"Moipu (Chief of Atuona, Marquesas) Dancing", P.31

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19340

Title

p.31, Moipu (Chief of Atuona, Marquesas Island) dancing (from sketch)

Description

A photograph of a sketch of Moipu, a dispossed chief of Atuona on the Marquesas Islands. He is wearing a big hair cape, a headdress, a knotted tail and loin cloth. His body is covered in tattoos.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Casco' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around Hawaii and French Polynesia in 1888.

Artist / maker

Mrs Hoare

Date

1889

Size

14.1 x 10.1 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Hakaiki Moipu was a chief at Atuona, on the island of Hiva Oa, part of the Marquesas Islands. In the 1870s, shortly before Stevenson visited the islands, an incident of in-fighting and cannibalism by Moipu and his people so shocked the Western settlers and French authorities that they deposed him as chief and replaced him with Paaaeua.

Moipu was given a house on the edge of Atuona and a retinue of retainers. Stevenson did not like Moipu, a keen past cannibal whose favourite food was human hand, but he was otherwise popular with the people of Atuona. His son went on to succeed Paaaeua as chief.

The Marquesas Islands are situated in French Polynesia, in the southern Pacific Ocean. They are volcanic and are named after the Marquis of Cañete, who financially supported the Spanish Explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira who disovered the islands in 1595.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886).

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the latter years of his life both travelling and resident in the Pacific. The family chartered the 'Casco' in San Francisco and spent several weeks travelling in French Polynesia, including an extended stay in Tahiti where Stevenson recovered from a bout of illness. After this the Stevenson group continued to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they landed in January 1889. In the summer of 1889 Stevenson embarked on a six month voyage through the Gilbert Islands to Samoa aboard the 'Equator'. It was here that Stevenson bought an estate he named Vailima. After another voyage, aboard the trading steamer the 'Janet Nicoll', Stevenson returned to Vailima. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Tattoos

People > Entertainment and sports > Dancers

People > Politics and government > Chiefs

Places > Oceania > Marquesas Islands

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"Moipu (Chief of Atuona, Marquesas) dancing", p.31