French Polynesia

Wayfinders - a Polynesian Oddysey

Introduction

When European explorers first ventured into the Pacific they were surprised to find that island after island was occupied by thriving societies of people still living in the age of stone. These wanderers from another ocean had themselves just developed ocean-spanning technology, yet they found that islanders lacking metal, and above all ships and navigational instruments, had preceded them into the Pacific.

Where did these people come from, and how did they reach the far islands? Answering these questions has occupied amateur and professional scholars over the last four centuries. It has been a highly interdisciplinary effort: linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists, folklorists, historians, ethnobotanists, oceanographers, and other specialists have applied their talents to the puzzle. However, what really distinguishes this inquiry is that Polynesians have recently joined in the quest - with a significant difference. They address the problem not as outsiders simply intrigued by an intellectual puzzle, but as descendants of a long lineage of seafarers who explored and settled the Pacific. Focusing upon the voyaging canoe, the artifact that made the migration possible, Hawaiians, Tahitians, New Zealand and Cook Island Maori, and other Pacific Islanders have begun to reconstruct their ancient craft and sail them over the long seaways of the Pacific in order to rediscover their oceanic heritage.

Polynesians: An Oceanic People

The islands scattered along the north shore of New Guinea first drew these canoe people eastwards into the ocean. By 1500 B.C., these voyagers began moving east beyond New Guinea, first along the Solomon Island chain, and then to the Banks and Vanuatu Archipelagos. As the gaps between islands grew from tens of miles at the edge of the western Pacific to hundreds of miles along the way to Polynesia, and then to thousands of miles in the case of voyages to the far corners of the Polynesian triangle, these oceanic colonizers developed great double-hulled vessels capable of carrying colonists as well as all their supplies, domesticated animals, and planting materials. As the voyages became longer, they developed a highly sophisticated navigation system based on observations of the stars, the ocean swells, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs to find their way over the open ocean. And, as they moved farther away from the biotic centers of Southeast Asia and New Guinea, finding the flora and fauna increasingly diminished, they developed a portable agricultural system, whereby the domesticated plants and animals were carried in their canoes for transplantation on the islands they found.

Once they had reached the mid-ocean archipelagos of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, these seafarers - the immediate ancestors of the Polynesians - were alone in the ocean, for only they had the canoes and navigational skills needed to push so far into the Pacific. The gaps between islands widen greatly in the eastern Pacific and the prevailing winds become less and less favorable for sailing to the east. Nonetheless, the archaeological evidence indicates that they sailed eastward to the Cook, Society, and Marquesas Groups, and from there crossed thousands of miles of open ocean to colonize the islands of Hawai'i in the north, Easter Island in the southeast, and New Zealand in the southwest, thus completing settlement, by around 1000 AD, of the area we know today as the Polynesian Triangle.

When the Southeast Asian sailors started out on their odyssey they were not yet identifiably Polynesian. Only after many years of learning how to voyage long distances, and to survive on the high islands and atolls they found in the sea, did the ocean-oriented Polynesian culture take on its classic form.

In addition to a highly developed sailing and navigational technology, that cullture included a uniquely oceanic world view and a social structure well adapted to voyaging and colonization. Polynesian societies combined a strong authority structure based on genealogical ranking that was useful for mounting long expeditions and founding island colonies.

The Voyaging Canoe

The Polynesians' primary voyaging craft was the double canoe made of two hulls connected by lashed crossbeams. The two hulls gave this craft stability and the capacity to carry heavy loads of migrating families and all their supplies and equipment, while a central platform laid over the crossbeams provided the needed working, living, and storage space. Sails made of matting drove this ancient forerunner of the modern catamaran swiftly through the seas, and long steering paddles enabled Polynesian mariners to keep it sailing on course.

A medium-size voyaging canoe 50 to 60 feet long could accomodate two dozen or so migrants, their food supplies, livestock, and planting materials.

European Explorers

The early European explorers who first encountered the Polynesians could not believe that a stone age people, with only simple sailing canoes and no navigational instruments, could themselves have discovered and settled the mid-Pacific islands. Accordingly, they dreamed up elaborate theories that explained the presence of the Polynesians in the middle of the Pacific, while denying to them the ability of having reached there through their own sailing abilities. For example, in 1595 the Spanish explorer Quiros imagined a great "Southern Continent" stretching from Asia far into the Pacific across which their ancestors walked to a point from which, by a short canoe crossing, they could reach the Marquesas. Other early explorers invoked sunken continents, transport by the first Spanish voyagers, and even special creation of the islands to explain the presence of Polynesians in the middle of the Pacific.

