W.H.R.Rivers

“ If the sculptors of Easter Island put hats on their statues because these were the proper attribute of representations of the dead, we have an all-sufficient motive for their choice of a material different from that of which the other parts of the statues were made. ”

“ The chief difficulty is to understand how immigrants stranded in a tiny island, perhaps among an earlier population inferior to themselves in culture, should have succeeded in transmitting their zeal and desire for commemoration to their descendants. ”

“ While there are statues in the Marquesas comparable with those of Easter Island, but pyramids are unrepresented, it is this latter feature which is prominent in Tahiti. An especially large example of a pyramid was recorded by Captain Cook, [7] and pyramidal structures were regular features of the marae, or sacred places, of this island. According to the description of a Tahitian pyramid given by Moerenhout [8] they seem to have been not far removed from the platform of Easter Island and, as in that island, to have been surmounted by images. ”

“ If now we examine the cults of these ghost-societies we find few elements more prominent than the hats which are worn in the rites. [17] In the Sukwe of the Banks Islands these hats are so prominent that they are denoted by the same word, tamate, as the ghosts of the dead from which the societies take their name. Every society has a special object associated with it which in most cases takes the form of a hat. ”

“ It is generally assumed that cutting the hair into fanciful shapes and changing its colour by various dyes, which are practised in several parts of Oceania, have a purely aesthetic motive. In the Hawaiian Islands, however, a man who personated a deity fashioned his hair in a manner called niheu. ”

“ Having unlimited time and copious supplies of the stone they needed for the construction of their burial-places and images, it is not difficult to understand that the immigrants should have sought to enhance their importance through the feature of size just as was done by the ancient kings of Egypt when they contrived the pyramids within which their bodies were to rest. ”

“ In this island the stone image is regarded as the representative of the dead chief who is buried in the pyramidal mound it surmounts, and it is believed that the soul or ghost of the dead man has its abode in the image. ”

“ It is quite in keeping with all we know of Oceanic culture, however, that the people should have continued to use the pyramidal form when no image was made, and that the sentiment in favour of monuments of this kind was of considerable strength is suggested by the use of the pyramidal form when it became necessary to reconstruct dilapidated ahu of the platform variety. ”

“ The volcanic soil would soon provide them with an ample supply of such foods as were either there already, or were provided by plants they had brought with them. We know that the supply of timber was so scanty that the people were driven to depend upon driftwood to make their canoes, and still find it diffcult to obtain sufficient wood to cook their food. ”