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| Country | France French Polynesia |
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| Archipelago | Marquesas Islands | |||
| Region | South Pacific Ocean | |||
| Area | 339 km² | |||
| Coastline | km | |||
| Highest elevation | Tekao 1,224 m |
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| Population - Density |
2,789 ppl. (2007) 7.8 ppl./km² |
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Nuku Hiva (sometimes spelled "Nukahiva") is the largest of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. It was formerly also known as Île Marchand and Madison Island.
Herman Melville wrote his book Typee based on his experiences in the Taipivai valley in the eastern part of Nuku Hiva. Robert Louis Stevenson's first landfall on his voyage on the Casco, was at Hatiheu, on the north side of Nuku Hiva, in 1888. Nuku Hiva was also the site for Survivor: Marquesas, the fourth installment of the popular CBS reality television show in the US.
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The coastline of western Nuku Hiva is characterized by a steep, but fairly regular coastline, indented occasionally by small bays leading to deep valleys, which lead into the interior. There are no villages on this side.
The coastline of the eastern part of the island has few places to land by sea and takes the brunt of the ocean swells.
The north, on the other hand, is indented by deep bays, the largest of which are Anaho and Hatiheu. Aakapaa bay is not as large but has a village of the same name.
The south has fewer bays, among which those of Taiohae, Taipivai, Hooumi, Hakapoovai (the last three are parts of the larger Baie du Contrôleur) and the bays of Hakaui and Hakatea both accessed by the same narrow entrance.
The central part of the island is a high plateau called Tōvi‘i, covered primarily by a tall-grass prairie, on which experiments in cattle raising are taking place for the first time — 15 years ago all the cattle were feral and hunted with rifles.
On the western edge of Tōvi‘i rises Tekao, the island's highest peak, which reaches an elevation of 1224 m (4,016 ft). The western and northern edges of Tōvi‘i are a mountain ridge, which catches much of the rain that waters the island.
Pine forest plantations covering large areas all around the crater of Tōvi‘i give an overall impression of the lower Alps and parts of Germany, Wales and Switzerland. In one place, Vaipo Waterfall, the collected water falls off a highland and falls 350 m (1,148 ft).
The slopes of the north western side of the island are much drier than the rest of the island, and are often described as a desert named "Terre Déserte" in French.
Nuku Hiva is administratively part of the commune (municipality) of Nuku-Hiva, itself in the administrative subdivision of the Marquesas Islands.
The administrative centre of the commune of Nuku-Hiva and also of the administrative subdivision of the Marquesas Islands is the settlement of Taiohae, located on the south side of Nuku Hiva, at the head of the bay of that same name.
The population in 2007 was 2,660. This is substantially less than that encountered at the end of the 16th century when the Spaniards first sighted the island. Contacts with Europeans brought infections such as venereal disease and influenza causing high mortality resulting in the loss of much of the local knowledge of plants as sources of medicine.
The population is primarily Polynesian with a small proportion of Europeans, mostly from Metropolitan France. At the 2002 census, 92.6% of Nuku Hiva's residents were born in French Polynesia while 148 people, making up 5.6% of Nuku Hiva's residents, were people born in Metropolitan France.[1]
The primary diet of people tends to be breadfruit, taro, manioc, coconut and many kinds of fruit, which grow in abundance. Goats, fish and, more rarely, pigs, are the main sources of meat but there is a growing amount of local beef available. Imported food is also freely available, including apples, grapes, celery, and even sliced bread from New Zealand. Two local bakeries produce baguettes, another cheap staple. Considerable rice is also eaten. There are a great many wild pigs on the island as well as those reared on the agricultural college.The wild pigs are a cross between the Polynesian pig brought by the first settlers and the wild boar brought by the Europeans.
There is one jail on the island, which was generally used for 'short stay' internments such as the last 3 months of sentences and was also often altogether empty. Lately, however, prisoners can opt to do their full sentence here if they have no family on Tahiti so the Nuku Hiva jail now has inmates all the time.
Nuku Hiva is served by a single-runway airport in the northwest corner of the island, approximately 30 miles by road, northwest of Taiohae.
Nuku Hiva was, in ancient times, the site of two provinces, Te I'i covering somewhat more than the western two thirds of the island, and Tai Pi, covering the eastern third.
Latest studies indicate that the first people to arrive here came from Samoa around 2000 years ago, only later colonizing Tahiti, Hawaii, The Cook Islands and New Zealand. The legend has it that Ono, the god of creation, promised his wife to build a house in one day, so he gathered together land and created these islands, which are all named after parts of the house, Nuku Hiva being the roof. Everything he had left over he threw to one side and created a dump which is called Ua Huka. From these supposed origins the population rose to an untenable size; first European estimates vary from 50,000 to 100,000.
Food became of prime importance. Breadfruit was the staple, but taro, plaintain and manioc also played a big part. As for meat, fish was the main source, but even so was limited because of the quantity needed to feed so many mouths. Pigs, chickens and dogs were also cultivated, and hunted when they took to the wilds.
It is still debated why many Polynesian tribes or nations practiced cannibalism. Indeed a large number of Pacific Islands residents did so in pre-historic times. One theory is that cannibalism was more for food than ritual, although ritual played a big part. An offering to the gods was called Ika, which means fish, and a sacrifice was caught and, just like a fish, was hung by a fishhook in the sacred place. Those to be eaten were tied and hung up in trees until needed, then had their brains bashed out on execution blocks with a club. Women and children seem to have been cannibalized just for food, whereas warriors killed in battle were offerings to the gods and were eaten by their conquerors to absorb their power; their skulls were kept by their slayers for the same reason.
