Tai Pi (province)

Tai Pī is a province of Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands, an administrative subdivision of French Polynesia. The settlement follows the line of the valley and the stream that passes from its mountainous island surroundings.

Herman Melville (known as 'Tommo' in Melville's narrative) was famously marooned here when, as a young whaling ship sailor, he deserted ship with his shipmate, Toby Greene. This experience which lasted a total of four weeks was the subject of Herman Melville's first book Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. He arrived the day the French sailed into Nuku Hiva and began firing their cannon, thus proclaiming it a French Protectorate.

Melville's story thus represents the tribe's (and all the Nuku Hiva islanders') native way of life before their island's opening-up to the outside world and the suppression that would follow. Their lifestyle, surroundings & condition made the young Melville think he had stumbled into the Garden of Eden. He portrays their daily life as joyful, nonchalant and innocent, and strikingly free of the worries of the Western World. Man makes a living by simply foraging in the abundant tropical surroundings, and teaches his son himself, within the community. There is almost no difference between the possessions of the islanders, and their homes are erected by everybody and not entirely fixed-abodes. This way of life was to rapidly decline and change with the arrival of the Europeans, as explored in Melville's second book, Omoo (although Omoo has nothing to do with Tai Pī).

During the wars between the Te I'i and the Tai Pī in 1813, the American navy Captain David Porter arrived in the frigate USS Essex and ten other armed ships on October 25. A shore party was landed and they claimed the island for the United States and constructed a small village, named Madisonville. A fort and a dock was also built, the latter to refit the Essex. Almost immediately Porter became involved in the tribal conflict. The first expedition into the jungle was led by Lieutenant John Downes, He and forty others captured a fort held by 3,000 to 4,000 Happah warriors with the assistance of several hundred Te I'is. The victory forced the Happah to terms and they allied themselved with both the Americans and the Te I'i. A second expedition was led by Porter himself and he made an amphibious assault against the Tai Pī held coastline. 5,000 Te I'is and Happahs accompanied the fleet in at least 200 war-canoes. Though the landing was unopposed, Porter's force of thirty men and a cannon led the march inland where they found another, more formidable, enemy fort. Thousands of natives armed with rocks and spears, positioned in a formidable mountain fortress, were able to fend off their enemies. The victory was short-lived however and Captain Porter followed up his landing with an expedition overland, bypassing the fort, to threaten the Tai Pī's village center in Typee Valley as the Americans named it.

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