Decorated Whale Teeth
One of these teeth shows a tattooed warrior. On the other side of this tooth is an image called 'Indians Devouring their enemies'. The other tooth is more peaceful and shows a Marquesas woman in her village. These whale teeth depict native people of the Marquesas Islands in the South Seas, one thousand miles north-east of Tahiti. These pictures may have been a record of a sailorâs experience of new cultures. These images may be a personal record of a whalerâs experience. However, they may also have been copied from a book on board his ship. The Marquesas Islands are the furthest island group in the world from any continent. They are 400 - 600 miles south of the equator and approximately 1,000 miles northeast of Tahiti. The Islands were first discovered about 2,000 years ago by Polynesian voyagers. They named the Island group Henua Enana or âGround of the Menâ. Human bones have been found with signs that some early natives practised cannibalism. The Spanish were the first Westerners to discover the Marquesas Islands. They recorded the Marquesas as a warlike people who practiced cannibalism. Later, in 1842 the Marquesas became part of the French Colonial Empire. Very little remains of the native Marquesan culture today. The French painter Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) left France for Tahiti in 1891. He later moved to the Marquesas, where he died. Gauguin was fascinated by the Polynesians, whose culture had already been nearly totally destroyed by the missionaries and colonial administrators.
