Oceania - The Center, Apex and Base of the Polynesian Triangle

Havai'i, fanaura's fenua.
Havai'i, the birthplace of lands.
- Tahitian Chant

THE CENTER OF THE TRIANGLE

The main body of the Polynesian Expeditionary Force, following on the trail of the Manahune vanguard, moved into the leeward islands of a volcanic group that lay on their eastward course. Fate, fortune, and the urge of their own stout hearts had enabled them to penetrate into the center of the widely spaced oceanic islands that, centuries later, were to be termed Polynesia (the many islands) and so give the name Polynesians to the descendants of the original discoverers and settlers.

The settlement of this group of islands in central Polynesia took place about the fifth century A.D. Over a thousand years later, the credit for their discovery was given to a British explorer named Wallace. The permanent geographical name was given by another British explorer, James Cook, who named the whole group the Society Islands after the Royal Society of London, under whose auspices he had made observations on the transit of Venus, with Tahiti as his base. These explorers of another race who came into the Pacific less than two centuries ago have been honoured rightly, but the original discoverers of over a thousand years before have forgotten through lack of written records. Perhaps their descendants conferred upon them the highest possible honours by promoting hem to the rank of gods. The Society Islands are divided into a leeward and a windward group. The islands of the leeward group were named by their first discoverers, but as time rolled on, new names were given. The old classical names were used in legend and song, but the later names were used in current speech and so were adopted by the European map-makers. The ancient names of the principal islands of the leeward group are given here with their modern equivalents in parentheses: Vavau (Porapora; European version, Borabora), Uporu (Taha'a), Havai'i (Ra'iatea, and Huahine. Of the windward group, Tahiti, the principal island, lies a little over a hundred miles from Ra'iatea. Mo'orea, formerly known as Eimeo, is seven miles from Tahiti, and a number of smaller islands complete the group.

Tahiti, because of its large size and great fertility, came to support the largest population in the Society Islands, and, in later times, the political power passed from its original center in Havai'i to Tahiti. Still later, it became the seat of the government for French Oceania, which includes not only the Society Islands, but also the Marquesas, Tuamotu, Austral, and Gambier islands. It will be more convenient to allude to the myths and legends of the group as Tahitian than to use the longer term Society Islands. The headquarters of the Polynesian main body was established in the largest island of the leeward group, named Havai'i after an ancient homeland. From this center various groups later dispersed to people other islands, taking with them a common basic language, the same foodstuffs and animals, a common religion, and a common cultural background of myth and tradition. Therefore all Polynesian cultures, wherever found in the wide spaces of the Polynesian triangle have common elements that can be traced back to a common period of reorganization in central Polynesia.

One basic language prevails throughout Polynesia. The vowels are consistently the same - a, e, i, o, and u, pronounced as in French or German - and the consonants are always followed by a vowel. Dialects have developed in various island groups by changes in consonant sounds. R and v are used in central and eastern Polynesia where l and v are used in western Polynesia. In some dialects certain consonants are not fully sounded but are represented or should be represented by an inverted comma over its place in the word. In the Society Islands, k and ng were dropped; so the name for the ancestral homeland, pronounced Havaiki in other dialects of central Polynesia, is here pronounced Havai'i. In New Zealand, where w is used instead of v, the ancient home is Hawaiki. In the Cook Islands, where h is dropped, it is 'Avaiki. In the Hawaiian islands, where w is used and k is dropped, the largest island of the group is named Hawai'i. In Samoa, where s replaces h, v is preferred to w, and k is dropped, the largest island is called Savai'i. The food plants, the domestic animals, the raw materials and tools upon which Polynesian material culture is built, were probably first developed and tested in the leeward Society Islands and carried from there by explorers and settlers to other parts of Polynesia. We may imagine the wonder and the joy of those first voyagers from Micronesia upon beholding the lofty hills, the wide valleys, the running streams, and fertile soil of a large volcanic island after they and their ancestors had for centuries scraped a meager existence from the unfriendly sands of coral atolls. Their whole physical background was miraculously changed. We may picture dimly the interest of the older people as they explored the profusion of plants, recognizing familiar ones, naming new species, and testing the useful value of woods, barks, and leaves. Here was an abundance of wood for building houses and canoes, and barks to furnish fiber for textiles and cordage. Most useful of all was the basaltic rock, which is absent in coral atolls. Food in the atolls had been cooked in earth ovens in which the heating agent had been pieces of coral rock and tridacna shells that crumbled away after each cooking. The volcanic islands provided basaltic stones which could be used over and over again and so formed a permanent medium for cooking. Basalt provided material for adzes and chisels that were vastly superior to those previously made from shell. Countless possibilities opened out in the arts and crafts, and progress in the development of new and improved techniques was rapid.

In the fertile soil of the rich valleys, food plants were cultivated to support an increasing population. All the food plants cultivated in Polynesia (except the sweet potato), and the domesticated animals were brought to central Polynesia at an early period from Samoa. The manner of their spread will be discussed later. The increase of food supplies in a volcanic group materially assisted the great cultural development that took place. An exuberant new life opened up in central Polynesia, and new adjustments and progress took place, not only in the arts and crafts but in social and religious matters. The senor families and the most intelligent priests seem to have settled down in the Opoa district of Havai'i, which became the cultural center of the group. A school of learning was established, and, in the course of time, the school systematized the scattered fragments of myth and history that had been remembered by various voyagers from Micronesia. That systematization took place locally is borne out by the fact that the myths and legends were applied to the local area. The pattern established was ultimately carried by later voyagers in varying degrees of completeness to the remote angles of the Polynesian triangle. Tahitian mythology or theology, however, continued to evolve, and the myths, as recorded for Tahiti by Teuira Henry from the manuscripts of the Reverend Orsmond, include changes made after the long-distance mariners had left the near homeland of Havai'i.

