Linton — The Marquesas Islands 295 



and eaten as part of the ceremony. The house itself appears to have been of the or- 

 dinary dwelHng type modified by greatly increasing the height of the roof. One 

 house of this sort in Pua Ma'u is said to have been "three fathoms long, three 

 fathoms wide, and ten fathoms high," but the height at least is almost certainly 

 exaggerated. The end posts were made of several pieces of lumber spliced one 

 above another and placed like those of an ordinary dwelling. There were three 

 front posts. The front was open. The roof was thatched with breadfruit leaves 

 and decorated with figures of birds made from red tapa and split bamboo, between 

 which were placed koiifau (bundles of sticks). There is said to have been a bird 

 figure for every fathom of height. Within the house there was a fata'a called the 

 ananu'u. The only other objects in the house were three pieces of wood placed 

 one on the fata'a, one half way up the house, and another at the top. Each of 

 these pieces of wood was decorated with four designs called taz'a which were so 

 arranged as to form an open square. A ta put oho lived in this hovise. 



Toiia Poll were houses tapu to women in which the men assembled to chant 

 the pue (name chant). They are said to have been raised above the ground on 

 posts and, according to Handy (32), were like the fata'a except for their larger 

 size. 



Canoe houses appear to have been purely utilitarian and did not exist in 

 certain valleys because of the practise of carrying the canoes up into the tohua 

 (assembly place) or of dismembering the canoes and distributing the parts among 

 the various owners. They appear to have been most common in valleys having 

 good beaches and the sites of the canoe houses in Pua Ma'u, Hiva Oa, are still 

 remembered. An old man there, who had seen some of these structures, said they 

 were open at one end, like the modern boat houses, but he could give no details 

 of their construction. A modern house in the valley of Hatiheu, Nuku Hiva, sug- 

 gested a possible form for these structures. One end of this house was like that 

 of an ordinary dwelling. The other end was open. Two heavy posts of equal 

 height were planted on either side. Their tops were connected by a heavy curved 

 beam, convex side up, from the center of which a short vertical timber extended 

 to the peak of the roof, supporting the ridgepole. 



SUMMARY 



The Marquesans employed two main house types, the canoe houses possibly 

 forming a third. The simpler houses consisted of a roof resting upon the ground, 

 while in the larger and more elaborate the roof was raised on one side only. 

 Houses of the second type were normally built on terraces or platforms of stone 

 which were often of considerable height. They were used as dwellings and sacred 

 structures. When used for ceremonial purposes some of them were modified by 



[35] 



