page_title: Marquesas Islands
section_title: European contact
hierarchical_section_title: Marquesas Islands / History / European contact
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Chef de guerre marquisien portant les attributs dûs à son rang. Musée d'histoire naturelle et d'ethnographie de Colmar
context_page_description: The Marquesas Islands are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas are located at 9.7812° S, 139.0817° W. The highest point is the peak of Mount Oave on Ua Pou island at 1,230 m above sea level.
  Archaeological research suggests the islands were colonized sometime after the 9th century and before the 11th century AD by indigenous voyagers from West Polynesia. Over the course of subsequent centuries, these settlers developed a "remarkably uniform culture, human biology and language."
  The Marquesas Islands form one of the five administrative divisions of French Polynesia. The capital of the Marquesas Islands administrative subdivision is the town of Taiohae, on the island of Nuku Hiva. The population of the Marquesas Islands was 9,346 inhabitants at the time of the August 2017 census.
context_section_description: The first Europeans to reach the Marquesas may have been the crew of San Lesmes, a Spanish vessel which disappeared in a storm in June 1526; it was part of an expedition headed by García Jofre de Loaísa. The Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña reached them nearly seventy years later on 21 July 1595. He named them after his patron, García Hurtado de Mendoza, 5th Marquis of Cañete (Spanish: Marqués de Cañete), who served as Viceroy of Peru from 1590 to 1596. Mendaña visited first Fatu Hiva and then Tahuata before continuing on to the Solomon Islands. His expedition charted the four southernmost Marquesas as Magdalena (Fatu Hiva), Dominica (Hiva ʻOa), San Pedro (Moho Tani), and Santa Cristina (Tahuata).
  In the late 16th century European explorers estimated the population at more than 100,000. Europeans and Americans were impressed with how easy life appeared to be in the islands, which had a rich habitat and environment. In 1791 the American maritime fur trader Joseph Ingraham first visited the northern Marquesas while commanding the brig Hope. He named them the Washington Islands. In 1813 Commodore David Porter claimed Nuku Hiva for the United States, but the United States Congress never ratified that claim.
  The islands were a popular port of call for visiting whaling ships in the Age of Sail. The first on record was the Hope in April 1791. The last known such visitor was the American whaler Alaska in February 1907.
  In 1842 France conducted a successful military operation on behalf of the native chief Iotete, who claimed he was king of the whole island of Tahuata. The government laid claim to the whole group and established a settlement on Nuku Hiva. That settlement was abandoned in 1857, but France re-established control over the group in 1870. It later incorporated the Marquesas into French Polynesia.
  Of all major island groups in the Pacific, the Marquesas suffered the greatest population decline in Polynesia from endemic diseases carried by Western explorers. The indigenous people suffered high rates of mortality, as they had no immunity to the new diseases. Such infectious diseases as smallpox, measles and others reduced the eighteenth-century population of over 78,000 inhabitants to about 20,000 by the middle of the nineteenth century.
  By the turn of the 20th century, the islands' population had reduced to just over 4,000. During the course of the twentieth century, after reaching a nadir of 2,255 in 1926, the population finally started to increase, reaching 8,548 at the November 2002 census, not including the Marquesan community residing on Tahiti. It has continued to increase, reaching 9,346 inhabitants at the August 2017 census.
caption: Traditional Marquesan warlord's headgear, ceremonial clothes, insignia, and weapon.
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