Ta'aroa, the Creator, was self-begotten, for he had no father and no mother. He sat in a shell named Rumia, shaped like an egg, for countless ages in endless space in which there was no sky, land, sea, moon, nor stars. This was the period of continuous, countless darkness (po tinitini) and thick impenetrable darkness (po ta'ota'o). At long last Ta'aroa cracked the shell to hatch himself. He stood on the shell and called in various directions, but no sound answered from the void. He retired within Rumia into an inner shell termed Tumu-iti (Lesser-foundation), where he lay torpid for a further untold period. At last, he determined to act. He emerged and made the inner shell of Rumia into a foundation for the rock and soil of the world, and the outer shell he made into the dome of the sky which was low and confined. He breathed into the rock foundation the essence of himself and personified it as Tumu-nui to be the husband; likewise he personified the rock stratum as Paparaharaha to be the wife. Both, however, refused to obey the command of Ta'aroa to approach each other, for each had a fixed appointed place in the earth structure from which they would not move. Then Ta'aroa created rocks, sand, and earth. He conjured up Tu, the great craftsman, to help him in the task of creation, and together they formed the myriad roots. The dome of Rumia was raised on pillars, and thus space beneath was extended. The space was termed atea and pervaded with a spirit personified as Atea. Land and space were increased and the underworld was set apart. Forest trees and food plants grew, and living things appeared on the land and in the sea. At the back were the mountains, personified as Tu-mou'a, with land, springs, and rivers. In front was the ocean and its rocks ruled by the ocean lord, Tino-rua. Above was Atea (Space) and below as Rua (Abyss). The land was Havai'i, the birthplace of other lands, gods, kings, and man.

Darkness brooded under the confined dome at Rumia. The gods Tu, Atea, Uru, and others were created or conjured forth by Ta'aroa in darkness. Later the stars and the winds were born. From Ta'aroa and Atea, who figures in the early part of this mythological period as a female, the god Tane was born as a viable mass without form. Skilled artisans were called to shape Tane. They came in pairs, carrying their kits of stone tools slung over their shoulders, but at the sight of the majesty of Atea, they retired in fear. Then Atea herself assumed the task of shaping Tane, and successively formed all the anatomical details associated with the human body, including the boring of the external ear passages with a fine spiral shell. After these many plastic operations, duly enumerated in myth, Tane assumed perfect form and became the god of beauty (te atua o te purotu). Ta'aroa exalted Tane in power, and he became the god of craftsmen. Another of the major gods, Ro'o, was born of a cloud and became the colleague and messenger of Tane. At a later period, Atea changed sex with Fa'ahotu to become a male, the sex attributed to Atea in the myths of other islands.

The Tahitian myth of the creation of man is lacking in detail. Ta'aroa with the aid of Tu, the great artisan, created Ti'i, the first human being. The word rahu (to create) is used, but as one of the names of Ti'i is given as Ti'i-ahu-one (Ti'i-mounded-from-earth) it is apparent that he was formed from earth. He married the goddess Hina, daughter of Te Fatu (Lord, Core) and Fa'ahotu (To-begin-to-form). The children of Ti'i and Hina intermarried in the period of darkness with the gods of that era. The children whom they conceived were the ancestors of the high chiefs entitled to wear the red feather girdles denoting the highest rank, but the children whom they simply conjured up became the progenitors of the common people. In another version, Ti'i created a woman from earth at Atiauru, took her to wife, and committed incest with his daughter to beget the first man. Another story states that Ta'aroa married Hine-ah-one (Earth-formed-maid) and produced Ti'i as the first man. The three versions are mentioned because we will meet them later.

In this period of confined darkness was born the famous Maui family of demigods. Ru had daughter, Ruahea, who married Hihi-ra (Sun-ray) and gave birth to five sons, all named Maui with a qualifying term, and a daughter, Hina. The last Maui was born prematurely and was cast into the sea. The gods took pity on him and married him to maturity in a coral cave beneath the ocean. He developed eight heads and hence was called Maui-with-eight-heads (Maui-upo'o-varu). When he grew up he performed miracles, but in the Tahitian version he is not associated with the fishing-up of the islands, as he was in other groups. Many artisans were employed to raise the sky and let light into the world, but all retired with their kits of stone tools when they came before the dread face of Atea, the God of the great Maui, made the first attempt to prop up the sky. He managed to raise it onto the mountain peaks where it rested on the leaves of the arrowroot, which consequently became flattened. but his physical efforts made him hump-backed and so he desisted. The task was then attempted by Tino-rua, Lord of the Ocean, but he also failed. Maui, under the name of Maui-ti'iti'i, studied the problem and decided that the way to succeed was to remove the pillars on which Rumia rested, to detach the tentacles of the Great Octopus which were holding the sky, and to relax the grip of Atea who held the earth. After trying in vain, Maui sought aid of Tane in the tenth heaven. By means of shell cutting and boring instruments and great logs for levers and props, Tane detached Atea and pushed him up on high. Thus light came into the world, and the long night of Russia was ended. Tane then employed Ra'i-tupua, who dwelt in the Milky Way, to restore order to the upper spheres of heaven which had been dislocated by the raising of Atea to his present position high above the world. The sun, moon, and stars were set in their appointed places, and peace and order reigned above. In the lower world, temples and houses were built, and man adjusted himself to an environment which provided food on land and sea.

The land that had been established had been termed Havai'i, and the Tahitian bards seem to have taken for granted that this Hawai'i was the island now known as Ra'iatea. The ocean to the west of Havai'i was termed the Sea-of-rank-odor, and the ocean to the east was the Sea-of-the-moon. The births of new lands, conjured up as was Havai'i, are described by the ancient poets as follows:

Let more land grow from Havai'i,
From Havai'i, the birthplace of lands.
The quickened spirit of the dawn rides
Upon the flying scud beyond restraining bounds.
Bear thou on! Whence beats the drum?
It beats beyond in the western sea,
Where the sea boils and casts up Vavau;
Vavau, the first-born of the family,
With the fleet that strikes both ways.

Thus Vavau (Porapora), to the drumming of the surf, emerged from the depths. Again, to the beating of the ocean drum, the smaller islands of Tupai, Maurua (Maupiti), Mapiha'a (Lord Howe Island), Putai (Scilly Island), and Papaiti (Bellingshausen) emerged in quick succession from the deep. The bard then faced east and sang:

Bear thou on! Whence beats the drum?
It beats beyond in the eastern sea,
Where the drumming surf casts up Huahine,
The land that reveres its chiefs,
The land set in the Sea-of-the-moon.

