Rapa Nui Journal Volume 24 Issue 2
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10524/64090
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Item Easter Island Foundation News(2010-10-01)Item What's New Elsewhere(2010-10-01)Item What's New in Hanga Roa(2020-10-01)Item What's New in the Pacific(2010-10-01)Item Publications(2010-10-01)Item Moai Sightings(2010-10-01)Item COMMENT: New Claims for the Moai Roads(2010-10-01) Shepardson, Britton L.Item Easter Island on the Air: British TV and Radio(2010-10-01) Bahn, Paul G.Item Item Getting to Know You: Sidesel Millestrom(2010-10-01)Item A Look Back(2010-10-01)Item The German-Chilean Expedition to Easter Island (1957-58) Part Two(2010-10-01) Fischer, Steven RogerItem Voluntary Trip or Deportation? The Case of King Riroroko and Policies of Deportation on Easter Island (1897-1916)(2010-10-01) Foerster, RolfNUMEROUS REFERENCES TO THE 1897-8 VOYAGE of Rapa Nui king Simeon Riroroko and his three “ministers” to the Chilean mainland, suggest that theirs was a voluntary trip, with its purpose a visit to the President of the Republic. They were to inform him about the pitiful situation of his countrymen, the pillaging of their lands and animals, and the exploitation and mistreatment received from Enrique Merlet and Co.1 A second point of agreement among scholars is that the king was poisoned by one of Merlet’s clerks only days after his arrival in Valparaíso. I suggest a different reading of the first topic, on the basis of documentation found in the Ministry of the Navy of the National Archive in Santiago, Chile. According to my investigation, this was not a voluntary trip but a deportation to the mainland of those considered as “disturbers of the public order,” and whose visible leaders were the king and his closest allies (his “ministers,” “counselors,” or “princes”). This deed can be compared with the deportation of King Beri Beri (around 1900) and to the six deportations of 1902 and the one of 1914, plus the failed deportation of Bautista Cousin’s assassins2 in 1916. Banishments were not common during the period3, and their motivation, in far away Easter Island, indicates a desire to terminate Rapanui “royalty” because of their sovereign acts of opposition that were contradictory to the requirements of cattle exploitation by the company of Enrique Merlet, and the establishment of the authority of the Chilean state in Easter Island (which supposed, among other things, the legitimacy of the company’s exploitation and rights).Item Fiji Revisited: A Field Report of the Rock Art Survey Project, 2009(2010-10-01) Millerstrom, Sidesel; Cruz Berrocal, MaríaItem Ancient Rapanui Water Management: German Archaeological Investigations in Ava Ranga Uka A Toroke Hau, 2008-2010(2010-10-01) Vogt, Burkhard; Moser, JohannesItem Evaluating Rapa Nui Prehistoric Terrestrial Resource Degradation(2010-10-01) Stevenson, Christopher M.; Haoa, Sonia; Ladenfoged, Thegn N.; Mulrooney, Mara A.; Vitousek, Peter M.; Chadwick, Oliver A.Item Sourcing Obsidian and Pitchstone from the Wakanui Site, Canterbury, New Zealand(2010-10-01) Mosley, Bridget; McCoy, Mark D.IN NEW ZEALAND, THE UTILITY AND AVAILABILITY of obsidian is evidenced by its common presence in archaeological assemblages. Obsidian’s physical properties facilitated the easy production of flakes with extremely sharp edges, and made it an important raw material for the first colonizers of Aotearoa. The presence of obsidian in stone assemblages from the earliest known archaeological sites indicates that sources were rapidly located and utilized. Place names often acknowledge the presence of obsidian sources by the incorporation of mata (obsidian, quartz, flint or chert; a sharp cutting stone) or tuhua (obsidian; specifically Mayor Island obsidian).