A VANISHING PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH SEAS 



303 



During the first fifty years of French 

 occupation there was a really sincere ef- 

 fort to convert the Marquesan and make 

 him an industrious Christian. Small 

 churches were built in several of the bays, 

 and later a tiny cathedral at Ataona with 

 a bishop, and a convent in which the 

 nuns were to instruct the savage maiden 

 in civilized arts and manners. With the 

 assistance of the French officials, schools 

 were conducted by the priests, and under 

 the forceful persuasion of soldiers the 

 fertile bays planted to coco palms and the 

 copra industry begun. 



As the making of copra consists merely 

 of splitting the ripe coconut and permit- 

 ting it to sun-dry for a few weeks, this 

 did not entail any great amount of labor, 

 and it has become the sole industry of the 

 islands. 



From 1850 to 1870 several efforts to 

 raise cotton were made by colonists, who 

 came assured of French authority and 

 protection, but these all failed, and some 

 of the colonists and their imported Chi- 

 nese laborers lost their lives. 



REJECTS CIVILIZED CUSTOMS AXD LOSES 

 HIS OWN 



After quelling the rebellion on the is- 

 land of Hivaoa thirty years ago, the 

 French withdrew their military establish- 

 ment and practically abandoned the Mar- 

 quesan to his fate. A semblance of con- 

 trol is kept up with an administrator and 

 one or two other officials at Ataona and 

 a few gendarmes scattered about the 

 group. 



The schools have disappeared, with the 

 exception of a little palm-thatched hut in 

 Ataona, where a few children, French 

 half-breeds for the most, sometimes have 

 a teacher. 



The little convent at Ataona still 

 houses four delightful old ladies, the 

 fearless nuns who came to this savage 

 land more than thirty years ago, but there 

 are no classes now for them to instruct 

 in maidenly arts and deportment. 



Not only does the Marquesan refuse to 

 receive the white man's culture ; he has 

 lost his own as well. His vices he has 

 retained and added to them those of the 

 race which conquered him, but his own 

 peculiar arts and virtues have disap- 

 peared. The making of tappa cloth 



ceased, save in rare instances, many years 

 ago, to be replaced by the cotton cloth of 

 the trader. In Ataona and a few other 

 villages the priests succeeded in forcing 

 the Marquesanne to cover her body with 

 a hideous nightgown effect, which some 

 of them wear when the priest is about or 

 a trading schooner comes in, and a more 

 unsightly or incongruous garb has never 

 been devised. 



TATTOO ARTISTS AND WOOD CARVERS HAVE 

 VANISHED 



There has not been a paddle or a poi- 

 poi bowl carved for a generation. The 

 famous tattoo artists are dead, and with 

 them died their art. In some of the bays 

 I have seen some of the young men par- 

 tially and poorly tattooed, but the really 

 beautiful work still to be seen on the 

 bodies of all the older men and women 

 has passed forever. 



The making of namu eki, koko gin, 

 goes on with but slight interruption, and 

 to it has been added a vile beer made of 

 fermented oranges or bananas, and alco- 

 hol in any form they can procure from 

 an occasional trading schooner. I was 

 somewhat puzzled at the Marquesans' 

 great craving for perfumes and toilet 

 waters until I discovered that a four- 

 ounce vial of "Mary Garden" was merely 

 a Marquesan cocktail, and a pint of Flor- 

 ida water rated as a fair quality of gin. 



\A nile the little schooner which took 

 me to Tahuata was lying in the Bay of 

 Vaitahu, a fierce old chief, tattooed from 

 head to foot and wearing a head-dress of 

 human hair encircled with chips of bone 

 and shark's teeth, paddled out and board- 

 ed us. He threw a lot of five- franc pieces 

 on the table and demanded strong wa- 

 ters. 



A CHIEE WHO WAITED IX VAIN 



The skipper, an old South Sea trader. 

 was equal to the occasion. He produced 

 a long black bottle containing about two 

 quarts of liquid and sold it to the chief. 



''Don't drink it here," he told the old 

 savage. "You get me into trouble. Take 

 it ashore, drink it, wait three hours, then 

 you get fine drunk." This, of course, in 

 Marquesan, as few outside the village of 

 Ataona understand any language but 

 their own. 



