460 

 Notes From Easter Island.* 



BY WM. A. BRYAN. 



(Coininuuieated by O. H. Swezey.) 



The native inhabitants of the lonely island, Rapanui, or 

 Easter Island, belong unmistakably to the great Polynesian 

 family. Today there is only a small colony of 270 remaining 

 out of a population that at one time must have numbered sev- 

 eral thousand. They were avowed cannibals at the time of the 

 discovery of the island, but with this combined a knowledge of 

 cutting stone and building huge cut stone alms or temples that 

 is truly marvelous. They were, so far as is known, the only 

 Polynesian tribe that had any form of writing — which con- 

 sisted in engraving curious unmatched characters on planks of 

 wood. Taken altogether, their origin and culture forms one 

 of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the many great puzzles 

 in Polynesian anthropology and ethnology. 



The people at all times have stoutly maintained that their 

 ancestors came in boats from over the sea, but from which 

 islands, or what direction, they have no knowledge whatever. 

 With them they brought a few of the plants of the land of their 

 origin, including two varieties of bananas, the yam, the "ki''; 

 "hauhau,"" from which they made fish line ; perhaps the "tolo- 

 milo," of which wooden idols were made, and of special inter- 

 est in this connection a species of mulberry or "mahute," deter- 

 mined by Professor Francisco Fuentes, botanist of the Uni- 

 versity of Chili, as Bronssonetia papyrifera Vent. 



From the bark of the "mahute" the natives made a rough 

 grade of tapa cloth. This shrub or small tree, now bordering 

 on extermination on this island, was planted by the natives in 

 the most favorable localities for moisture and soil and tended 

 with great care. A few clumps are still living in the great 



* These notes, dated February 7, 1920, were received from Mr. Bryan 

 with the request that they be published in connection with description of 

 the beetles, six specimens of wliich were sent. (Ed.) 



Proc. Haw. Ent. Soc, IV, No. 3, September, 1921. 



