GODS OF EASTER ISLAND.

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18642, 21 May 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

GODS OF EASTER ISLAND.

400 HUGE STATUES : TRAGIC HISTORY OF NATIVES.

(By Trevor HE PRIMITIVE GODS of Easter Island in the South | H Pacific are one of the riddles of history. Carved ; S out of soft tufa rock, the largest stand thirty-five feet high and weigh forty tons. The number j still to be seen on the island equals the present population, I about four hundred; of these a hundred and sixteen gaze scornfully from one slope of Hano Raraku, the mountain : from which they were quarried; a hundred and fifty are i on burial platforms of basalt, and these have grotesque hats of red stone. Their origin is a legend of neolithio < antiquity. i From the summit of a dead volcano, says Mr Robert J. Casey in “ Easter Island,” these gigantic gods leer across 1 a landscape as desolate and forbidding as the craters of the moon. Their long ears seem attuned to the moan of the distant breakers. Their scornful faces, made animate i by (he sun, mock the wreckage of all that man has done, I while they survey the epic futility of his glamorous past and his hopeless future. . . . They watched the building of a vast society and saw the rise of a strange culture. ( They listened to the chants of the soothsayers and the ( chieftains who walked with the high gods... . . They were able to sneer and they never found need for any other expression. ] How They Were Carved. How were they carved? The top soil was removed, and the exposed tufa rock levelled off; then the sculptors blocked out a figure lying on its back, usually with its , feet towards the base of the hill. Finally, stone wedges were placed beneath the image to hold it firm while the base or keel, was cut away—and it was launched down , the hillside, probably on mud slides. Some were taken ten j miles from the place where they were quarried. How were they hoisted into position? By means of ■ °rass ropes and a A'ast concentration of human muscle. An entire community, Mr Casey suggests, must have listened to the crack of the whip. Thousands of lean brown shoulders stood poised for the word of command . . . thousands of bodies thrust forward as a unit when the word was given . . . thousands of legs moved in unison thousands of human wills submitted themselves to a ■directing intelligence. Both the carving and transportation, he thinks, began and ended in one generation, and one great chief, Horn Matua, was the model for all the images. This chief, landing upon the island, imposed upon its savage people his idea of culture. The tradition he began lasted until, centuries later, the Peruvian raiders came. Fifty Years’ Work. The master-work of the image-makers, a statue fifty feet long and probably sixty tons in weight, may still bo seen in its niche ready for launching, but bound to‘ its rocky bed. Ten skilled chisel-men, Mr Casey estimates, must have been able to rough out a thirty-ton monolith in fifteen days and finish it in another fifteen. The original five hundred could have been carved In fifty years at the rate of ten a year. , Not many years ago it was decided to obtain one or these images for a museum in Chile, which now controls the island. The entire male population, just under two hundred, marched to Rano Raraku, dug up one fifteen fee! high, and with the aid of ropes and rollers loaded it on to a bullock dray which took it nine miles to the landing stage. While being removed from the cart it was dropped and lost the tip of its nose. The ship was due to sail in thirty-six hours. A native lad “borrowed a cold chisel from the ranch house at Mataveri, worked all night, aiuK in fifteen hours had carved a new Image out of the old one. The result stands to-day in a Valparaiso collection, similar in every detail to the works which strew the slopes of Rano Raraku.” A Lost Island. Many theories have been advanced to account for this eruption of primitive culture on Easter: one is that the island is the sole remaining peak of a vast continent now lost under the sea, another that it is the only surviving island of a great archipelago. But one Is still faced by this problem: The collapse of a culture whose beginnings were so brave, whose day was so brief and whose end was so sudden. It is a little like the enigma of Angkor. ... It wasn't the departure of the Khmers from Angkor that wiped them from the face of the earth ... It was the departure of something from the Khmers themselves. And here in the thrones of desolation one reads a parallel case. Roggeween, the Dutch admiral, Cook, and La Perouse visited the island and brought back strange tidings of Its primitive people and grotesque statues; but Us known history virtually dates from the past century. Raid by Poruvlan Slave-traders. In 1862 Peruvian slave-traders raided it and carried r off half the population to die in the South American guano L fields. They landed with gifts which they strewed about »■

