Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation Volume 5 Article 1 Issue 4 Rapa Nui Journal 5#4, Winter 1991 1991 Rapa Nui Journal 5#4, Winter 1991 Follow this and additional works at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/rnj Part of the History of the Pacific slI ands Commons, and the Pacific slI ands Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation (1991) "Rapa Nui Journal 5#4, Winter 1991," Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation: Vol. 5 : Iss. 4 , Article 1. Available at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/rnj/vol5/iss4/1 This Research Report is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Hawai`i Press at Kahualike. It has been accepted for inclusion in Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation by an authorized editor of Kahualike. For more information, please contact [email protected]. et al.: Rapa Nui Journal 5#4, Winter 1991 I VolS, No 4 EASTER ISLAND FOVNDAnON December 1991 Lost Islands Cmise Has the British Museum a Georgia Lee "stolen friend" from Rapa Nui? The September-October 1991 Society Expeditions cruise, Steven Roger Fischer, Ph.D. "Polynesian Migration", took us to some of the far-flung and hard to reach places in the south Pacific ocean. This begins a For more than a century the British Museum has perhaps two-part article describing the islands visited, their history, been harboring a "Stolen Friend" of the Rapanui For "Stolen and life today. Although our visits on shore were brief, they Friend" could well be the proper translation of the name of were memorable. Those islands which will be described are the famous moai Hoa Haka Nana Ia. And no one in these Ra'ivavae, Rapa lti, Morotiri, Mangareva, Pitcairn, 122 years since its unveiling has turned an ear to its loud Henderson, and Ducie. opprobrium. Perhaps . this is RA1VAVAE (Australs) because of the name's unpardonable bastard­ This is one of the loveliest islands in the South Pacific. A ization. "Hoa Haka jewel-like lagoon surrounds a dozen picturesque islets, and =~:::::.::;; Nana Fa [sic] of Tau­ fern covered mountains reach to Mt Hiro, the highest point re - renge" (palmer on the island (1500 feet). The tiny island is just south of the 1870a:370) was the Tropic of Capricorn and measures only 6 square miles. Its red-and -white colored vegetation is tropical, and the many rivers plus runoff from "sacred image" of the mountains are the source of five great taro-growing 'Orongo, or so the areas. A great variety of food grows on the island, including Rapanui informed breadfruit, coconuts, vanilla, coffee, and bananas. A barrier Palmer in November reef forms the deep lagoon between the motu and the shore; 1868 once the British the Society Discover glided into the lagoon just a few meters sailors had laboriously above the clearly visible reef. • moved the "four or five Most of the small tin-roofed stucco houses cluster near the ton" moai onto H.MS. churches. There are four small villages scattered around the Topaze for shipping island with some 1200 inhabitants. Aging school buses were ~==:=:::::: back to London and employed to carry our group around the island. We visited the British Museum. one of Ra'ivavae's famous statues (second only to those of In other accounts, Easter Island in size)--and the only one remaining on the Palmer writes "Hoa­ island. A considerable number of large and small stone haka- nan a -Ia" statues in human form had been erected in various parts of (1870b:112), "H 0 a­ the island prior to its discovery by Gayangos in 1775, who haka- nana Ia" came to the island from an abortive Spanish attempt to (1870b:I15), "Hoa­ colonize Tahiti. All the other statues were carried off to hakanana-Ia Tahiti where they now are displayed in the Gauguin Museum ( 18 70 c: 176, 177), "H 0 a - h a k a - Nan a - I a " and the Museum of Tahiti at Punaauia. The one remaining (1875:285) and H 0 a - h a k a - Nan a - I a" (1875:290). statue is still on the island due to an accident: two statues In both of the 1868 photographs of this famous statue were being transported to Tahiti via ship. In the process, one taken while it was aboard the Topaze (Roussel 1926:496­ fell into the lagoon. The islanders took this as an omen and 497, falsely identified the ship as the Challenger, continued onpage 3 apparently the first two photographs in history of anything Rap a n u i ) the name has been printed upon its Vol 5, No 3 • Page 49 Published by Kahualike, 1991 1 Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation, Vol. 5 [1991], Iss. 4, Art. 1 protective tarpaulin. And into the mom1s specially fashioned within the semantic range of "friend, companion, comrade" stone pedestal was engraved in 1869 the name "HOA­ or, if there had truly been some ritual meaning attached to HAKA-NANA-IA" these smaller statues, "lord, master, proprietor, officiant" Routledge (1919:257) wrote "Hoa-haka-nanaia," saying this What does Rapanui hakanana{o mean? Old and Modem name was "roughly to be translated as 'Breaking wave'"­ Rapanui haka is of course the aforementioned causative although in the Rapanui language none of these three words prefix "to make." Modem Rapanui nJJ1JQl1ais "to pass quickly has the slightest to do with either "breaking" or "wave" (the by," which appears to be rather irrelevant in this context; that action of breaking waves is hatipU in Rapanui). M6traux is, it is difficult to imagine a four-ton moai "passing quickly (1940:298) called the moat "Hoa-haka-nana-ia," whose by" or a local rite--here on a cliff some 1000 feet above the translation he took directly from Routledge as "Breaking sea-in which this moat might cause people to "pass quickly waves" without checking this for himself, apparently, despite by," wholly unattested at 'Orongo anyway, although it is still his keen interest in the Rapanui language. entirely within the realm of possibility. But nanaz1a also Fuentes' dictionary provides the forms "H6a-hakanana-ia," signifies "thief" in Modem Rapanui, and this might very well calling it a "nombre de un modi (1960:208), and "Moai-h6a­ be what is meant in the name which I shall hereafter write as Mka-nana-!a" which is the "nombre de la estatua tomada en Hoa Hakanana{a. The lexeme Hakananata, not attested in Or6ngo y transladada al Museo Britanico" (1960:262). Modem Rapanui, would be Old Rapanui and probably mean Fuentes does not attempt a translation of the apparently something like "stealing, stolen, inciting to theft, having jumbled name, with good reason. Recall that the German incited to theft, etc." missionary Father Gaspar Zumbohm had already told How might we interpret the name Hoa Hakananai'a? If I Palmer on Rapanui back in 1868 that "the meaning of the were an archaeologist or ethnologist I would of course name is very doubtful" (palmer 1875:290). readily point out the obvious fact that the moat Hoa The form "Hoa Haka Nana Ia" is of course gibberish in Hakananai'i was situated in 'Orongo where the "theft" of the Rapanui. Certainly we can recognize in it the two Raparud first egg of the manu tara from Motu Nui represented the words hoa 'companion, comrade, friend; proprietor, lord, highlight of the Birdman rites. Perhaps the name signifies master' from Proto-Polynesian *soa 'friend' (Walsh/Biggs "Lord Inciting Theft" or "Master (Who) Makes (a) Thief"--or 1966:1(0), as well as Rapanui haka 'to make' which is the "The Instigator." Such an interpretation would perhaps fit in common Polynesian causative prefix, Proto-Polynesian well with what we already know about these rites, and its *faka-'causative' (Walsh/Biggs 1966:7). But "Nana Ia" tells us implications would represent important new additions to our nothing in this orthography. It is obviously incorrectly knowlege: i.e., that this particular hoa was immediately spelled, in other words. involved in the Birdman celebration; that the mana to fetch We might take "Nana Ia" to be the result of the following the egg seemingly emanated from it; that Rapanui hypothetical conversation: "Ko ai te ingoa '0 te moai nen" monolithic architecture was intimately associated with these "Ko Hoa Hananana ian "Hoa Hakanana Ia?" "Eeee" ("What's rites too; and--although none of this is attested in Rapanui the name of this moat here?" "It's Hoa Hakanana, it is" "Hoa oral tradition--all sorts of fascinating possibilities which Hakanana It IsJ" "Yes") in which hakanana is Marquesan "to spring to mind in ed~cated speculation. But here a word of spy upon" or Mangarevan "to hate," or even Mangarevan caution would be in order, because with this we are likely to hakanananana "to pout, to sulk" which supplies a perfect be reading into the name what is not even there. description of this mo(U1S sulking or pouting lips. But then I am a linguist and philologist: I must recognize hoa first as almost all moat show sulking or pouting lips. And why should "friend" and haka-- as a Polynesian causative which, these replies come in Marquesan or Mangarevan and not in statistically speaking, whenever it fills such an obvious Rapanui? -apart from the possibility that PalmerlZumbohn "adjectival slot" as it is doing here, usually translates--in all might have been chatting with one of the three Mangarevan Polynesian languages--more often (but not exclusively) as presbyters on Rapanui in 1968, which is unlikely.