98. ORNAMENT, MARQUESAS ISLANDS poe vaevae human hair, fibres 60 cm. long Provenance James Hooper, Arundel Christie's, London, Oceanic Art from the James Hooper Collection, 17 June 1980, lot 131 André Fourquet, Paris Daniel Hourdé, Paris Literature Phelps, S., Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas, The James Hooper Collection, London, 1976, Pl.48, n°400 Caroline van Santen in her unpublished PhD dissertation, Nuku Hiva 1825: ethnohistory of a Dutch-Marquesan encounter and an art-historical study of Marquesan material culture, 2021, vol.1, p.113, discusses the various historical references to human hair ornaments from the Marquesas Islands. According to Van Santen human hair (òuoho) is used in several types of ornaments, most of which are mainly, but not exclusively, worn on the body. Willem Carel Singendonck (1801-1874), in his unpublished manuscript written in 1824-1825, records that hair ornaments worn around the wrists and ankles were made from the hair of slain enemies. James Cook (in A Voyage towards the South Pole and round the World, Volume I, London, 1777, p.310) mentions similar ornaments but does not refer to the provenance of the hair. George Forster (A voyage around the world. Volume II. London, 1777, p.16) also refers to them adding that those worn around the knees and waist may have been 'worn in remembrance of their dead relations, and therefore looked upon with some veneration; or else they may be the spoils of their enemies, worn as the honourable testimonies of victory.' Georg Heinrich Von Langsdorff (Voyages and Travels in various parts of the world during the years 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806 and 1807, Carlisle, 1817, p.171-3) observes that men wore a type of hair ornament on their backs, which he calls hopemoa, made from the hair of their wives. Many years later, E.S. Craighill Handy (The Native Culture in the Marquesas, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, no 9, 1923, pp.282-283) mentions that for the different types of hair ornaments both the hair of living relatives as well as that of enemies was used. He also explained that before being used, the cut hair was curled using heat by a specialist (tuhuka). The hair ornaments themselves mainly consist of a thick braided coconut cord to which bundles of dark brown human hair are attached with the bottom parts wrapped in coconut fibres. Most would mainly have been used for the wrist, upper arm and ankles. These objects were collected throughout 1774-1840s. Captain Jean-Benoît-Amadée Collet's objects, collected between 1842 and 1844, and now mostly in the Musée du Quai Branly, include one larger hair ornament that was probably worn around the waist or on the shoulders.