Allen.) the shore to tempt the natives from the hills, in whmn they had taken refuge. First one or two of the mor. venturesome came down - and helped themselves - o trinkets; others followed, and eventually came most of tne three thousand men and women: —"More trinkets \xeie tossed to them and they threw away their war clubs and spears in a mad scramble for the spoils. The raiders c oser in on them. The Peruvians attacked simultaneously from several points along the shore and so were able to knoc ■. down and tie scores of the islanders before a general alarm could be given. When the people at last were aware of the trick and fled back to the hills, a thousand of them lay trussed up on the rocks.” Among these, declares Mr Casey, were scores of tne royal line and the last of the ariki—the great chiefs and it was this fact that put an end to the original culture and tradition. The Tyrant. Five years later Dutrou Bornier, a soldier of fortune, and Crimean veteran, obtained three-fourths of the land m exchange for red calico and other goods, established a sheep ranch, built himself a house, and took a native wife. By that time the population had dwindled to a Despite this, he announced his intention to send three hundred of them to work on the sugar plantations of Tahiti. This brought him into conflict with missionaries from Chile, who had contrived to establish themselves In the face of persecution from the natives. So he “set up two ship's cannon on hills overlooking Hanga Roa and sent occasional shots into the village to Indicate his command of the island. He established at Mataveri a church of his own for the express purpose of undoing all that the pries.,s had done. There with mock ceremonial he unmarried couples who had found the sacramental contract of the missionaries tiresome. He released you'ng native nuns from their vows, took away their veils, and added them to his harem. And finally he achieved what he had set out to achieve when he put three hundred men and women forcibly aboard a schooner and dispatched them to Tahiti. By 1871 only 175 people were left on the island. Shortly after that Bornier was murdered. The interests in time passed to a Tahiti family who, In 1888, sold out to tne Chilean Government. The Missionary and the Coffin. The missionaries certainly had a hostile reception when first they landed. Their clothes and food were stolen uj the natives; they were forced to work and subjected to extreme cruelties. When one priest embarked for Easter his brotherhood presented him with a coffin, the rat'} 6 remarking: "This is one of the few things we might give you which is certain to be useful on Easter Island. "This is just.what I shall need to remind me of my purpose in going there," the priest, undaunted, replied. “I shall keep it always with me.” . He had not been at Easter long before he decided to get himself smuggled aboard a ship, concealed in that very coffin—after he had successfully dodged five rocks, a hatchet, a knife, and three bullets. When the gunboat was well under way Father Rivero stuck his head out of his coffin and asked for a glass of water. . "Do you wish to alight?” Inquired the solicitous commandant. “Ah, no," replied the ex-missionary. “ I wish to lie here and meditate on the fact that 1 can get out of tills tiling whenever I want to." A Mongrel Race. To-day Easter secs a ship about once a year; its only Industry is Ihe sheep ranch, and that Is an object of hostility as well as systematic pilfering. When Mr Casey landed there the small population gazed, wide-eyed and silent, at the new-comers without much friendliness, lor it believes that visitors have never brought any good lo the island. Many of the men are handsome, some of their women - typical belles of the romantic South Seas. But they arc a mongrel race; only their brown eyes and skins and black hair classify them as Polynesian. “ Their features bear the national characteristics of the crew of every ship that ever was wrecked on the island. A long history of tragedy is stamped on their sullen faces.” As for their Illustrious and mysterious ancestry, all of the virtues of the image-makers and their empire-building kings may have vanished save their tenacity. Beaten down, scourged, all but stamped out, the race still carries on, surviving not only its own heritage- of evil but its acquired blessing of civilisation. There is something pathetic about it, and something admirable. Mr Casey not only describes this strange Island of the Pacific and its sardonic images graphically and vividly; he evokes the life and times of the image-makers themselves in brief episodic dramas founded on legend and conjecture. He takes liis reader in spirit across far seas and down far vistas of time. His book is the next best tiling to an ■ actual visit.