The towering seas cast up Malao-iti, and then the sound of the drumming waves receded to Tuamotu, Marquesas, Hawai'i, distant lands that at present do not concern us. The family of islands forming the leeward group had been born around the motherland of Havai'i. According to mythology, the windward group was created after the religious center of Opoa had developed in Havai'i (Ra'iatea) and 'Uporu (Taha'a) was filled by land. For an impending ceremony, sacred restrictions were imposed at Opoa. No cock must crow, no dog bark, and neither pig nor man must walk abroad. The wind ceased to blow, and the sea became still. In the midst of this dread silence, a beautiful girl named Tere-he stole secretly away to bathe in a river that ran near her home. The gods punished the infringement of taboo by causing her to drown. A giant eel swallowed her whole and became possessed by her spirit. The eel became enraged and tore up the foundation of the land between Havai'i and 'Uporu. The loosened land floated away on the surface of the sea like a huge fish. The head of the fish had been at Opoa and the tail extended to 'Uporu. As it floated out toward the horizon, the gods did not interrupt their sacred ritual at Opoa, but Tu, the great artisan of Ta'aroa, took charge of the fish. He stood on its head, which is now Taiarapu, and guided its course to the east and south to the horizon of a new sky. The fish was Tahiti-nui (Great Tahiti) possessed by the soul of the maid, Tere-he. The first dorsal fin of the fish stood up and formed the highest mountain of Orohena. The second dorsal fin detached itself and fell over the steering paddle to follow in the wake as Tahiti-iti (Little Tahiti). It became the island of 'Ai-meo, now called Mo'orfea. The great fish dropped off other fragments which became the small islands of Meti'a and Te Tiaroa. The little fish also dropped a fragment which became Mai'ao-iti. Thus Great Tahiti and the smaller islands of the windward group were established from the land fish which floated away from Havai'i, the mother of lands. Tu, having finished his task as pilot, returned to the religious convention that was being held by the gods at Opoa.

Study the map below, and you will see how accurately myths have been based on geographical position. The emergence of Tahiti from the gap between Ra'iatea and Taha'a does not require such credence as the western theory that the moon emerged from the Pacific Ocean. The head of the fish (Taiarapu) certainly points in the direction in which the fish was piloted, and Mo'orea lies behind in its wake. I have lived at Papeete (chief town of Tahiti), visited Taiarapu, gazed across at the rugged skyline of Mo'orea, and come in and out on ocean liners, but I never realized the relative positions of the individual units composing the Society Islands until I restudied the map in the light of Tahitian mythology. The myths were composed from the verbal logs of deep-sea mariners, and the picture of the relative positions is as accurate as if the bards had had a modern chart spread out before them. When the land of Tahiti floated down to the present location, there were brave warriors upon it, but, according to later traditions, there were no high chiefs of royal lineage among them. When Tu returned to Havai'i, Tahiti was left without gods, at least without the gods worshipped at Opoa. The early people of Tahiti were termed Manahune and were governed by warrior chiefs called fatu. Because the later chiefly families did not officially trace their descent through them, the term manahune came to mean plebeian. Tahiti was therefore termed Tahiti-manahune, Tahiti without royal chiefs and without gods. Both high chiefs and gods have belittled the achievements of the early people who made their creation possible.

Native legend states that the land of Tahiti had been long standing; new generations were born in the land, bananas ripened, mountain plantains matured, the crowing of cocks resounded in the woods, dogs barked on the seashore, hogs' tusks turned upward, 'ava plants developed their roots, taro plants blossomed, sugar cane leaned forward, breadfruit fermented in the pits, and songs accompanying the beating of bark cloth were heard in the land. In spite of this picture of happy contentment, the warrior leaders were uneasy regarding the stability of their fish. The fish that had swum from Hawai'i might swim elsewhere. The warrior, Tafa'i, said that the sinews of the fish must be cut to render its position permanent. A number of warriors, whose names were personifications of varying moods of the ocean, hacked the land with their stone adzes but to no avail. Tafai'i then called upon the gods of the sky, the sea, and the moon to assist, but no god responded to his prayer. Tafa'i sailed south to Pupua'i in the Austral Islands to seek aid of King Marere-nui. The king asked what gods had assisted them in their efforts. Tafa'i replied, "None! Tahiti-manahune stands there without gods." The king after reflection gave Tafa'i a stone adz which bore the name of Te-pa-huru-nui-ma-te-vai-tau, and with it the sinews of the fish Tahiti were effectively divided. Formerly a chain of mountains extended throughout the length of Tahiti, but this was severed with the magic adz, and the gap forms the present isthmus of Taravao connecting the head, Taiarapu, with the body of the fish. The throat of the fish had been cut and it became stable.

A time arrived when the gods of Opoa in Havai'i came down on the westerly winds to Tahiti, and the people fled in terror to the caves and ravines of the mountains. Like birds' peckings were the morsels of food at that time. The gods settled first on Mo'orea and then spread to Tautira in Tahiti, where their reign was tyrannous. They demanded the heads of warrior men, and the people deserted Tautira through fear of the gods. Nought remained but the birds. The people begged the gods not to destroy them, and the gods harkened to their prayers. The gods gradually spread throughout the land of Great Tahiti, and the people returned to their homes, having no more fear. Temples were erected and dedicated to them, and the people adjusted themselves to the new theology. Myths and traditions have been freely quoted to give a picture of the Tahitian method of narrating events that occurred so far back that they have become clothed with the supernatural. If this form of literary style is interpreted in the spirit and not in the letter, we may grasp the main order of human events as they occurred in the dim past.

From the mythical account of the origin of Tahiti, it is evident that the priests of Opoa imposed severe religious restrictions upon the people. The silence imposed on cocks and dogs, confinement on pigs and man, and stillness on the wind and sea are indications of a tyrannous rule. The action of the maid Tere-he may be interpreted as a rebellion by the Manahune against these restrictions. The name Tere-he may be translated as Floating away through-sin, and it aptly illustrates the Polynesian method of recording events by applying them as proper names to persons who figure in the story. Her death by drowning and the struggles of the sea eel imbued with her spirit indicate that reprisals followed and an upheaval took place. As a result of the social upheaval, a section of the warlike Manahune, who worshiped the god Tu, set out in their canoes to seek a new home. The later historians admitted the association of Tu with the Manahune by allowing Tu to pilot the fish, but they stole Tu by returning him to Opoa, thus leaving the Manahune without gods. The fish that broke away from Havai'i was not the island of Tahiti but the Manahune fleet that conveyed the first inhabitants to Tahiti. Hence the first name of Tahiti was Tahiti-Manahune, Tahiti-of-the-Manahune-people. The gods who followed after were the people influenced by the priests of Opoa. They established themselves on the nearest island of Mo'orea and afterwards on the main island of Tahiti in the district of Tautira. They demanded the heads of Manahune warriors, which statement may be accepted literally as indicating that they killed many of the Manahune and conquered them. Finally, peace was made and the vanquished accepted both the rule and the gods of their conquerors.

