Sacred Texts -- Pacific Islander Religions

Te Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island: Tongariki

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This is a journal excerpt from an 1891 U.S. Navy scientific expedition to Easter Island (Te Pito Te Henua), written by William J. Thompson. The passage covers two days — Christmas Day and the day after — during which the expedition team explored caves, excavated platforms and cairns near the Rana Roraka crater, and uncovered human remains, cisterns, and a concealed stone image roughly three feet tall. Thompson's account is notably candid about the expedition's practical hardships: undrinkable water (the island's "springs" turn out to be salt-water seepage), Christmas provisions stolen by local assistants, and irreplaceable geological specimens accidentally thrown into the sea by a crewman tidying the cave on Sunday. The excerpt also captures friction with the indigenous workers, who refuse to labor on Sunday on religious grounds and whose chief guide objects to ancestral skulls being taken as specimens. The writing sits in the tradition of 19th-century naval exploration reporting — methodical and empirical in its archaeological observations, yet alive to the absurdity of colonial expedition life — making it useful both as a primary source on Easter Island's material culture and as a document of the era's extractive scientific practices.

Te Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island: Tongariki

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