People of Easter Island

The island’s population represents the easternmost settlement of a basically Polynesian subgroup that probably derived from the Marquesas group. The original Rapa Nui vocabulary has been lost except for some mixed Polynesian and non-Polynesian words recorded before the Tahitian dialect was introduced to the decimated population by missionaries in 1864. Today Spanish is generally spoken. In their traditions, the islanders consistently divide themselves into descendants of two distinct ethnic groups, the “Long-Ears” and the “Short-Ears” (see below). Intermarriage is common, and an influx of foreign blood has become increasingly dominant in recent years.

Economy

Whereas the aboriginal economy was based on the cultivation of sweet potato, chicken raising, and coastal fishing, the island has shifted to a cash economy based on tourism. The opening of an airport at Mataveri near Hanga Roa has permitted an increasing influx of tourists since the 1960s, and a few small hotels have been built in the village area, where many islanders and settlers from continental Chile also have accommodations in their homes. The ties to continental Chile are strengthened through twice-weekly flights from Santiago and the building of schools, hospitals, and a large community hall for sports and performances. A well-organized Chilean national park system provides guided tours and security for the unique archaeological monuments. Reforestation projects have been successfully initiated, including eucalyptus plantations at Vaitea and coconut groves in Anakena Bay.

History

The first European to land on Easter Island was the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen, who paid it a single day’s visit in 1722. He and his crew found a population that they described as being of mixed physical types who worshiped huge standing statues with fires while they prostrated themselves to the rising sun. Some of them, said to be “white men,” had their earlobes slit and hanging to their shoulders, a distinctly non-Polynesian custom.

An expedition dispatched by the Spanish viceroy of Peru rediscovered the island in 1770. The Spanish spent four days ashore and were the first to report that the aborigines had their own local form of script. They estimated a population of some 3,000 persons.

A civil war seems to have raged on the island before the arrival of the British navigator Captain James Cook in 1774; a decimated, poverty-stricken Polynesian population of only about 600 or 700 men and fewer than 30 women was found by the Englishmen, who also observed that the large statues were no longer venerated, most of them having been deliberately overthrown. In 1786 the French navigator Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, arrived and found some 2,000 people on the island; he tried in vain to introduce domestic animals. A number of sailing vessels, including whalers, visited the island from 1792 onward. By 1860 the population was about 3,000, but a major slave raid launched from Peru in 1862, followed by smallpox epidemics, reduced the population to 111 in 1877. At the end of the 19th century it began to increase once more. In 1864 Brother Eugène Eyraud, a French Catholic missionary, became the first foreigner to settle on the island; as a result, the population became converted to Christianity by 1868. Settlers from Tahiti began to raise sheep in 1870.

In 1888 the island was annexed by Chile, which leased nearly all its territory for sheep raising; in 1954 the Chilean navy administration took over the sheep range. In 1965 a civilian governor was appointed by the Chilean government, and the islanders became full Chilean citizens. Within a single generation the Easter Islanders successfully responded to a complete acculturation to continental standards without losing their pride in their own ancestors and their skills and customs. Annually in February old and young of both sexes meet in contests to revive the arts and practices of the island’s past, including carving, tattooing, reed-boat building, and traditional singing and dancing. In 2018 the Rapa Nui Marine Protected Area, encompassing 286,000 square miles (740,000 square km) of Pacific Ocean surrounding Easter Island, was established.