Sacred Texts -- Pacific Islander Religions

Te Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island: Text of the Easter Island Tablet: Atua Matariri

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This is a late 19th-century ethnographic document — a section of U.S. Navy Paymaster William J. Thompson's 1891 survey of Easter Island — presenting the transcription and English translation of a physical rongorongo-style tablet called "Atua Matariri," now held in the U.S. National Museum. The text's core content is a cosmogonic catalog: a structured table attributing the origin of virtually every element of the natural and supernatural world to specific pairings of named gods and goddesses. The unions produce an unusually wide range of things — not just plants (taro, coconuts, hibiscus) and animals (sharks, boobies, fowls), but also materials (obsidian), concepts (life, luck), and phenomena (wind, pain, death). Distinctive among the entries are attributions that cross into the morally or physically unpleasant: one deity is credited as "founder of all things unpleasant and bad smells," and another created all forms of death. The document preserves the original Rapanui-language chant alongside the translation, giving it dual value as both a religious text and a linguistic record. It is primarily of interest to readers studying Polynesian cosmology, Rapanui religious tradition, or the history of Pacific ethnography.

Te Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island: Text of the Easter Island Tablet: Atua Matariri

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