Not until the late eighteenth century with the coming of Europe's second Age of Exploration did a reasonable hypothesis about where the Polynesians came from, and how they managed to discover and settle their island world, begin to emerge. Whereas explorers of the previous European age of exploration were primarily searching for new routes to the riches of Asia, those of this second age sailed the seas primarily, in Braudel's words, "to obtain new information about geography, the natural world, and the mores of different peoples." In the Pacific, the leaders of this new approach to oceanic exploration criss-crossed the ocean, finding and mapping the locations of islands, cataloguing the plants and animals found there, and investigating the islanders, their language, and customs. Only then was the true extent of Polynesia realized, and was credence given to the idea that the ancestors of the Polynesians could have intentionally sailed into this great ocean to find and settle so many scattered islands.

Captain James Cook

Captain James Cook, who is considered by many to have been the greatest of the explorers in this second age of European global expansion, was the first to realize and document that a vast region of the Pacific was occupied by people who shared a common cultural base. Cook was also the first European explorer to consider seriously that the Polynesians could have intentionally explored and settled their island world without the aid of a nearby Southern Continent, Spanish ships, divine intervention, or other external agencies. "How shall we account for this Nation spreading itself so far over this Vast ocean?" is the question Cook asks in his journal when in l778, on his third and last voyage, he chanced upon Hawai'i and its inhabitants, and so realized that the Polynesian nation extended north of the equator as well as for a considerable distance across the South Pacific. Cook did not live to answer that question fully, as he met an untimely end on the shores of Kealakekua Bay, Hawai'i. Nonetheless, the seeds for his theory of Polynesian settlement, one that takes into account the nautical abilities of the Polynesians, can be found in an earlier journal entry dating back to l769.

That year, while on his first voyage into the Pacific, Cook stopped four months in Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun as part of an international effort to determine the distance between the Earth and Sun. During his stay in Tahiti, Cook did something no previous European explorer to touch on a Polynesian island had ever done: he learned the basics of the local language, and then he used his rudimentary linguistic skills to ask how the islanders sailed and navigated their canoes, and where they voyaged. His primary guide in local nautical matters was Tupa'ia, a learned Tahitian who befriended the expedition. Tupa'ia was able to explain how the Tahitians sailed their canoes and navigated by reference to the sun, moon, and stars, and to provide information on islands immediately surrounding Tahiti as well as those a considerable distance away.

Cook, in turn, was impressed enough with both the practical seamanship and navigational skills of the Tahitians, and their wide geographical knowledge, to accept that which had been unthinkable to earlier European voyagers: that the ancestors of these islanders must have sailed into the Pacific on their own, covering great distances in their canoes, orienting themselves by observing the celestial bodies. Unfortunately, Cook never developed his thoughts beyond a few lines in his journal, which include elements basic to a modern theory of Polynesian settlement: an acceptance that Tahitian canoes were seaworthy and capable of sailing at least "two or three hundred leagues" (600 to 900 nautical miles), that the Tahitians had a "compass" provided by the sun, moon and stars and that they used this to orient themselves at sea, and that their ancestors could have employed this technology to move, from island to island, all the way from the "East Indias" (roughly modern Indonesia) to Tahiti.

Cook chose the "East Indias" as the origin point for the Polynesian migration because a linguistic Sailing with Cook as his botanist was Joseph Banks, who had studied philology at Oxford, and who later was to become president of the Royal Society. On board the ship was a small library containing published accounts of previous voyages through the Pacific, and in these accounts were short lists of words from islands scattered from Southeast Asia eastwards into the Pacific as far as the the western edge of Polynesia. By comparing the list of Tahitian words he compiled with these other vocabularies, Banks was able to show how Tahitian was directly related to languages spread across the Pacific to the Southeast Asian islands of the "East Indias."

Cook saw only one obstacle to accepting a Polynesian origin in island Southeast Asia: the proposed migration trail led through tropical latitudes, and in the tropics easterly trade winds normally prevail. Whereas these would make it relatively easy for voyagers from South America to sail westward with the wind into the Pacific, steady trade winds would seem to present a formidable obstacle for any voyagers sailing eastward across the ocean. Yet, because he saw no cultural resemblance between the islanders he had met and the native Americans, Cook rejected the idea of an American origin of the Polynesians. The trail of linguistic evidence clearly marked the direction of migration, and he therefore sought to explain how canoe voyagers could have moved eastward into the Pacific against the direction of the trade winds.