So the priests and scholars at Opoa pieced together broken records and scraps of myths to compose a Genesis that would apply to their new home and oceanic environment. They deified the leaders of early expeditions who, in the course of time, became major gods, such as Ta'aroa, Tu, Tane, Ro'o, and others. As gods, they took part in the creation of the sky dome, the earth foundation beneath it, and the things that grew on land and in water. Man was connected with the gods through genealogies, for, in truth, the gods had been human ancestors before they were made divine. In addition to gods and demigods, certain natural phenomena and evolutionary concepts were added to the pantheon in the personifications of Atea (Space), Papa (Earth foundation), Te Tumu (Source, Cause), and Fa'ahotu (To begin-to-form). The mediums of family gods graduated into powerful priests, who composed appropriate invocations and a richer ritual. They developed the architecture of the temple from a simple pattern of a cleared space before a stone upright into a paved or graveled courtyard before a raised stone platform. At Opoa, the great temple, or marae, of Taputa-pu-atea was erected to the new god, 'Oro, the son of Ta'aroa, and its fame spread far and wide. new temples were built in the Society Islands, but, in order to acquire religious prestige, a stone from Taputapu-atea had to be incorporated in the building. It was the leaven from which new structures derived mana (power).

For years I had cherished the wish to make a pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea. From Maori traditions, I knew that some of my ancestors had come from Ra'iatea, and I felt that much of our theology had emanated from Opoa and its chief temple. Fortunately, during a Bishop Museum expedition to the Cook Islands in 1929, I found myself on the northern atoll of Tongareva (Penrhyn), and my quickest means of getting back to my base at Rarotonga was by way of the Society Islands. Through the courtesy extended by the New Zealand Navy Department to scientists in the field, I was picked up at Tongareva by H.M.S. Veronica en route to Ra'iatea. As we steamed southeast, I could not help feeling what a vast difference the centuries had made. Here we were on a steel-clad British man-of-war, steering a course by compass, observing the sun at noon with an accurate instrument, and plotting off the position on a chart with all the islands accurately located. The number of miles per day could be absolutely controlled, and we knew the hour that we would arrive at Ra'iatea. The Manahune vanguard had sailed down this identical course centuries before in wooden vessels made with shell tools, with matting sails and man power at the paddles, no compass, no sextant, no chart, but a firm faith that they would land somewhere.

"Porapora of the muffled paddles" rose sheer from the sea before us, a magnificent sight to one who had spent even a brief month on atoll islands. Farther on, Taha'a and Ra'iatea towered into view, and beyond lay Huahine. Here before us, in the Sea-of-rank-order and the Sea-of-the-moon, lay the great islands where Polynesian history was made. We approached Ra'iatea, the ancient Havai'i, and steamed through the capacious reef channel to tie up to a buoy in the deep lagoon before the chief village of Utoroa. The Commander went ashore to pay an official call, and I landed with him. I felt that I should reverently pick up some of the sacred soil of Havai'i from the first footprint that I made on stepping ashore. But it could not be done, for we landed on a modern wharf with wooden buildings forming the background. The old world atmosphere of Havai'i, the birthplace of lands, that I had been conjuring up in my imagination, was rudely displaced by a modern French trading village. It was all wrong. My melancholy musings were interrupted by a familiar voice. Before me, with a welcoming smile, stood K. P. Emory, a member of the Bishop Museum staff who was to conduct an expedition into the Tuamotu Archipelago on a motor launch built at Tahiti. The boat had been completed and was being tried out on a trip from Tahiti to Ra'iatea. It had been given the ancient canoe name of Mahina-i-te-pua (The-crescent-wave-at-the-bow-that-bursts-into-foam-like-a-flower). Emory had been told when I would arrive at Ra'iatea and said, "I have come to give the boat a trial and take you to Taputapu-atea."

The people of Ra'iatea had gathered at Uturoa to celebrate the French fete of the fall of the Bastille. In the evening, various village groups competed in singing and acting out some historical or legendary incident. One of these plays represented the origin of the little cluster of stars known as Pipiri-ma (The-twin-stars-in-Scorpio). The story goes that a selfish fisherman and his wife ate his catch of fish and sent their two children supperless to bed. The two children, therefore, ran away and ascended a mountain. Their parents pursued them. As the children stood on the mountain peak, their parents besought them to return, but the children refused. When the parents ascended the peak, the children sprang up into the sky, where they became the stars Pipiri-ma. In the play, a rather corpulent man and his wife sat beside a burning coconut leaf that represented the cooking fire. The two children lying on the ground peeked through their fingers at their parents going through the pantomime of eating fish. Finally the parents lay down to sleep, and the two children crept quietly away toward a high pole in the show ground that represented a legendary mountain. At the foot of the mountain were two chairs fixed to ropes which ran through pulleys at the top of the pole. The parents woke up and, with exaggerated wailing, followed in pursuit. As they neared the mountain, the two children were hauled up in the chairs and suspended in the heavens. The corpulent father clasped the foot of the pole and besought the children to come back. The two children produced electric torches and took evident delight in flashing them down on the upturned face of their remorseful father. The flashes of light from the modern electric torches represented the twinkling rays of the star cluster, Pipiri-ma.

Next morning we sailed down the lagoon to deserted Opoa. The old people who might have conjured back some of the religious atmosphere were still at the fete at Uturoa. Taputapu-atea stands on a low, wide cape bounded on wither side by beautiful bays. The court of the temple was overgrown with weeds, but the altar (ahu), 141 feet long by 25 feet wide, bore witness to past grandeur. The stone platform was walled with huge slabs of coral limestone imbedded in the earth, and the enclosure was filled in with loose rock through which, formerly, skulls were scattered or piled in recesses until the people had to conceal them elsewhere from the acquisitive fingers of foreign vandals. Some of the slabs rose twelve feet above the ground, some had fallen, revealing an inner row of lower wall slabs which showed that a larger platform had been built around and above a smaller structure. Thus modern decay revealed the evidence of previous growth whereby the first temple of Feoro had become Vai'otaha and finally had risen in size and importance to become the international marae of Taputapu-atea. Near the temple was an upright stone pillar, nine feet high, termed the White-rock-of-investiture (Te Papa-tea-ia-ruea). Here the head of the4 royal line of Opoa, girdled with a red feather belt and seated on his wooden seat of honor, was raised to the top of the pillar as part of the ceremony of investiture. Close to the be4ach was another marae on which the human sacrifices brought by canoe were laid to await their turn in the temple ritual of Taputapu-atea.

