When you arrive in the Marquesas you say to yourself, seeing these tattoos that cover the face and the whole body: “These are terrible fellows. And they have been cannibals too.”

You are altogether mistaken.

The native Marquesan is by no means a terrible fellow; on the contrary, he is an intelligent man and quite incapable of plotting evil. He is so gentle as to be almost foolish and he is timorous towards all in authority. People say he has been anthropophagous, imagining that this is ended, which is a mistake. He is so still, but without ferocity; he likes human flesh as a Russian likes caviar, as a cossack likes a tallow-candle. Ask a dozing old man whether he cares for human flesh; wide awake for once, his eyes shining, he will reply with infinite gentleness, “Oh, how good it is!”

Paul Gauguin, Gauguin’s Intimate Journals (translated by Van Wyck Brooks)