Tupa'ia supplied the solution to this apparent dilemma: he told the puzzled Cook that during the months of November, December, and January the trades frequently died down and were replaced by spells of westerly winds, and that the Tahitians then used these westerly winds to sail to the east. From that crucial bit of intelligence, Cook constructed his seaman's explanation for how Polynesia was settled from the west that takes into account both the oceanic environment and Polynesian nautical abilities: the early voyagers worked their way eastward from the Asian side of the Pacific, moving from island to island, by exploiting seasonal westerly wind reversals.

Linguistic Evidence/Oral Traditions

Until the development of modern archaeological research programs in Hawai'i and New Zealand during the 1950s, the most prominent lines of inquiry into the Polynesian settlement issue involved the study of the languages of the Pacific and the tales Polynesians told of the voyaging exploits and migrational feats of their ancestors.

Joseph Banks and James Cook used word comparisons to establish that the languages spoken on different Polynesian islands were nearly identical, and that these languages were related to those stretching across the Pacific to Southeast Asia. In his journal, for example, Banks lists Tahitian and New Zealand Maori words side by side to show that the two languages are nearly identical, and then (using lists of words from languages in Melanesia and Indonesia) uses the same method of vocabulary comparison to trace a linguistic relationship westward all the way to Southeast Asia.

Subsequent explorers and the scientists who sailed with them collected more island vocabularies and extended these comparisons, while philologists in Europe and America systematically compared the languages of the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Their findings confirmed that Cook and Banks had been on the right trail. All the languages of the Pacific islands (except those spread over the interiors of New Guinea and adjacent islands) were indeed related and formed part of a great language family centered in island Southeast Asia. They also confirmed that this language family was not only spread over the Pacific Ocean, but had also been carried across the Indian Ocean to this great island of Madagascar off the African coast. As such, these linguists established the existence of what was the most widely spread language family in the world until Europeans began to sail beyond the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.

Today this group of related languages is usually referred to as the Austronesian family. The spreading of this language family by seafarers from Southeast Asia seemed obvious to the linguists and other students of the problem, simply because everywhere that Austronesian languages were spoken there were also ocean-going canoes.

Oral Traditions

While language studies support the theory of Cook and Banks that the Polynesians originated there, these studies did not shed much light on the precise location of the original homeland, or on the migrational routes followed in entering and then spreading over the Pacific, nor could they say anything about how the Polynesians had been able to sail so far into the ocean. During the late 1800s and early 1900s a major effort was mounted to examine the traditions of epic voyages told by the islanders themselves in hopes that they could provide the clues needed to reconstruct the Polynesian migration.

Scholars working in New Zealand, for example, found a wealth of traditions about the discovery of their land, and the coming of colonizing canoes from Hawaiki, the legendary homeland which these scholars identified with the Society and Cook Islands. In contrast, those working in Hawai'i found in Hawaiian traditions a wealth of tales connecting Hawai'i with Kahiki, which, arguably, is the Hawaiian way of pronouncing Tahiti. These are not just about single voyages, but tell of the adventures of chiefs and priests who sailed repeatedly back and forth between the two centers. One of the best known of these legends is that which tells of eight different voyages made by Mo'ikeha, a chief who lived (according to genealogical reckoning) sometime around the 12th century, and his sons.

Professional anthropologists began to study the Polynesian problem in earnest during the period between the two world wars. Through surveying the remains of stone temples and other structures, and comparing the cultural traits and physical characteristics of the islanders, these anthropologists sought to shed further light on Polynesian origins, but with little success. Without a program of sub-surface archaeology to work out the routes, sequences, and chronologies of settlement, and without a method for finding out how the Polynesians could have sailed and navigated over such a great expanse of ocean, Polynesian studies were stalled.

Heyerdahl and Sharp

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl drifted on a raft made of balsa wood logs from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands on the eastern edge of Polynesia to prove that these craft, once used by South American Indians, could have carried migrants to Polynesia. Heyerdahl needed this demonstration to support his theory that the first people to Polynesia came from the east, from South America. He claimed that it would have been impossible for early canoe voyagers to have sailed directly eastward from island Southeast Asia against what he called the "permanent trade winds and forceful companion currents of the enormous Southern Hemisphere" to reach Polynesian waters and discover and settle the islands there. Therefore, he concluded that Polynesia must have been first settled by people from the west coast of the Americas who sailed and drifted eastward into the Pacific before wind and current.