We took pictures of speechless tone and inanimate rock. I had made my pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea, but the dead could not speak to me. It was sad to the verge of tears. I felt a profo9und regret, a regret for - I knew not what. Was it for the beating of the temple drums or the shouting of the populace as the king was raised on high? Was it for the human sacrifices of olden times? It was for none of these individually but for something at the back of them all, some living spirit and divine courage that existed in ancient times and of which Taputapu-atea was a mute symbol. It was something that we Polynesians have lost and cannot find, something that we yearn for and cannot recreate. The background in which that spirit was engendered has changed beyond recovery. The bleak wind of oblivion had swept over Opoa. Foreign weeds grew over the untended courtyard,* and stones had fallen from the sacred altar of Taputapu-atea. The gods had long ago departed. To keep down the rising tide of feeling, I said bruskly in the American vernacular, "Let's go."

THE APEX OF THE TRIANGLE

Go to the island of my dreams and seek for a beautiful beach upon which the king may dwell.
-Legend of Hotu-matua

King Hotu-matua dwelt in the land of Marae-renga and he dreamed of an island with a beautiful beach that lay over the eastern horizon. He sent men on a canoe named Oraora-miro to locate a beach on his dream island. He followed in their wake in his great double canoe, ninety feet long and six feet deep. One hull bore the name Oteka and the other Oua. The king was accompanied by the master craftsman, Tu-koihu, in another canoe. After many days' sail, the two vessels sighted an island that Hotu-matua knew to be the island of his dreams. As they approached the western end of the island, the two vessels separated, the king to survey the south coast and Tu-koihu the north. The king's ship sailed rapidly and paddles were piled to increase the speed. The king's ship rounded the eastern end of the island without having seen the beach for which he searched. On the north coast he saw the canoe of Tu-koihu paddling in to a beach that he recognized as the beach of his dream. It would never do for Tu-koihu to land before him, so he invoked his gods with the magic words, "Ka hakamau te konekone" (Stay the paddling). The paddles of Tukoihu's crew stayed motionless in the water, and the sea seethed as the king's paddlers raced for the shore. The double prow of the king's ship ran u on the sands of Anakena, and Hotu-matua stepped ashore onto a beautiful beach fit for a king to dwell upon. And thus Hotumatua added his name to the roll of famous navigators by discovering the eastern outpost that forms the apex of the Polynesian triangle.

Easter Island is 1,500 miles from Mangareva, 1,100 miles from Pitcairn, and 2,030 miles from South America. Its greatest length is 13 miles and its area is 67 square miles. It is a volcanic island with a dry, arid soil, no streams, and but slight rainfall. Of a number of extinct craters, Rano Aroi rises to a height of 1,600 feet. The island was first sighed by the Dutch navigator, Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday, 1722. At that time it was occupied by a people of Polynesian stock speaking a Polynesian language. Later European voyagers, including Gonzalez and Cook, stopped at Easter Island and brought with them the diseases that decimated the populations of all Pacific Islands. In 1862, Peruvians carried off large numbers of the Easter Islanders into slavery. Of a remnant of 100 sent back after representation by the British and French Governments, 85 died of smallpox at sea and the 15 who were landed spread the disease throughout the island so that thousands died. A conservative estimate of the population before European contact is from 3,000 to 4,000. Fifteen years after the first depredations of the slavers, the population had dwindled to 111, of whom but 26 were females. The census taken in 1934 gave the total population at 456.

A French adventurer named Dutroux Bornier established himself on the island in 1870 and became so obnoxious that the Catholic missionary and his flock fled to Mangareva. More would have left but the schooner was crowded to the limit. Those who were forced to remain behind finally disposed of the foreign tyrant in the only suitable manner. The exiled inhabitants returned after the death of Bornier, but one wonders how many of the one4 hundred and eleven survivors were fitted to pass on the torch of knowledge to their descendants. No native population has been subjected to such a succession of atrocities and disintegrating influences as the people of Easter Island. It is no wonder that their native culture was so wrecked that the records obtained from the survivors are the poorest in all inhabited Polynesia. Unfortunately the early missionaries to Easter Island hadn't sufficient vision or interest to teach the native scholars to write down their history, legends, and customs. The early European voyagers collected curios and wrote down what they saw and often what they did not see. Behrens, who accompanied Roggeveen, stated that the natives were so tall that the seamen could wlk upright between their legs. He also saw pottery in a land where there was no clay. Paymaster Thomson of the U.S.S. Mohican wrote of the material things he saw in 1886, but even then it was too late to gather authentic information about ancient manners and customs. Mrs. Routledge made a survey in 1914 and her information about images, quarries, and platforms is valuable. Macmillarn Brown visited later and his theory of a sunken archipelago has interested many. The Franco-Belgian Expedition visited the island in 1834 and later Dr. Alfred Metraux, a member of the expedition, worked up his field material at Bishop Museum.

From the fragments we can reconstruct but little of the native mythology. Atea and Papa, the primary parents, have not been recorded. Tangaroa came to Easter Island in the form of a seal with a human face and voice. The seal was killed but, though baked for the necessary time in an earth oven, the seal refused to cook. Hence the people inferred that Tangaroa must have been a chief of power. Tangaroa also appears in the king's lineage with Rongo as his son. This scanty information is significant as an echo from central Polynesia. Tane and Tu are absent from the pantheon but Tu-koihu is an early ancestor. He was a skilled artisan, which reminds us of the early functions of the god Tu in the Tahitian tale of creation. Hiro, the famous voyager of central Polynesia, occurs in an invocation for rain. The first line runs:

E te ua, matavai roa a Hiro e-

(O rain, long tear drops of Hiro-)

Ruanuku, a well-known god, occurs in a genealogy. Atua-metua is present in a creation chant. This name is intriguing for it resembles Atu-motua, one of the early gods of Mangareva. Though Atu (lord) and Atua (god) are different words, a change may have taken place in Easter Island. The qualifying words motua and metua are linguistic forms of the same word meaning father. Atua-metua mated with Riri-tuna-rei and produced the niu. The word niu is the widely spread name for coconut but, as there were no coconuts on Easter Island, the name was applied locally to the fruit of the miro. The word tuna in the compound name of Riri-tuna-rei means eel, and it is evident that this fragment records a memory of the well-known myth of the origin of the coconut from the head of an eel. The principal god was Makemake. The name does not occur elsewhere as the name of a powerful god, and Metraux thinks that it is a local name substitution for the important Polynesian god Tane. This theory is supported by the myth that Makemake created man on Easter Island in a way similar to that used by Tane and Tiki to form the first woman in other parts of Polynesia. Makemake procreated red flesh from a calabash of water. He mounded up some earth and from it he formed three males and one female. The process of mounding up earth is described in the local dialect as popo i te one, in which one is the general term for earth and popo is the local verb for heaping upo, which in other dialects is ahu.

