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'Nuku Hiva' is the largest of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. It was formerly called also 'Île Marchand' and 'Madison Island'.
This was the site for , the fourth installment of the popular CBS reality television show. Herman Melville wrote his book ''Typee'' based on his experiences in the Tai Pi Vai valley in the eastern part of the island. Robert Louis Stevenson's first landfall on his voyage on the ''Casco'', was at Hatiheu, on the north side of Nuku Hiva, in 1888.

Contents

Geography

Demographics

Communications

History

Before 1600

1600 to the Present

Trivia

Resource

External links

Geography

Its highest point, in the northwestern part of the island, is Tekao, which reaches an elevation of 1,224 m (4,016 ft.).
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.
The coastline of the eastern part of the island, on the other hand, is indented by deep bays, the largest of which are Haka Ui and Tai o Hae, and in the former province of Tai Pi, Vai‘i, Ho‘o Umi, Ha‘a Tuatua, Ana Ho and Hatiheu.
The central part of the island is a high plateau, the Tōvi‘i, covered primarily by a tall-grass prairie, on which experiments in cattle raising are taking place for the first time. On the western edge rises Tekao, the island's highest peak. The western and northern edges of Tōvi‘i are a mountain ridge, which catches much of the rain that waters the island. In one place, Vaipo Waterfall, the collected water falls off a highland and falls 350 m (1148 ft). The slopes of the western side of the island are much drier than the rest of the island, and are often described as a desert.
The capital of the Marquesas Islands, Tai o Hae, is located at the head of the bay of that same name.

Demographics

The population in 2002 was 2,375. This is hugely reduced from the numbers encountered in the 1840s when the French first invaded the islands. The usual afflictions beset the islanders at this point with ailments like venereal disease and influenza causing massive mortality rates at such an alarming speed that a great deal of the Shamanistic Knowledge of plants as sources of medecine was lost.
The demographic split of the island is vast majority Polynesian with a very small proportion French colonisers ie Police, Church and various other officials.
Important to note that the Mayor of Nuku Hiva who promoted independence from Tahiti was mysteriously killed in an airplane accident which many locals still state was never properly investigated. There is a considerable amount of latent resentment and hostility about this incident and it is strongly felt by many that this incident was covered up by the French authorities.
The primary diet of the peoples tends to be vegetables, breadfruit, coconut and fruit (both growingin abundance all over the island), but particularly pig and fish. There is a great deal of wild pig on the island. The pig is customarily still killed by hand with a knife as a matter of personal Male honour. The young bucks wear the teeth of the dead wild pigs around their neck as an adornment to woo the women.
Cannibis grows in abundance in this tropical climate but is carefully grown well away from the prying eyes of State Officials.
There is one jail on the island, which is generally used for 'short stay' internments and is also often altogether empty.

Communications

Nuku Hiva is served by a single-runway airport in the northwest corner of the island, approximately 30 miles by road, northwest of Tai o Hae. The airport is NOT capable of handling the largest of aircraft. The only commercial flights to this island seem to be twin engine Fokker with seating capacity of approx 38 people max but 1/2 of that is taken up with cargo for the island and post.

History

Before 1600

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.

1600 to the Present

In 1813, Commodore David Porter claimed Nuku Hiva for the United States, but the United States Congress never ratified that claim, and in 1842, France took possession of the whole group, establishing a settlement (abandoned in 1859) on Nuku Hiva.
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 here is to stop non French investment in property for the time being.

Trivia

Lucien Berland named a genus of pisaurid spider ''Nukuhiva''.

Resource

★ Stevenson, Robert Louis. ''In the South Seas, Being an Account of Experiences and Observations in the Marquesas, Paumotur and Gilbert Islands in the Course of Two Cruises, on the Yacht ''Casco'' (1888) and the Schooner ''Equator''.'' 1900.
Herman Melville's first ever publication (well before Moby Dick) "Typee" documents most intimately the ways and mores of a people before the French Christian invasion of around 1842.

External links

★ Nuku Hiva information, with map, from Tahiti Nui Travel

★ Nuku Hiva travel and attraction guide

★ Nuku Hiva information

★ Presidency of French Polynesia article on Nuku Hiva