A few years after Heyerdahl publicized his theory, Andrew Sharp, New Zealand historian, wrote a book entitled Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific, in which he claimed that the vision of the Polynesians as great voyagers who had set out to explore and settle the Pacific was nothing but romantic nonsense. Although Sharp accepted that Polynesia had been colonized from the west, he proposed that the settlement was simply the product of many accidental voyages which had moved the Polynesians slowly westward across the Pacific and then throughout the Polynesian triangle. Sharp claimed that the canoes of the Polynesians were not seaworthy enough, and their navigational methods were not accurate enough, to have enabled them to intentionally set out to explore and colonize the Pacific. Sharp declared that all voyaging and island settlement was "accidental" for islands farther than 300 miles from their nearest neighbor.

Distant islands could only have been discovered and settled, he said, by the chance arrival of unintentional voyagers - who, because of storms or navigational incompetence had strayed far off course while making a short crossing between closely-spaced islands, or who, after fleeing from their home island because of famine or defeat in war, had been drifting blindly around the ocean hoping to land on an uninhabited island.

The Archaeological Response

The findings of the archaeological work subsequently conducted throughout Polynesia and in Melanesia have not been kind to Heyerdahl's theory of American origins. Through their excavations and analyses of artifacts and other recovered materials, archaeologists were able to develop a model of Polynesian settlement that demonstrated the eastward movement into the Pacific of ancestral Polynesians, located the "true" homeland of the Polynesians on the western edge of Polynesia itself, outlined population dispersion within the Polynesian triangle, and demonstrated the lack of evidence of any noticeable population movement from the Americas to Polynesia.

The discovery of a distinctively decorated type of pottery called Lapita provided the first solid evidence of the general route by which the ancestors of the Polynesians migrated into the Pacific. The Lapita cultural complex, made up of his pottery and associated artifacts, began turning up in excavations from islands extending from the islands off the northeast coast of New Guinea to archipelagos at the western edge of Polynesia. These sites, with their distinctive artifacts, not only demonstrated that the ancestral Polynesians sailed through Melanesia, and not Micronesia as some had proposed, but also indicated that it probably took them no more than a few hundred years to move from island to island through Melanesia to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, some 2,000 miles east of their starting point off New Guinea.

There followed the realization that the long-sought Polynesian homeland was not outside the Pacific, but was really within Polynesia itself. The Lapita voyagers were seen as ancestral to, but not yet identifiably Polynesian. Not until they began to adapt to life in the isolated mid-Pacific archipelagos of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa do sites there indicate that the distinctively Polynesian cultural complex begins to emerge from its Lapita roots.

The archaeological record then showed that the movement eastward across the Pacific continued, with the central archipelagos of East Polynesia being settled from these West

Polynesian Migration RoutesPolynesian centers. The Marquesas Islands were reached between 200 BC and 300 AD, and although the evidence is so far lacking, some archaeologists believe that the Cook and Society Islands may have been settled from West Polynesia even earlier. Then, from this nuclear region of East Polynesia, voyagers explored the length and breadth of the Polynesian triangle, reaching the distant islands of Hawai'i (by at least 400-500 AD), Easter Island (by about 400 AD), and New Zealand (around 1000 AD) to complete the settlement of Polynesia.

Despite major programs of archaeological excavation in Hawai'i, the Marquesas, Easter Island (including some work sponsored by Heyerdahl), and other islands facing the Americas, no potsherds from South America or other identifiably native American artifacts have been found. At prehistoric levels, the cultural materials are thoroughly Polynesian. The only definite evidence that points to the possibility of human contact between the Americas and Polynesia is the presence in Polynesia of the sweet potato, a plant indigenous to South America. In 1990, archaeologist Dr. Patrick Kirch found sweet potatoes in the Cook Islands dating back to 1000 AD, thus confirming the early introduction of these plants in central Polynesia. Whether they were brought on a raft from South America (and then spread around Polynesian by canoe), or whether some intrepid Polynesians sailed all the way to South America and carried sweet potatoes on the return voyage, remains unanswered.

Fragments of canoes were found in caves and swamps. One such find appears to be from a deep-sea voyaging canoe. Dr. Yoshihiko Sinoto of Honolulu's Bishop Museum, found the remains of an ancient voyaging canoe that had been buried in the mud when a tsunami struck the island of Huahine, near Tahiti, sometime between 850 and 1100 AD.

