Marquesan dog

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Dog relief from meʻae Iʻipona, Puamaʻu Village, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands.

The Marquesan dog (ger .: Marquesan Dog , Marquesas Islands Dog ) is an extinct breed of dog from the Marquesas Islands . Similar to other lines of Polynesian dog breeds , the Marquesan dog breed was introduced by the ancestors of the Polynesians during their migrations in the Marquesas Islands. Among other things, the animals had totem functions and served as religious symbols, but also sometimes as suppliers of meat , although this was less common than in other regions, as they seem to have been rare overall. These original dog breeds seem to have died out before the arrival of Europeans, as there are no reports of dogs on the islands. Petroglyphic depictions of dogs and archaeological remains of dog bones and burials are the only indications that such a breed ever existed. The modern dog population on the islands goes back to the descendants of animals who came to the islands in the 19th century as companions of the European settlers.

Linguistic Findings

Map of the Marquesas Islands

There are two words for "dog" in the Marquesan language : peto in northern Marquesas and nuhe in southern Marquesas. The former could be a loan word from English pet or Spanish perro , or it could be derived from pero (a synonym for kurī = dog in the related Maori language ). One theory, which assumes a foreign origin, suspects that the name of the dog "Pato" became a synonym, which the American captain Edmund Fanning from New Haven carried on Nuku Hiva from 1798 to 1803 . South Marquesan Nuhe is unique in the Polynesian languages, but could be related to wanuhe , the word for dog in the Papuan language of the Brumer Islands . The French Catholic missionary René-Ildefonse Dordillon listed two other forms: mohoʻio and mohokio (in Grammaire et dictionnaire de la langue des iles Marquises , 1904).

history

Little is known about the dog breed. Apparently they came to the Marquesas Islands with the Polynesian settlers, along with chickens, pigs and the Pacific rat . The breed was probably already extinct before the arrival of the Spanish explorers in 1595. There are no reports of them from Europeans and it is believed that they have always been quite rare and "never been numerous" on the islands. Unlike in other parts of Polynesia, dogs were never considered an important source of food, although archaeological evidence suggests that they were indeed sometimes eaten by carving bones. Due to their rarity, they were more likely to be revered and were a status symbol of the chief and priest class.

Many petroglyphs or carved images of dogs were found in the vicinity of religious centers and chiefs' dwellings, which underscores their prominent status and importance in the culture. A study by the American archaeologist Sidsel N. Millerstrom comes to the conclusion that the greatest number of dog petroglyphs can be found in the valleys of ʻAʻakapa , Haʻatuatua and Hatiheu on the north coast of Nuku Hiva, as well as on meʻae Vaikivi at Ua Huka and the meʻae Iʻipona and in the Eiaone valley on Hiva Oa . The regional distribution may reflect the role of dogs as symbols of tribal or clan affiliation. Dogs were the totem animals assigned to the Naki'i tribe.

features

Petroglyphs depict the Marquesan dogs in exaggerated form. Millerstrom writes that these representations differ greatly from the typical characteristics of the Polynesian dog breeds, and asked whether they were intended as realistic representations. She stated:

“The pictures of the Marquesan Dog show that the necks and bodies are excessively long. The tails are long and curved over the back, while the ears and mouth are shown pointed, angular or rounded. The legs are short and in one case from Hatiheu Valley the paws point in the wrong direction ...
The early post-contact dog is white or spotted, small or medium in size, with a pointed snout and ears, and a long tail. Could the Marquesans of the past have forgotten what dogs looked like or did it have a certain meaning how they portrayed the dog? "

archeology

Stone carvings

The German archaeologist Karl von den Steinen was the first European visitor to observe the evidence of the ancient dogs on the Marquesas (1897–98). In his excavations at meʻae Iʻipona , a temple district near the village of Puamaʻu on the northeast coast of the island of Hiva Oa, he discovered several stone tiki , including two with zoomorphic (animal-shaped) quadruped figures engraved on the statues were. At that time, the site and temple belonged to the Reverend James Kekela , a Hawaiian Protestant missionary who was befriended by the Stones. He also based his research on an old Marquesan named Pihua , who was the only one who knew the names of the Tikis there.

Sacrificial head Manuiotaa, currently in the Ethnological Museum , Berlin .
Tiki Makiʻi Tauʻa Pepe at Iʻipona .

