The French made the islands their political possessions with little
difficulty. The Marquesans had no king or single chief. There were
many tribes and clans, and it was easy to persuade or compel petty
chiefs to sign declarations and treaties. But it was not easy to
kill the independence of the people, and France virtually abandoned
and retook the islands several times, her rule fluctuating with
political conditions at home.

There were wars, horrible, bloody scenes, when the clansmen slew the
whites and ate them, and the bones of many a gallant French officer
and sea-captain have moldered where they were heaped after the orgy
following victory. But, as always, the white slew his hundreds to
the natives' one, and in time he drove the devil of liberty and
defense of native land from the heart of the Marquesan.

Before the French achieved this, however, the white had sowed a crop
of deadly evils among the Marquesans that cut them down faster than
war, and left them desolate, dying, passing to extinction.

As I looked from the deck of the _Morning Star_ I was struck by the
fittingness of the scene. Fatu-hiva had been left behind and Hiva-oa,
our destination, was before us, bleak and threatening. To my eyes it
appeared as it had been in the eyes of the gentler Polynesians of
old time, the abode of demons and of a race of terrible warriors.
Hence descended the Marquesans, Vikings of the Pacific, in giant
canoes, and sprang upon the fighting men of the Tahitians, the
Raiateans and the Paumotans, slaughtering their hundreds and carrying
away scores to feast upon in the High Places.