The distribution of domesticated plants and animals across Polynesia at the time of European contact, and archaeological evidence of the early introduction of these, lends credence to the idea that this migration was intentional. All the Polynesian food plants except the sweet potato - notably taro, bananas, yams, breadfruit, and sugar cane - and the three domesticated animals - the pig, dog, and chicken - come from the Asian side of the Pacific. Most Polynesian islands have these domesticates, which suggests that colonization was intentional since accidental drift voyagers were not likely to have carried all the plants and animals with them on short inter-island trips or fishing expeditions. The presence of pig, dog, and chicken bones at the lower levels of a number of early archaeological sites, along with indirect evidence of the use of domesticated plants, testifies further to the probability that voyagers carried with them the species needed for colonization, and that they were not introduced piecemeal by a long series of random drift voyages.

Experimental Voyaging

Not all students of Polynesia embraced Sharp's theory of accidental settlement, however. They felt that not only had Sharp arrogantly denied to the Polynesians their due as ingenious canoe designers and builders, and skilled seamen and navigators, but that in labelling the process of settlement as accidental he had without foundation denied to the Polynesians and their ancestors any volition in the shaping of their own destiny as colonizers of a vast Pacific realm.

However, as the debate over Sharp's thesis continued in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it became clear that the information needed to refute or confirm Sharp was simply not there. The voyaging canoes and traditional navigators had long since disappeared from Polynesian waters, victims of the radical transformation of Polynesian societies over the last two centuries. The debate therefore was primarily being conducted with information on Polynesian canoes, navigation methods, and voyaging accomplishments penned by the explorers and other early European visitors to Polynesia. Since these writers typically had neither the time, language skills, nor motivation to investigate these topics thoroughly, their writings on these subjects were sketchy and often ambiguous. Disputants could often pick from this literature whatever observations or opinions supported their case, and their opponents could do likewise, with the predictable result that the debate produced little in the way of new insights, much less any definitive answers.

New approaches were needed to break out of this impasse. A few adventuresome researchers sought to find out exactly how Polynesian canoes sailed, and how the non-instrument navigation system worked, by reconstructing the canoes and ways of navigating, and then testing them on long voyaging routes between Polynesian islands.

This experimental effort got underway in the mid-l960s. David Lewis, a physician turned voyaging researcher, navigated his catamaran from Tahiti to New Zealand without instruments in order to test the feasibility of using star observations made with the naked eye to guide a vessel over thousands of miles of open ocean. By following Kupe's legendary sailing instructions to a landfall on New Zealand's North Island within 30 miles of where he expected to sight land, Lewis demonstrated the quality of Polynesian methods. While Lewis was conducting this navigation experiments, Ben Finney, an anthropologist, built a 40-foot replica of an Hawaiian double canoe and tested its sailing performance. The sailing trials indicated that the basic double-canoe design, composed of two hulls lashed together with a central platform upon which one or more sails were raised, was well adapted for deep-sea voyaging. The double canoe was stable and seaworthy; it sailed well downwind and across the wind, and could sail to windward, although not as well as a modern yacht.

On the basis of these findings, Finney proposed that it would be feasible to sail a Polynesian double canoe from Hawai'i to Tahiti and return, over the legendary voyaging route that once connected these two centers, and navigate it by traditional methods without the use of a magnetic compass, charts, or any other instruments or aids. Such a voyage would constitute a realistic test of Sharp's claim that it had been impossible for Polynesians to have made purposefully navigated round-trip voyages between islands separated by more than 300 nautical miles, for Hawai'i and Tahiti are separated by more than 2,000 miles of open ocean.

Hokulea: The Rediscovery

In 1973, Ben Finney and a group of Polynesian specialists and canoe enthusiasts formed the Polynesian Voyaging Society to build a large voyaging canoe to attempt the Hawai'i - Tahiti round-trip in order to test the feasibility of making long-distance, navigated voyages in a voyaging canoe guided solely by traditional navigation. The canoe, christened Hokule'a, which is Hawaiian for the bright star Arcturus that passes directly over the island of Hawai'i, was launched in l975. Other than the findings at Huahine, journal notes and illustrations from early European expeditions, and verbal information from chants and legends, there was little evidence to help determine the actual size and shape of the ancient voyaging canoes. Furthermore, the lack of traditional materials and skills in modern Hawai'i meant that the canoe had to be partially built of modern materials. Archaeologists, maritime historians, and anthropologists collaborated on the design of a vessel that would simulate an ancient craft in shape, weight, and performance. Because no Polynesians knew how to navigate in the ancient manner, Mau Piailug, a traditional navigator from the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, was chosen to guide the canoe. His method of navigating by the stars and swells was closely similar to extinct Polynesian methods.