The Easter Island creation chant, first recorded by Thomson in 1886 and checked over by Metraux with native informants, follows the pattern of such chants in other parts of Polynesia. Various couples are mated to produce plants, insects, birds, fish, and other objects. As in the Marquesas, Mangarevea, and the Tuamotu, Tiki, here called Tiki-te-batu (Tiki-the-lord), is mated with different wives to produce numerous offspring. Among Tiki's wives was Turua who gave birth to Ririkatea, a king and father of Hotu-matua, the first king of Easter Island. By another wife named Hina-popoia (Hina-the-heaped-up), Tiki produced a daughter, Hina-kauhara. In Hina-popoia we find a possible memory of the first woman, known elsewhere as Hina-ahu-one (Earth-formed-maid). Thus, from the wreck of local mythology, there remain a few definite indications that the mythology of Easter Island contained fundamental elements that originated in central Polynesia.

Makemake was responsible for the fertility of food plants, fowls, and the paper mulberry from which cloth was produced. When crops were planted, a skull representing Makemake was placed in the ground and an incantation was offered, commencing, "Ka to ma Haua, ma Makemake" (Plant for Haua, for Makemake). Makemake was worshipped in the form of sea-birds, which may be interpreted as his incarnation. His material symbol, a man with a bird's head, was carved on the rocks at the Orongo village. Wooden images representing him were carried at the feasts. Human sacrifices were made in his honour and the material part was consumed by the priests. These various items conform to a general Polynesian pattern, but the bird-headed man is an expression of art influenced by local developments. Of the organized forms of religious ritual we know little. Priests presided over birth festivals, drove out disease demons, and regulated funeral ceremonies for which they composed dirges. The priests were termed ivi-atua (people of the god), which has an affinity with the Mangarevan term for priestly chants. Human sacrifices were termed ika (fish), a widespread Polynesian term which probably had its origin in an early period when religious offerings consisted principally of fish. Sorcerers and priestesses who claimed to be the medium of deceased relatives who had something to communicate functioned much as in the religious systems of other Polynesian islands. The spirits of the dead were called akuaku and were represented by the carved wooden images termed moai kava-kava with protruding ribs and sunken abdomens. The spirits were stated to have introduced tattooing, turmeric dyes, and a variety of yam, which they must have brought from the land of the dead away to the westward. The Easter Islanders shared in the general Polynesian concept of a spirit land, not as a place of reward or punishment but simply as a land beyond the grave to which the undying souls of all men may return.

The traditional history is almost as poorly transmitted as the mythology. Hotu-matua took up his residence at Anakena and shortly after the landing his wife Vaikai-a-hiva gave birth to a male child. Tu-koihu cut the navel cord of the child and conducted the ritual whereby the royal halo (ata ariki) was produced around the child's head to indicate its royal birth. He was named Tu-maheke and through him descends the line of Easter Island kings. On the basis of fragments of royal genealogies, Metraux had estimated that Hotu-matua landed on the island in about 1150 A.D. As in other parts of Polynesia, tribes developed with increase in population, taking names of ancestors and living in definite districts of the island. The highest ranking chief, who also had priestly functions, belonged to the senior line descended from Hotu-matua. This tribe was named Miru and ranked above the other tribes, enjoying certain special privileges. Intertribal wars were frequent and the tale of the war between Long-ears and Short-ears may indicate that there were two early groups of settlers; one group, which pierced their ears and wore such heavy ornaments that their ears were considerably elongated, coming from the Marquesas where heavy ear ornaments were worn, and the other group which did not pierce their ears coming from Mangareva. The Long-ears lived on the eastern end of the island and were credited with making the stone images which have long ears and the stone temple structures. The Short-ears lived on the western part of the island and had the more fertile lands. The Marquesans carved large stone images and built stone retaining walls, whereas the Mangarevans did not. Conflict arose because the Short-ears refused to carry stones to assist the Long-ears in erecting a temple. In the war which followed, the Long-ears were said to be almost exterminated. This may account for what appears to have the commencement of knocking down the images from their platforms.

The fowl, which was the only domestic animal known in Easter Island, may have come from the Marquesas where it was present but not from Mangareva where it was absent. Because it was the only domestic animal, the fowl received more attention and honour than in any other part of Polynesia. Fowls became the mark of wealth, and festivals were characterized by gifts and distributions of fowls. In order to protect them from thieves, fowl houses of piled stones were erected to house them at night. Stones were piled up against the entrance and the sound of stones being moved served as an alarm to the owner. Skulls with incised carvings, imbued with power by Makemake, were placed in the fowl house to promote the egg-laying capacity of the occupants. It may seem a long call from the domestic fowl to the sooty tern, but both are birds and lay eggs. The sooty tern (manu tara) comes to breed in large numbers in July or August off the southwestern point formed by the crater of Rano-cao on three rocky islets, of which the only one accessible to swimmers is Motu-nui. What commenced as an ordinary food quest for eggs became an annual competition to obtain the first egg of the season. The warriors (matatoa) of the dominant tribe entered servants for the annual Derby, and members of defeated tribes were not allowed to take part in the competition. The selected servants swam over to Motu-nui and waited in caves for the migration of the birds. The warriors and their families assembled on the lip of Rano-kao that overlooked the course. Owing to the strong wind, they built houses of stone for shelter at the village named Orongo, the Place-of-listening. There they listened for the coming of the birds and waited for the call of the successful servant who found the first egg. While waiting they amused themselves with singing and feasting and carved on the adjacent rocks figures with birds' heads and human bodies, the symbol of Makemake, god of fowls and sea-birds. In time, rules and ritual were developed about his annual competition which became the most important social event on the island. The successful servant leaped onto a rocky promontory and shouted across the water to his master, "Shave your head. The egg is yours."