The first tiki was a megalithic stone with the dimensions 82 cm (height) and 90 cm (diameter). The stone head represents an unknown ʻupoko heʻaka ( human sacrifice ). Of the stones, the stone sacrificial head was named Manuiotaa after the famous Marquesan sculptor Manuiotaʻa from the 18th century from the Nakiʻi tribe. It is said that he designed numerous tikis and statues at this point. The head bore totem motifs of four-legged friends and line drawings of Marquesan etua (gods), which were "tattooed" on both sides of the mouth. From the stones I learned that the four-legged friends represented either dogs, rats or pigs. However, he concluded that it must be rats, since at that time the dogs had only been reintroduced by the Europeans. He brought the head to Germany, where it is exhibited in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin to this day .

The second statue was named Tiki Makiʻi Tauʻa Pepe after Manuiotaʻa's wife, who was known as Tauʻa Pepe ("butterfly priestess"); According to tradition, she died in childbirth with Maki'i (" writhing in pain"). There are different views as to what position the statue was originally in. Both Karl von den Steinen and the German ethnographer Arthur Baessler , who visited the site before Von den Steinen, described the statue in a reclined position. The Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl, on the other hand, argued that she originally stood in a hunched over position and was later overturned when Christianity was introduced to the islands. In any case, it is said that she should represent a female figure bent over, head and arms raised to the sky, and giving birth. Another interpretation sees a female deity in the figure, which the Marquesan people carry on their backs. Images of four-legged friends were engraved as bas-reliefs on either side of the statue's rectangular base. This tiki remained in its original place and can still be seen in Iʻipona today. Only one of the dog carving is discernible now; the other one has weathered away.

In 1956, Thor Heyerdahl made the claim that the reliefs on the Tiki Makiʻi Tauʻa Pepe lamas or pumas to support his theory that Polynesia was settled from South America . There were later speculations that Heyerdahl changed the reliefs and deliberately defaced them during the restoration. The current consensus is that the carvings represent the extinct breed of dog and not llamas, pumas, or rats .

Bones and burials

In 1956 Robert Carl Suggs carried out the first stratigraphic excavation on the islands on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History and discovered many fragments of dog bones and a dog burial, scattered over different places on the island of Nuku Hiva. Between 1964 and 1965, the American archaeologist of Japanese descent Yosihiko H. Sinoto discovered a drilled canine canine tooth that had been used as a pendant, as well as a premolar and two dog burials in the sand dunes near Hane on the island of Ua Huka for the Bishop Museum . In 1998, the American archaeologist Barry Vladimir Rolett discovered dog bones in all layers of the Hanamiai settlement on the island of Tahuata , suggesting that the breed may have survived on this island until the mid-19th century. Some of these bones had visible cuts. In 2000, the French archaeologist Pascal Sellier discovered three dog skeletons next to several human graves near Manihina , Ua Huka . One dog was even buried in a coffin.

Millerstrom summarizes these earlier finds and also personally analyzed many of the canine petroglyphs left behind by the prehistoric Polynesians. In 2003 she wrote in her thesis "Facts and Fantasies: the Archeology of the Marquesan Dog" that further research is necessary to research the spread of dogs in Oceania and to determine their socio-economic role in Marquesan and Oceanic cultures, as well as the morphology of the Clarify bones and dog burials in the Marquesan archaeological sites.

Introducing dogs

Dogs of different breeds were later brought back to the Marquesas by European settlers and visitors. The first European dogs were those that the Spanish explorers Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira and Pedro Fernandes de Queirós carried with them in 1595. While on Hiva Oa, the Marquesans tried to steal some of the small dogs from their ships. However, anthropologist Katharine Luomala writes that there is nothing to suggest that these dogs were left behind by the Spaniards. Probably the first dogs to be reintroduced were those abandoned by American ships in the early 18th century in the care of beachcombers , missionaries, and settlers who kept the animals as pets. One of the first to be put on record was a New Haven dog named Pato, who was "found guilty of stealing sheep around 1797 and banished for that crime." Around 1798, Captain Edmund Fanning let him on Nuku Hiva back in the care of the British missionary William Pascoe Crook , who in turn left him to a Chief "Keattonnue" (i.e. King Cato). But on June 8, 1803, another American Captain Brinell took him back and replaced him with two other dogs. During the Nuku Hiva Campaign in 1813, Navy Captain David Porter reported that there were some dogs on the island and observed that the islanders were afraid of the two mastiffs on board his ship.

Paul Gauguin's 1902 painting, possibly a Marquesan Moorhen (Porphyrio paepae) torn from a dog.

In the 1890s, the English traveler Frederick William Christian reported on the ideological conflict over dog meat consumption as the island's population increased. While the Marquesans in the eastern valleys of Hiva Oa had gone over to eating dog meat baked "with delight", while the inhabitants of the western valleys "would hardly ever touch dog meat, even in times of hunger" (will barely touch dog meat even in times of famine). Christian also observed dog meat being consumed in Tahuata and Fatu Hiva. The French artist Paul Gauguin depicted scenes in which dogs can be seen in the Marquesas. His painting from 1902 Le sorcier d'Hiva-Oa ou Le Marquisien à la cape rouge possibly shows a dog killing a bird, the now extinct Koau (Marquesan Moorhen, Porphyrio paepae ).