Navigator Mau Piailug used the rising points of the stars, supplemented by observations of the sun, moon, and ocean swells, as a natural compass to guide the canoe. Even when days of solid cloud cover hid the stars, sun, and moon from sight, Mau was able to keep the canoe on course and keep in his mind an accurate picture of the canoe's progress toward Tahiti. And, obligingly, small, white fairy terns skimming over the sea, told Mau that HOKULE'Athe atoll of Mataiva, just to the north-northwest of Tahiti, was near before it could actually be seen. Once this atoll had been reached, it was easy to orient the canoe for the short sail to Tahiti.

The fact that the canoe sailed from Hawai'i to Tahiti and back, and that Mau had been able to navigate to Tahiti without instruments, effectively demonstrated how Polynesian canoes and traditional navigational methods were up to the task of planned, long-distance voyaging. This voyage served to turn the tide against the Sharp hypothesis of accidental voyaging, and to develop a new appreciation for voyaging canoes and traditional ways of navigation.

As significant as these findings are to revising our view of Polynesian prehistory, the unique feature of this project has been the degree and character of the participation of Polynesians. Not only have hundreds of Hawaiians and other Polynesians sailed on Hokule'a, but in seeking to rediscover their maritime heritage they have greatly expanded the anthropological significance of the project. It was primarily the Hawaiians who, searching to rediscover their own maritime roots, took the lead in the project by extending the experimental approach far beyond the initial voyage of 1976. In so doing, they have provided realistic information on sailing over a number of legendary voyaging routes in Polynesia, which has served to greatly enhance the understanding of the discovery and settlement of the islands.

That modern Polynesians have taken the lead in demonstrating the capabilities inherent in the technology and methods of their ancestors is doubly fitting, for not only do they have the desire and talent for voyaging, but they stand to benefit most by this effort to reestablish the deserved nautical reputation of their ancestors. Assisted by their Micronesian teacher and advisor, Mau Piailug , who recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hawai'i for his efforts to revive Polynesian seafaring knowledge, the Hawaiians, Marquesans, Tahitians, Cook Islanders, Maori, Tongans, and Samoans who have sailed Hokule'a around Polynesia have been instrumental in changing scientific perceptions of their migratory past, and have brought to their fellow Polynesians a renewed pride in their heritage as oceanic voyagers.

The complex cultures of ancient Polynesia are largely gone. The incursions of modern technology, the demands of the world economy, and the impingement of foreign ideologies - religious, political or otherwise, have radically altered once integrated and largely self-sufficient societies. In some parts of Polynesia, the transformation from the old order is more complete, particularly in Hawai'i and New Zealand, where Polynesians are minorites in their own land.

Many contemporary Polynesians seem to be culturally adrift, neither fully participant in the modern cultures which have engulfed them, nor firmly anchored to even a memory of the ancient ways of life that once sustained their people. In this situation, the reconstruction and sailing of ancient voyaging canoes becomes more than adventurous and anthropologically-fruitful excursions into the past. These projects become ways culturally-uprooted Polynesians can themselves rediscover the means by which their islands were discovered and settled, indeed their ancient cultural heritage as a uniquely oceanic people. That is why the Hokule'a project so captured the Hawaiian imagination, and why its passage through Polynesian seas has so excited Tahitians, Cook Islanders, New Zealand Maori, and other islanders. In fact, Hokule'a has not sailed alone in those seas. Not only has the project spawned a veritable renaissance in Hawaiian sailing canoes, but it has inspired Tahitians and New Zealand Maori to reconstruct their own voyaging canoes and sail them over legendary sea routes.

For more general information on French Polynesia, go to:

• About the Country (Introduction)
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For more regional information on French Polynesia, go to:

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We have included French Polynesia in some of our specials to the South Pacific, eg. our Kontiki Voyage and South Sea Dream Voyage. Another option is to create your own package to French Polynesia by utilizing the seperate travel components, like hotels, flights and excursions on the islands.

For a legal wedding the legal requires in French Polynesia that you remain at least 30 days in French Polynesia before the marriage. In practice this means you may only have a ceremonial wedding in French Polynesia (see also Tiki Village).