the Marquesas Islands, his last home. Marquesas inspired the US writer Herman Melville, whose experience in the Marquesas was the foundation of his novel Typee.

In 1888 Robert Louis Stevenson attended the Marquesas and in 1900 he published a novel entitled In the South Seas about his work there. Marquesas Islands were given a temporary boost in the United States when the television show Survivor: Marquesas was shot there. This was the 4th episode of the TV showurvivor.

Tattoo in the Marquesas by Willodean Chatterson Handy, Honolulu: The Marquesans and their Art" Pirates of the Sudsee ornamentation, I.Tatauierung," by Karl von der Steinen, Berlin: The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality in Vol. 1, Polynesia-France ("Dr. Anne Bolin"),5. "Marquesans: Decorating the world: the Marquesas Islands.