On July 21, 1595 Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira stopped at Fatu Hiva and called the islands Los Marquesas after the wife of the Viceroy of Peru. James Cook likewise visited the south in 1774, and the Solide expedition in 1791. There is little evidence that these visits led to the introduction of diseases, perhaps because slow passages inhibited the diseases aboard the ships. It seems that it was the commercial shipping, taking on sandalwood, and the whaling ships that brought the epidemics that killed nine out of ten Polynesians.
During the wars between the Te I'i and the Tai Pi, on October 25, 1813, the American navy Captain David Porter arrived in the frigate USS Essex, the flagship of his fleet of ten other armed ships. A shore party was landed and they claimed the island for the United States and constructed a small village, named Madisonville. A fortification, named Fort Madison, and a dock were also built, the latter to refit the Essex. Almost immediately Porter became involved in the tribal conflict. The first expedition into the jungle was led by Lieutenant John Downes, He and forty others captured a fort held by 3,000 to 4,000 Happah warriors with the assistance of several hundred Te I'is. The victory forced the Happah to terms and they allied themselved with both the Americans and the Te I'i. A second expedition was led by Porter himself and he made an amphibious assault against the Tai Pi held coastline. 5,000 Te I'is and Happahs accompanied the fleet in at least 200 war-canoes. Though the landing was unappossed, Porter's force of thirty men and a cannon led the march inland where they found another, more formidable, enemy fort. Thousands of natives armed with rocks and spears, positioned in a formidable mountain fortress, were able to fend off their enemies. The victory was short-lived however and Captain Porter followed up his landing with an expedition overland, bypassing the fort, to threaten the Tai Pi's village center in Typee Valley as the Americans named it.[3]
When the column arrived at their destination it was November 30 of 1813. The first shots fired occurred after the Tai Pi's attempted to ambush the column, the attack was beaten off Porter issued a message warning that if the Tai Pi did not cease their resistance at once, he would destroy the villages. After a little while of waiting, the hostiles seemed to ignore the demands so the expedition advanced. A engagement ensued as the villages were burned. In the end, the Americans and their Te I'i and Happah allies had won at severe cost to the enemy, who sued for peace soon after. The next few months were peaceful until May 1814. The War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom was in its third year and most of the American fleet was captured British privateers. At least six British prisoners were at Nuku Hiva during the American operations against the natives, not including a number who volunteered to fight for Captain Porter. But in December 1813, Porter left Nuka Hiva to continue raiding British whalers. He left behind only nineteen navy sailors and six prisoners under two midshipmen and United States Marine Corps Lieutenant John M. Gamble. On May 7, 1814, a group of the British sailors mutinied, released the six prisoners and attacked the fort. Gamble was wounded in the foot and taken captive with his remaining men on the corvette Seringapatam though the Americans were set adrift later that day.[4]
An Englishman, named Wilson, on the island was used as an interpreter by the American navy and on May 9 he convinced the Te I'i that Porter would not return from his raid which the natives were not happy about. Wilson eventually persuaded the Te I'is to cancel the alliance and attack. Six American sailors were on the beach at Madisonville at the time, four of the men were killed and one other man escaped wounded with a second survivor. Gamble was alone on the Sir Andrew Hammond, one of the captured British ships. While still recovering from his wound to the foot, two Te I'i war-canoes attacked the ship. The ship's cannon were already loaded so Lieutenant Gamble stumbled from one gun to another, firing them as fast as he could. Ultimately Gamble beat off the enemy attack single handedly but after the deaths of four of his men in town, there was no choice but to abandon the colony with the remaining seven, all of whom were either wounded or ill. After that the base was never again occupied by American forces. Captain Porter, who intended to sail back to Nuka Hiva, was captured at the Battle of Valparaiso on March 28, his claim on Nuku Hiva was never ratified by the United States Congress and in 1842 France took possession of the whole group, establishing a settlement which was abandoned in 1859.[5][6]
A ship from Peru captured people from Ua Pou and took them back as slaves, but as the Catholic Church had converted the islands to Christianity by then, there was a protest and those captives who were still alive were sent back. However, this was a mixed blessing because they brought typhoid fever. A population in excess of 100,000 in 1820 fell to 6,000 in 1872, to 3,000 in 1911 and to a low point of 2,200 in 1927. It seemed that there was no way the Marquesians would survive, but two French doctors toured the islands giving vaccinations and medical care and halted the heavy death toll. Leprosy, however, was still a problem only 20 years ago and elephantiasis is only now almost gone.
Due to its isolation from Tahiti and the will of most of the population, it has been spared the fate of its capital and remains a mysterious undeveloped archipelago.
In 2002, France successfully requested that a 20-year moratorium be applied to French Polynesia to stop it from being incorporated into the European Union. One of the driving factors was to stop non-French investment in property for the time being.
The then-mayor of Nuku Hiva, Lucien Kimitete, who promoted separation of the Marquesas Islands from French Polynesia within the French Republic, was killed in an airplane accident in May 2002, along with MP Boris Leontieff, Mayor of Arue in Tahiti. Many locals still believe this crash was not properly investigated. There is a considerable amount of latent resentment and hostility about this. Since the death of Lucien Kimitete, Marquesan political leaders have repeatedly declared themselves in favor of separating from French Polynesia and remaining within the French Republic in case French Polynesian political leaders in Tahiti would proclaim the independence of French Polynesia.[7]
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