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MARQUESAN.
"THE Marquesas or Washington
group forms a cluster of islands situated about nine degrees south of
the equator, at a distance of 900 miles north-east of Tahiti. The
largest of these islands is not above
half the size of Tahiti, and it is questionable whether the population of the
entire cluster exceeds 20,000.
In manners and customs, and in national traditions and superstitions, these
islanders, as might be
expected from the proximity of situation, resemble the
Tahitians, but they are a far more
barbarous
people than their southern neighbours, and before the introduction of
Christianity were addicted to
cannibalism, and to many flagitious and inhuman
practices. Their language is nearly identical with
that of Tahiti, but the pronunciation is still more liquid.
The Marquesan dialect is more closely allied to the Tahitian than to any
other: indeed one
grammar may do for both. Like the Tahitian the Marquesan has not the
nasal ng; nor yet l or r,
letters which, it may be noticed, are often interchanged not only in the
Polynesian idioms, but also in
many languages of Asia; such as the
Tamil, which combines the two liquids in
one letter; and the
Japanese, which pronounce one or the
other only, in districts bordering on one another. In Marquesan,
as in other purely Polynesian dialects, such as the Tahitian,
Hawaiian,
Rarotonga, and
New Zealand,
there are no sibilants, which are, however, found in
Tonga and
Feejeean, idioms that in some
respects
deviate from the Polynesian type properly so called. The place of the
Marquesan and Tahitian dialects
among other Polynesian idioms is between that of Hawaii and that of New
Zealand; the former the
poorest, the latter the richest of those dialects.
Various efforts have been made at different intervals since the
year 1797 to proclaim the glad
tidings of the Gospel in these
islands. For many years these attempts were rendered abortive by
the
ferocity and savage obduracy of the natives. At length, in 1834, the
Rev. Messrs. Rodgerson,
Stallworthy, and Darling, agents of the London My.
Society, met with some encouragement in
their endeavours to instruct the people, and reclaim them from
idolatry. Mr. Darling devoted himself
to the translation of the Scriptures, or rather to the adaptation of the
Tahitian version to the Marquesan
dialect. The Gospels of St.
John and St. Luke have been
completed, and other portions of the New
Testament are either ready for the press or in a state of preparation.
But we have no recent information
respecting the progress of evangelisation in these islands, which were taken
possession of by France a
few years since, and are for the present closed to the labours of the
Protestant my.."--The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second
Edition) Samuel Bagster [Info only]
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