In Herman Melville's semi-fictional work, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life from 1846, the narrator Tommo gives an unflattering picture of dogs living in the Tai Pī valley on Nuku Hiva:

“I think I need to enlighten the reader about the natural history of the valley.

Where, on behalf of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier , did these dogs come from that I see in Typee? Dogs! - Rather large hairless rats; all with supple, shiny, blotchy skins - fat sides, and very unpleasant faces. Where can they have come from? I am firmly convinced that they were not the indigenous production of the region. In fact, they seemed aware that they were intruders, looked quite ashamed, and always tried to hide in a dark corner. It was clear enough that they did not feel at home in the valley - that they wished themselves away, and back to the ugly land they must have come from.

Crooked mutt! they were my disgust; I would have liked nothing more than to be the death of every one of them. Indeed, at one point, I suggested to Mehevi that a dog crusade was appropriate; but the generous king would not agree. He listened to me very patiently; but when I finished he shook his head and told me, trustingly, that they were "off limits ". "

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gabriele H. Cablitz: Marquesan: A Grammar of Space . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-11-019775-4 , pp. 19, 41, OCLC 290492499 .
  2. ↑ a b c d David J. Addison: Traditional Marquesan agriculture and subsistence: General ethnobotany, animal husbandry, the use of pork and European-introduced animals Part IV of V. In: Rapa Nui Journal. [1] , vol. 22, 1; The Easter Island Foundation, Los Ocos, CA, May 2008: 30-39.
  3. ^ John Crawfurd: A Grammar Ad Dictionary of the Malay Language: With a Preliminary Dissertation , Volume I. Smith, Elder and Co., London 1852, p. 240, OCLC 713118500 .
  4. ^ Frederick William Christian: Eastern Pacific lands: Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands . R. Scott, London 1910, pp. 82, 86.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Sidsel N. Millerstrom: Facts and Fantasies: the Archeology of the Marquesan Dog. In: Sharyn Jones O'Day, Wim Van Neer, A. Ervynck: Behavior Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity. [2] vol. 1, 2003 Oxbow Book, Oxford: 144-152. ISBN 978-1-78297-913-5
  6. ↑ Katharine Luomala: A History of the Binomial Classification of the Polynesian Native Dog. In: Pacific Science. [3] , vol 14, 13; July 1960, University of Hawaii Press / Pacific Science Association Honolulu: 193, 203, 221.
  7. ^ Margaret Titcomb, Mary Kawena Pukui: Dog and Man in the Ancient Pacific, with Special Attention to Hawaii , Volume 59. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publications, Honolulu 1969, pp. 32-33, OCLC 925631874 .
  8. ^ Maria Leach: God Had a Dog: Folklore of the Dog . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 1961, p. 122, OCLC 247920656 .
  9. ^ Jan Bay-Peterson: Competition for resources: The role of pig and dog in the Polynesian agricultural economy. [4] In: Journal de la Société des Océanistes. vol. 39, 77, 1983. Societe des Oceanistes, Paris: 121-129.
  10. ↑ "never numerous in the islands"
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Burgl Lichtenstein, Robert C. Suggs: Manuiota'a: Journal of a Voyage to the Marquesas Islands . Pa'eke Press, Boise, ID 2001, ISBN 978-1-887747-38-7 , pp. 7-9, 121-136, OCLC 49521848 .
  12. ^ The Marquesan dogs' images show that the necks and the bodies are exaggerated in length. The tails are long and curved over the back while the ears and muzzle may be pointed, square or rounded. The legs are short and in one case from Hatiheu Valley the paws were pointed in the wrong direction…
    The early post-contact dog is white or spotted, small to medium size, with pointed snout and ears, and a long tail. Could the Marquesans of the past have forgotten what the dog looked like or did it matter how they depicted the dog? Millerstrom 2003.
  13. ↑ a b Burgl Lichtenstein: The world of 'Enana: A journey through the past and present of the Marquesas Islands . Norderstedt Books on Demand, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7392-2772-6 , pp. 128-130, OCLC 946132371 .
  14. ↑ Arthur Baessler: New South Sea Pictures . G. Reimer, Berlin 1900, pp. 235-236, OCLC 254688157 .
  15. ^ A b Celeste Brash, Jean-Bernard Carillet: Tahiti & French Polynesia . Lonely Planet, Footscray, Victoria 2009, ISBN 978-1-74104-316-7 , p. 222, OCLC 312626589 .
  16. ^ A b J. Maarten Troost: Headhunters on My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story . Penguin Publishing Group, New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-101-62169-1 , p. 63, OCLC 859199273 .
  17. ^ The art of buying tikis . In: Wanderlust , August 11, 2013. Retrieved March 15, 2017. 
