When the whites found the Marquesans in the sixteenth century, they were building at Vaitahu great war-canoes to "attack the black people who used bows and arrows."

The Marquesans of the north said their race came from Hawaii, and those of the south from Vavao.

As with the Marquesans to-day, they had a fugleman, or leader, in all songs, who introduced the subject in a prologue, and occasionally gave the cue to a change.