Rapa Nui Journal Volume 11 Issue 3

Thailand Handbook, 1997 (Second Edition) by Carl Parkes

Moon Travel Handbooks, PO Box 3040, Chico, CA 95927-3040

Review by Georgia Lee

International News

What's New in Polynesia

What's New in Hangaroa

An American airman landed at Rapa Nui in April of 1967. Lt. Colonel Reed C. Mulkey, Commander of the 55th Aerospace Rescue and Recover Squadron at Kindley AFB, Bermuda, was impressed by what he saw and wrote the following letter to his family. Our thanks to Reed for sharing this peek into life on Rapa Nui, thirty years ago.

A group of academic investigators originally envisioned building the William Mulloy Library on Rapa Nui to fulfill the last wishes of the late Dr. William Mulloy, archaeologist at the University of Wyoming, and to honor his truly seminal archaeological restoration work on the island. Our goal was to provide a central research facility with a comprehensive collection of papers, books, and other materials relating to Rapa Nui and Polynesia with Dr. Mulloy's collection, left to the islanders, as its core.

The Chilean Forest Service Corporacion Nacional Forestal (CONAF) is the Chilean Government Agency whose mandate includes the management of National Parks. The Rapa Nui National Park was established in 1935, its 6.7 hectares covers about 42% of the total area of Easter Island. including all its major archaeological monuments.

The urge to preserve monuments and sites arises from the universal need of knowing and understanding the origins and developments of human societies (ICOMOS 1964, 1990). This is deeply linked to the psychological need to know our history and recognize a familiar environment so as not to feel unprotected (Mattinen 1988). These concepts are particularly appropriate for the case of the monumental heritage of Easter Island.

Of the four expeditions known to have touched Easter Island between 1722 and 1786 many written records are available. Some reports are very scientific, including maps that show the exact landing spots. This is unfortunately not the case in regard to the Dutch visit of 1722. Although it is well known that Roggeveen's fleet came to the island on April 5, 1722, and an abstract of his journal was published in English by B.G. Corney in 1908, little importance was given to it by the general public.

This paper arose in part from my own interest in the persistent popularity of the phenomenon of cannibalism as an explanation in Archaeology (e.g. see Bahn 1990; 1991; 1992), and In part from Steven Fischer's report in the invaluable Rapa Nui Journal (1992) of an alleged visit to Easter Island by a French vessel in 1845. In what must be one of the most ridiculous yarns ever spun about the island, it was claimed that the crew was attacked by cannibals, and "Mr Ollivier ... had, on various parts of his body, the teeth marks of those cruel islanders, who had begun to eat him alive."

This led me to wonder what, if any, hard evidence lies behind the claim, found throughout the literature on Easter Island, that its occupants were cannibals at some point in their history.

Rapanui is the world's most remote continuously inhabited place and this isolation enclosed its remarkable prehistory and shaped its tragic chronicle of relations with the outside world. In 1862, Rapanui began its incorporation into a world system of labor and trade, culminating in the alteration of the local order with the assassination of king Riro in 1899. For over half a century, the island was cut off socially from the rest of the world, until 1965 when a modern Rapanui hero pushed it back into the position it occupies today. King Riro and Alfonso Rapu are compared for their sources of leadership and the effects they had, the consequences for local knowledge of colonial space and time are explored.

The hypothesis that Rapanui's founding father Hotu Matu'a might be a recent borrowing of Mangareva's founding father 'Atu Motua is tantamount to heresy in Rapanui studies. However, the possibility of a recent borrowing of the name Hotu Matu'a seems to be implicit in the single-settlement model for Rapanui. This is the model which many, but certainly not all scholars of Rapanui prehistory currently endorse. It holds that Rapanui was settled in the first few centuries A.D. by one voyaging canoe of East Polynesians probably hailing from the Marquesas; allegedly, this was the only human arrival at the island until Roggeveen's on Easter Day 1722 (Kirch 1984:266-8; Bahn and Flenley 1992:81; Fischer 1992: 181-90). This settlement model will not permit us to accept that Hotu Matu' a came to Rapanui in the first few centuries A.D. from Mangareva. which was not settled until around A.D. 1100 (Bellwood 1978). And because the two names Hotu Matu'a and 'Atu Motua are not shared by any other East Polynesian island or island group, they were evidently not known in the period of "East Polynesian regional unity" which presumably lasted from ca 400 B.C. to, at the latest, A.D. 300 (Kirch 1986:28-9; Fischer 1992: 182). The Iogic of the single- ettlement model for Rapanui, then. would semingly force us to conclude that Rapanui's Hotu Matu 'a would be a recent borrowing of Mangareva's founding father 'Atu Motua.

To speak about Rapa Nui is absolutely impossible without referring to the most spectacular feature of its culture, the gigantic stone statue or moai, as they are commonly termed now. They fascinated not only the first Europeans who saw them in 1722 and all subsequent visitors, but also absorb most attention, imagination and effort in every respect up to this day. Their spectacular size, technical achievement and artistic style and standard justify, beyond the least doubt, the attention paid to them. On the other hand, the almost exclusive devotion of means and energy to the problems of the making, lifting and transport of the big stone statues led to an overemphasis on archaeology and an understandable if lamentable propensity towards the solution of mere technicalities. This still prevailing tendency, however justified it may be or appear, hindered discoverers, adventurers, settlers and even investigators from paying the same or, at least, half as much attention to the whole range of other, just as important aspects of Rapa Nui culture.

This issue of Rapa Nui Journal presents a fourth portion of papers presented at the Third International Conference on Easter Island Research, held in Laramie, Wyoming, August 3-6,1993. The conference was sponsored by the University of Wyoming. Sixty papers were presented by researchers from 18 countries. Over 250 participants attended the conference which was in recognition of the contribution to Easter Island research made by the late William Mulloy. Wyoming anthropologist, and his colleagues of the 1955-56 Norwegian Expedition.

The conference was made possible by funding from the University of Wyoming Research Office and was strongly supported by members of the Easter Island Foundation, University of Wyoming Department of Anthropology. University of Wyoming College of Arts and Sciences, and University of Wyoming Office of Conferences and Institutes.