A sentry on watch in a cave below Orongo, termed the Bird-listener (Hakaoorong-manu), heard the call and relayed the message up to the waiting masters. The successful master was termed the Bird-man (Tangata-manu). On reception of the egg, the people escorted him to Mataveri, where a feast was held in his honour. After that he went into seclusion for a year in a house at Rano-raraku. The details of his functions and privileges are not known, but certain it is that he was held in high honour and provided with food by the people until the next annual Derby took place. The list of Bird-men was memorized and transmitted like a line of kings. The bird cult is not known elsewhere in Polynesia and is clearly a local development arising out of peculiar local conditions. The important of the fowl as the sole domesticated animal, the annual migration of the sooty tern to a near-by islet to breed, the village of Orongo with its carved rocks overlooking the course, and the development of the bird cult are all in a natural sequence that could have occurred nowhere else but on Easter Island.

Easter Island has little fertile soil and no forests with large trees to provide adequate raw material for houses and canoes. Consequently the framework of houses was made of slender arched poles, and houses were narrow, low, and long. In order not to waste valuable inches, the poles were not stuck in the ground but rested in holes carved out of stone blocks. These pitted curbstones, like the elaborate bird cult, are unique on Easter Island, evolved locally due to lack of timber. The canoes were poor and flimsy, but ten to twelve feet long and formed of many small bits of wood sewn together. Even the paddles were made of two pieces; a short, narrow blade with a separate handle lashed to it. The two-piece paddle is unique for Polynesia, but again the form of the canoe and paddle was a local adjustment forced upon the people by the lack of material. Successive European voyagers saw fewer and fewer canoes on Easter Island, not because of degradation in the population, but because of constant decrease in the wood supply. The people swam out to ships sometimes with a supporting float formed of a comical bundle of bulrushes. Wood was at precious as gold in Europe or jade in New Zealand. The minimum quantity was used for necessities, and the surplus constituted wealth in the form of wooden breast ornaments, dance implements, and carved tablets.

Macmillan Brown in his work on "Peoples and Problems of the Pacific" condemned the arts and crafts of Easter Island as being the most primitive in Polynesia. This is manifestly inaccurate and unfair. Apparently he did not take into consideration the vast importance of environment and its influence on all forms of material culture. The feather headdresses of Easter Island compare favourably with those of the Marquesas and Tahiti and are vastly superior to any similar work in Samoa and Tonga. The bark cloth is remarkable, for the shortcomings of the original material are overcome by quilting with threads by means of a bone needle. The carving of wooden ornaments, stone images, and the development of decorative techniques, such as the representation of eyes by means of a shell ring with a black obsidian pupil, are among the most remarkable in all Polynesia. Brown has condemned the Easter Islanders for not making greater use of bone, turtle shell, and obsidian to inlay their wood carvings, but neither did the other great branches of the Polynesians. The most unfair criticism is leveled at the implements, which are classed as childish.

The adz or toki is stated to be a blunt round stone rarely ground to an edge or rubbed smooth. It is evident that the critic was referring to the hand implements that were used to shape the stone images in the rough. He totally disregarded the adzes that were used in woodwork, which are better made then those of Mangareva and Samoa. Some of them are well shaped but with a blunt edge and they were probably used as hand adzes to finish off the stone images after they had been taken from the quarry. The stone statues of Easter Island have intrigue4d the imaginations of many, and a mystery has grown up around them. Some have believed them to be the work of some extinct race from a vanished continent. Yet the simple truth lies at the feet of the statues. Large stone images were made in the Marquesas and Raivavae and smaller ones in the Society Islands, Hawai'i, and New Zealand. The Easter Islanders carried the memory of stone carving from the Marquesas to their new home, where they developed a local pattern adapted to the soft, easily worked volcanic tuff found in the extinct crater of Rano-raraku. The images have high faces, long bodies, and arms but no legs. They are really busts. Some were placed on stone platforms near the coast and others were dotted about the landscape. Those on the platforms had expanded bases to enable them to retain an erect position. The others had peg-shaped bases for insertion in the ground.

The process of carving these statues may be deduced by an examination of the unfinished forms still lying in the quarry workshop in the crater of Rano-raraku. The figures were roughly shaped with the face uppermost. Then the sides were undercut and rounded, leaving a narrow ridge along the back to hold the statue in position. Finally this flange was cut and the detached figure was hauled to its site of erection. There the ridge along the back was trimmed off. Near some figures in the quarry lie rough stone tools shaped from hard modules in the tuff, apparently left by workmen when the image factory went out of business. Macmillan Brown has proposed that the statues were made in the image of their mysterious creators from a now submerged land-strong, imperious men with shapely chins and scornful, pouting lips. At this statement a physical anthropologist stands aghast; if the Easter Island images resemble their sculptors, then the Marquesan images with round, owlish eyes, noses with expanded wings, mouths stretching the full width of the face, must represent their makers. What a nightmare the image makers of Polynesia would present if they were recalled from the spirit land and made to conform to the anatomy of their creations!

The difficulty of transporting the images has been adduced as an argument in favour of a large population coming from elsewhere with ropes and mechanical appliances to move the images. The present Easter Islanders were considered too weak and lazy to have had ancestors who could do hard work. The Tongans, Hawaiians, Tahitians, and Marquesans moved large masses of stone and set them in place with ropes, wooden levers, skids, and props, and built up inclined planes of earth and rock to accomplish their tasks. Brown's assumption that the images could be moved only by thousands of slaves coming from an imaginary archipelago is based chiefly on one image fifty feet high which was never removed from the quarry. The average height of the images is ten to fifteen feet and their weight between four and five tons. I doubt if the images were heavier than the logs that the Maoris dragged from the forest for their war canoes or for the one-piece ridgepoles of their large meeting houses. United man-power can accomplish much, especially when such public works were made the occasion for a festival, with feasting according to Polynesian custom.

Originally the stone images may have represented gods and deified ancestors but in the course of time they became more truly an expression of art. The images with pegged bases were never intended to be placed on the stone platforms of the temples but were to be erected in the ground as secular objects to ornament the landscape and mark the boundaries of districts and highways. Because the images remaining in the quarry all have pegged bases, it would appear that the orders for the platforms had been filled and that the people had embarked on a scheme of highway decoration when war or contact with white foreigners caused operations to cease forever. The stone temples of Easter Island were built near the shore line as in other Polynesian islands, and the theory that they were so placed to exercise a magical influence in preventing the encroachment of the sea is untenable. A stone retaining wall was built near the coast, and the inland side was filled in with rock to form a sloping surface which was defined on the inland side by a low curb, sometimes stepped. The middle section of the retaining wall was higher than its wings and thus provided a raised platform upon which a number of images facing inland were placed on flat stone pedestals. Beyond the low inland curb a roughly paved area represented the paved court of the maraes of other groups. The entire enclosure was called ahu, a term used in central Polynesia to designate the raised platform at the end of the marae court. Recesses or vaults were provided in the mass of stone as tombs for the dead, a usage not confined to Easter Island. Owing to the loss of religious association and ritual, the ahu have come to be regarded as cemeteries, which was a secondary function of the older structures.