  18. ^ Thor Heyerdahl : The Statues of the Oipona Me'ae, with a Comparative Analysis of Possibly Related Stone Monuments . In: Thor Heyerdahl, Edwin N. Jr. Ferdon (Ed.): Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific  (= Monographs of the School of American Research and the Kon-Tiki Museum; no. 24, Part 2). Forum Publishing House, Stockholm 1965, pp. 123-151, OCLC 901420992 .
  19. ↑ Thor Heyerdahl: The Art of Easter Island . Doubleday, Garden City, NY 1975, ISBN 978-0-385-04716-6 , pp. 141-142, 223, 234-235, OCLC 2034616 .
  20. ↑ Catherine Chavaillon, Eric Olivier, Henri Marchesi: Le patrimoine archéologique de l'île de Hiva Oa (archipelago des Marquises). Vallée de Puamau (B29) In: Dossier d'Archéologie Polynésienne. Issue 5, [5] Service de la Culture et du Patrimoine, Tahiti 2007: 117-130.
  21. ^ Karen Greig, Richard Walter, Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith: Dogs and People in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In: M. Oxenham & H. Buckley (ed.): The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. [6] Routledge, Abingdon, UK 2015: 462-482. ISBN 978-1-317-53401-3
  22. ↑ a b c Katharine Luomala: The Native Dog in the Polynesian System of Values. In: Stanley Diamond: Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. Columbia University Press , New York 1960: 190-240.
  23. ↑ Pedro Fernandes de Queirós : Narrative of the Second Voyage of the Adelantado Alvaro de Mendaña, by the Chief Pilot. transl. v. Sir Clements Markham [7] (The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606) vol. I Hakluyt Society, London 1904: 21, 24
  24. ^ A b "found guilty of sheep stealing about the year 1797 and was banished for the above crime." Edward Robarts: Greg Dening (Ed.): The Marquesan Journal of Edward Robarts, 1797-1824  (= Pacific History Series, No. 6). Australian National University Press, Canberra 1974, ISBN 978-0-7081-0635-8 , pp. 69, 124-125, OCLC 470549807 .
  25. ^ David Porter : Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean in the United States Frigate Essex, in the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814 . Bradford and Inskeep, Philadelphia 1815, p. 418, OCLC 62611110 .
  26. ↑ Christian 1910: 124, 127, 133, 142–144.
  27. ^ The Bark: Paul Gauguin, Mythic Life Painting . The Ultimate Global Traveler. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  28. ^ Samuel T. Turvey: Holocene Extinctions . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-157998-1 , p. 208, OCLC 488939935 .
  29. ↑ Leon Howard noted Typee is "in fact, neither literal autobiography nor pure fiction". Melville "drew his material from his experiences, from his imagination, and from a variety of travel books when the memory of his experiences were inadequate". Leon Howard: Historical Notes . In: Herman Melville (Ed.): Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life . Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL 1968, ISBN 978-0-8101-0159-3 , pp. 277-302, OCLC 2579802 . [8th]
  30. ↑ Herman Melville : Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. During a Four Months' Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas . Wiley and Putnam, New York 1846, p. 268, OCLC 3212579 .
  31. ↑ Daniel Paliwoda: Melville and the Theme of Boredom . McFarland and Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-5702-1 , pp. 49-50, OCLC 593239846 .
  32. ^ I think I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural history of the valley. Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came those dogs that I saw in Typee? Dogs! —Big hairless rats rather; all with smooth, shining, speckled hides — fat sides, and very disagreeable faces. Whence could they have come? That they were not the indigenous production of the region, I am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of their being interlopers, looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hide themselves in some dark corner. It was plain enough they did not feel at home in the vale — that they wished themselves well out of it, and back to the ugly country from which they must have come. Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked nothing better than to have been the death of every one of them. In fact, on one occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine crusade to Mehevi; but the benevolent king would not consent to it. He heard me very patiently; but when I had finished, shook his head, and told me, in confidence, that they were "taboo". Herman Melville : Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. During a Four Months' Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas . Wiley and Putnam, New York 1846, p. 268, OCLC 3212579 .

literature

Commons : Sacrificial Head Manuiotaa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Tiki Makiʻi Tauʻa Pepe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files