Chile today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

The Routledge Expedition, with good fortune and exquisite patience, discovered and elucidated the extremely interesting story of the Bird Cult of Easter Island. Dependent upon the sea-birds’ coming for an important part of their food-supply, the islanders evolved a series of rites connected with the event. The chief ceremony was concerned with the securing of the first egg, deposited on Moto Nui, one of three little rocky islets opposite the highest peak of Easter Island, Rano Kao, at the southwestern edge. At a spot called Orongo, on a slope of Rano Kao, are still to be seen fifty stone huts, where the people went in September and waited for the sea-birds’ coming. Several birds visit the rocks, but it is the egg of the Sooty Tern, known as manu-tara, that was the islanders’ objective; competition among the watchers was keen, and only members of the temporarily most powerful clan, or their friends, could take part in the contest. The competitors, men of substance, waited in special houses, but deputed servants to swim to the islet when the season was at hand; carrying food, these men lived in a big cave, whose carvings are still to be seen, until the curious scream of the birds heralded their coming. When the first egg was found, the deputy shouted the news to his employer (who shaved his head and painted it red), and swam ashore with the precious egg in a tiny basket tied to his forehead. The victor and his rejoicing party danced ceremonially, carrying the egg, all the way from the west to the eastern end of the island, where the bird-man went to a special house for a year, at Orohié, on Rano Raraku’s slope, strict tabu being maintained for five months. Each old egg was as a rule given to the incoming bird-man, and by him buried on Raraku.

Mrs. Routledge says that apparently the last year in which the dominant clan went to Orongo to await the birds was in 1866 or 1867, although the competition for the first egg survived for some twelve years afterwards.

Legends of the Easter Islanders appear to point to their racial origin upon other Pacific islands, and migration in at least two separate periods, a tradition which is confirmed by the divergence of types found, and the number of shades, from dark brown to nearly white, of the skin of the different people. Stories of the wars between the “Long Ears” and the “Short Ears” suggest that the image-makers, always depicting elongated ear-lobes, differed in tribal attributes from their opponents. None of the native settlements upon Easter Island appear to be of very old establishment.

Wooden Carvings

A curious and beautiful series of small objects is typical of the peculiar culture of Easter Island. The natives had, of course, no metal, and it must have been with stone or hardwood tools that quantities of small wooden figures made in former days in Easter Island were carved. It is not known with certainty whether the territory formerly included a larger number of trees, offering timber for this work and for the larger canoes of which tradition speaks, or whether use was made of driftwood. Today there are no trees of the quality shown by the figures.

The most striking of the old wooden objects represent human figures—rarely, those of women, and most commonly, of singularly emaciated men. Specimens of the latter are beautifully finished, and the head shows “long ears” and faces with “imperials” or little beards, and marked aquiline features, quite distinct in type from these of the conventional stone faces. These statuettes are from 29 to 30 inches in height, the carving bearing a technical resemblance to the “lizards,” another highly-finished series. Crescent-shaped breast ornaments, formerly worn by women, have almost entirely disappeared, although a few specimens survive, one, in the British Museum, bearing inscriptions. The dancing-clubs or paddles belong to another series of high artistic merit, but the most interesting of the wooden carvings from an ethnological point of view are the tablets engraved with signs whose meaning was lost when, sixty years ago, the last of the ariki (learned men) died, a slave in the guano fields of Peru.

Tradition upon the island states that the wooden figures were originally made by a great ariki, named Tuukoihu, one of the first immigrants to Easter Island from the western islands; but the art of wood carving still survives feebly, chiefly in the manufacture of objects for sale, as antiques, to unsuspecting visitors.

The natives today wear clothes, a habit which has probably tended to render them more liable to disease; they number about 250. Retaining their two-hundred-year-old reputation of being courageous and persistent thieves, they have however lost many of their ancient arts and are not addicted to regular work. But they are of a physically fine type, appear to possess a gift of wit, and, unless when instigated to anger by their equivalent for medicine men or women, are an amiable people. They formerly tattooed the body in definite conventional patterns; their religious cult was chiefly connected with respect to ancestral dead, and ideas of spirits, kindly or the reverse. A certain clan, the Miru, assumed possession of supernatural powers, and specially gifted men and women were given the usual homage of the medicine man. But religious ceremonies, as apart from the burial rites, initiation into the bird cult, and, later, ritual connected with the visits of European ships, do not appear to have existed.

Of weapons, quantities are found; black obsidian flakes, roughly chipped at edges, with a short stem bound to wooden handle, are typical.

Exterior communication with Easter Island depends upon the Chilean Government, sending an Admiralty vessel yearly, and upon the visits of a sailing ship sent to bring away the wool clip, product of the flock of the 12,000 sheep, by the commercial company of Valparaiso leasing the main part of the territory.