The wooden tablets with rows of incised characters have been the greatest problem in solving the so-called mystery of Easter Island. Legend states that King Hotu-matua brought sixty-seven tablets with him from the island of Marae-renga. It this is so, the use of such tablets must have been well established in the land. Cultural and mythical evidence seems to point to the Marquesas and possibly to Mangareva as the lands of origin of the Easter Island people, yet neither of these islands, nor indeed any Polynesian island, retina a memory of such tablets. Did they come from some land beyond Polynesia or were they evolved in Easter Island itself? Students of Polynesia were startled to learn that characters similar to those on the tablets had been found on seals excavated at Mohenjo Daro in the Indus valley in India. A European investigator arranged in parallel columns selected characters from the seals and from Easter Island tablets that were similar or even identical. However, a careful analysis by Metraux showed that certain motifs had been rendered more similar by inaccurate drawing. In any event, the identity of characters would tend to raise suspicion rather than to confirm a common origin. It had been demonstrated time and again that figures do not remain identical during prolonged transmission. Easter Island lies over 13,000 miles from Mohenjo Daro, whose civilization is dated at 2000 B/C. How could these characters survive the dangers of flood and field during a migration of over 13,000 miles of space and through 3,000 years in time to arrive unchanged in lonely Easter Island and leave no trace between, not even in Marae-renga whence Hotu-matua was supposed to have brought the tablets?

We cannot suppose that the tablets themselves were brought from Mohenjo Daro, for the Easter Island tablets have a boustrophedon arrangement, that is, alternate rows are upside down. Such an arrangement has not been discovered in Mohenjo Daro. Also, the Easter Island tablets are made of local or drift wood, the largest one being made from the blade of an ash oar which must have drifted to Easter Island in the early eighteenth century. Hence there is little doubt that the tablets were carved in Easter Island itself long after the time of Hotu-matua, but were attributed to him to give them the increased antiquity that all Polynesians revere.

The tables of local wood are flat, oblong pieces with rounded edges and are neatly cut in shallow parallel grooves with distinct edges bounding them. Commencing with the lowest groove on one surface, the carver worked from left to right, when he reached the right end, he turned the tablet upside down in order to carve the second row from left to right. Both surfaces of the tablet and even the side edges are completely covered with rows of figures. As it is difficult to understand how any written chants or records could so correspond to the size of the tablet as to exactly fill it in every instance, it is probable that the characters are purely pictorial and are not a form of written language. The tablets were called kouhau, which, in the dialects of Easter Island, Mangareva, and Marquesas, means a rod (kou) of hibiscus wood (hau). In the Marquesas, bundles of hibiscus rods were placed vertically at the corners of religious platforms as part of the temple regalia. In Mangareva, the term kouhau was applied to hibiscus rods that were used to beat time for certain ritual songs and dances. From the use of the term kouhau in Easter Island, it would seem that the art motifs were carved originally on a staff of hibiscus and, if done along the length of the staff, it may account for the technique assuming the form of long rows. Owing perhaps to the need of lengths of wood for other purposes, the carving was transferred from staves to shorter pieces of wood in the form of tablets which retained the name kouhau.

The tables were used by scholars termed rongorongo, who sang the old chants at various festivals. In Mangareva, the learned men who chanted at festivals and during religious ritual were also termed rongorongo. In the Marquesas, the inspirational priest who chanted were termed o'ono, the dialectical form of orongo. When the Easter Island rongorongo chanted, they held a tablet in their hands and when, in later times, a tablet was shown to an Easter Islander, he took it in his hands and commenced chanting. The connection between chant and tablet seemed so obvious that European observers never doubted but that the carved figures on the tablets definitely represented the words of the chants and were thus a form of writing. When Bishop Tepano Jaussen heard an Easter Islander chant to one of the tablets, he wrote down the words that were chanted to the various characters on the tablet. An analysis of the written native text proved to be a brief naming of the individual characters, some obvious and many doubtful. Though delivered as a chant, the whole composition had no connected meaning and was obviously made up on the spot to satisfy a white man's desire for a chanted ritual of the characters on the tablet. Any Polynesian can improvise a chant. I have improvised chants to lengthen out a recital for a European audience that did not understand the language. Neither the Bishop's informant nor I had any intention of deceiving, but we were both influenced by the desire to please.

Judged from a Polynesian background, I would suggest that the rongorongo chanters originally carved figures representing Makemake and art motifs connected with the bird cult on staves termed kouhau, which they held in their hands while they exercised their duties. Later the motifs were inscribed on wooden tablets, and the natural desire not to waste any space led to the tablets being completely covered. Again to make the most of the material, the tablet was adzed or chiseled in contiguous grooves to form ordered rows for the carving. The normal technique of working from left to right and the desire to commence the first figure in a new line close to the last figure in the previous line led to the boustrophedon arrangement of successive rows. The artistic tendency to avoid monotonous repetition of a few figures led to variations of the main motifs derived from the bird cult and the addition of new figures that were regarded purely as art motifs. The tablets became works of art and, as valuable possessions, they were given individual proper names in the same manner as jade ornaments in New Zealand. The Easter Islanders, like other Polynesians, learned their chants and lineages by heart. They held the tablets in their hands as symbols replacing the orator's staff.

The Easter Islanders have been badly treated by popular writers. Erroneous assertions have been piled up one after another to make their arts and crafts appear so poor and futile that the task of making the stone images and of transporting them would appear to be beyond the capacity of the ancestors of the present people. The mystery has been deepened by regarding the art tablets as a form of script and so foreign to Polynesian culture. Because western people are now incapable of making stone images without steel tools and of transporting them without modern ;machinery, the very culture of the Easter Islanders has been attributed to a mythical people who never existed. Yet the fact remains that the descendants of Hotu-matua used the raw material of their little island to an extent that the western mind seems to find difficulty in realizing. The resurrection of an extinct civilization from a sunken continent to do what the Easter Islanders accomplished unaided is surely the greatest compliment ever paid to an efficient stone-age people.

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