States of Oceania - Easter Island / Rapa Nui

Situated in the eastern half of the Pacific Ocean and forming the farthest south-eastern corner of Oceania, Easter Island has a history which reaches back a millennium or so (the precise date is disputed). Known also by its native Polynesian name of Rapa Nui, the nearest land to it is the small and uninhabited islet of Salas and Gómez, located four hundred and fifteen kilometres to the east.

The closest inhabited land is 2,080km to the north-west, in the form of the Pitcairn Islands. Both Rapa Nui and Salas and Gómez are part of one of the two underwater volcanic chains which are built on the Nazca Plate, known as Dorsal de Salas and Gómez.

Polynesian descendants of the Samoans managed to reach the then-wooded Easter Island between AD 600-1200, perhaps via the Pitcairn Islands. There, during the Neolithic Oceania period, they became known as the Rapanui, with their language bearing the same name. A few tens arrived at first, according to legend, landing at Anakena in the north of the island.

They brought with them animals, of which only chickens and tiny Polynesian rats survived. The human population grew rapidly to about three thousand before it stabilised until the arrival of Europeans.

Legend says that the leader of the first arrivals was Hotu Matu'a, a young chief from the island of Hiva in the Marquesas Islands range. He left to escape fighting at home (a disputed assertion), accompanied by his tattooist and priest, Haw Maka, and other followers who represented seven different racial groups. They arrived on Easter Island, where the groups became the seven original tribes. They built the moai, the famous religious statues, between AD 700 and 1600.

According to archaeologists, the people of Easter Island ran out of resources, including trees, around AD 1600. They stopped building their moai, threw down the statues, began a bird-man cult, and started fighting amongst themselves over the remaining resources. This established version of events has more recently been disputed by a segment of scholars who prefer a less dramatic social decline.

By the time the first Europeans arrived, the island's population had been reduced from a high of twenty thousand to only a fraction of that. Europeans also introduced disease and slave-trading which further reduced the population.

Chile annexed Easter Island on 9 September 1888, depriving the native inhabitants of their rights. The native Rapanui rebelled in 1964, managing to obtain Chilean citizenship and winning the right to elect their own mayor. By 2012 the population of Easter Island had doubled during the preceding twenty years, to five thousand, of which fewer than half were Rapanui while most of the rest were Chilean migrants.

It is only from the beginning of this colonial period onwards that the name Rapa Nui has been used, with the island previously remaining unnamed. This is unusual for migrating Polynesians who normally carried island names with them as part of their migration.

The highly tabooed paramount chief or king of Easter Island used the title 'ariki henua. The position was a hereditary one for the Miru clan. Under a custom - one which is similar to a Tahitian custom - the first-born son of the 'ariki henua automatically succeeded at birth, while his father continued to hold power as regent until the marriage of the son. Information on rulers is very imprecise and unreliable. There are six or seven lists of 'ariki henua which name between twenty and fifty-seven rulers.

The list on the Rulers.org website is largely also used here, with additions. That employs what it considers to be the most reliable list whilst pointing out the fact that the list of fifty-seven 'ariki henua is gaining in respectability thanks to carbon-dated research on how early the island was settled. All rulers prior to the arrival of Europeans are considered legendary, so those are backed here in pink.

According to a new and somewhat controversial theory by Jerry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University Long Beach, Polynesians only arrived on the island around AD 1200, four centuries later than generally thought. As can be expected, this theory will require a good deal more examination and fine-tuning before it can expect to be accepted by the majority of experts.

Far East Kingdoms

Oceania

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