On Two Different Personalities from Old Rapa Nui: Personal Effects of ‘ ariki mau Nga‘ara (? – ca. 1859) and ‘Prophetess’ María Angata Veri Tahi (ca. 1853–1914) – Part II: Angata’s Bible

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Part I of this article, we discussed an English caplock pistol that reportedly belonged to the Easter Island (Rapa Nui) King Nga‘ara (? – ca. 1859) and the birdmen motif found on the pistol grip, comparing the pistol’s birdmen figures to similar figures found carved on boulders and rock surfaces on Easter Island. In Part II we turn to a consideration of another seminal individual in the history of the island, María Angata Veri Tahi – the Rapanui ‘Prophetess’ and chief organizer of the 1914 rebellion against the Compañía Explotadora de la Isla de Pascua. Thanks to the generosity of the current owner, we have been allowed to study a nineteenth-century artefact that was once in the possession of Angata – an 1849 English Holy Bible. This Bible is of note as (1) in contrast to Angata’s conversion to Roman Catholic beliefs, it is a Protestant Bible, and (2) it features a short inscription in vernacular Rapanui on the inside of its back cover which may have been penned by Angata herself or by another Rapanui under her direction. The present analysis of the Bible (and other associated objects) suggests a number of hypotheses regarding the historical context in which Angata lived and operated, while shedding light on various aspects of the prophetess’s life and activities. Whether raising the spirits of her Rapanui followers against foreign institutions and shifting powers or fuelling a new brand of syncretic religion on the island, Angata’s historical importance merits the attention of modern scholarship.Key words: Bible, bead-/‘button’-like objectscatechistCompañía Explotadora de la Isla de Pascua (CEDIP)María Angata (Aŋata)mother-of-pearl crossRapanui revolt/rebellion of 1914rosary SUPPLEMENTAL DATA AND ILLUSTRATIONSSupplement accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2023.2215725.AcknowledgementsIn Part II, we acknowledge the interesting discussions with Gordon Berthin, Roberto Weber Ch., Nancy Thiesen de Weber, Ewan Maidment, Grant McCall, Bernard Hausdorf, Philippe Bouchet, Ellen Strong, Bret K. Raines, and Paulus-Jan A. Kieviet concerning various aspects of the history, ethnography, language, malacology, and bibliography of Rapa Nui. Under this vein, we are most grateful for their input. Any possible lapse along the suggested hypotheses is ours.Notes1 Tomi S. Melka and Robert M. Schoch, ‘On Two Different Personalities from Old Rapa Nui: Personal Effects of ‘ariki mau Nga‘ara (? – ca. 1859) and ‘Prophetess’ María Angata Veri Tahi (ca. 1853–1914) – Part I: The Pistol of Nga‘ara’, The Journal of Pacific History 58, no. 3 (2023).2 We must respect the desire of various dealers, collectors, and owners to remain anonymous; otherwise, we would not be allowed access to their collections for purposes of scholarly study.3 It should be highlighted that the current owner’s interest in the artefact is of a non-religious nature and, certainly, s/he does not practise any form of witchcraft.4 The Holy Bible, The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments (London: G. E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, 1849).5 See Katherine Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island: The Story of an Expedition (London: Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1919), fig. 30 facing page 145, photograph labelled ‘ANGATA, THE PROPHETESS’; José Ignacio Vives Solar, ‘Una Revolución en la Isla de Pascua en 1914’, Pacífico Magazine 10, no. 60 (1917): 660, quoted in Nelson Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, in La Compañía Explotadora de Isla de Pascua: Patrimonio, Memoria e Identidad en Rapa Nui, ed. Claudio Cristino and Miguel Fuentes (Concepción, Chile: Escaparate Ediciones, 2011), 112 note 8, mentions specifically a long rosary of Angata. In turn, Castro Flores (ibid.) points out, ‘El rosario utilizado por Angata estaba confeccionado con conchas pequeñas, que recibían la denominación de pure. Pure se denominaba a la casa y a la Iglesia. Además, la expresión denota la oración Englert, 1948: 489’ (The rosary of Angata was made of small shellfish, to be known as pure. Pure connoted the home and the Church. Also see the reference in Englert, 1948: 489). Furthermore, the term pure had the meaning of prayer; cf. idem. Consider, however, that there are two basic definitions of the word ‹pure›: pure (1) n. prayer, invocation, v.i. pray, supplicate; pure (2) n. a kind of cowry (cowrie) shell (porcelain-like shell), different species being generally dark or light brown with dots: Cypraea caputdraconis and Cypraea englerti; cf. WoRMSa, ‘WoRMS taxon details – Monetaria caputdraconis (Melvill, 1888)’, http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=570813 (accessed 10 Dec. 2020); WoRMSb, ‘WoRMS taxon details – Naria englerti (Summers & Burgess 1965)’, http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1075024 (accessed 10 Dec. 2020). There is no word pure that means explicitly church. A church or chapel building (= house of worship) is called a hare pure, lit. house prayer (prayer house); see William Churchill, The Rapanui Speech and the Peopling of Southeast Polynesia (Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1912), 245.6 See ‘Lettre du R. P. Pacôme Olivier, vice-provincial de la Congrégation des Sacrés-Coeurs de Jésus et de Marie, à Valparaiso (Chili), au T. R. P. Supérieur Général de la même Congrégation, à Paris’, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi – Recueil Périodique des Lettres des Evêques et des Missionnaires des Missions des Deux Mondes, et de tous les Documents Relatifs aux Missions et a l’Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi 38 (1866): 45–52; Joseph-Eugène Eyraud, ‘Lettre du Frère Eugène Eyraud, au T. R. P. Supérieur Général de la Congrégation des Sacrés-Coeurs de Jésus et de Marie. Valparaíso, décembre 1864’, in ibid., 52–71, 124–38. Although there had been contact with Europeans since 1722, the first Christian missionary to live on the island was Eugène Eyraud, for nine months in 1864. Eyraud returned to the island with other missionaries in 1866. See Steven Roger Fischer, Island at the End of the World: The Turbulent History of Easter Island (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 92–7.7 Fischer, Island at the End of the World, 113.8 See Steven R. Fischer, ‘Rapanui Group Photo Dated August 1873’, Rapa Nui Journal 5, no. 1 (1991): 3; Grant McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World: Angata’s Cult on Easter Island’, in Papers from the Eighth Pacific History Association Conference, ed. Donald H. Rubinstein (Mangilao, Guam: University of Guam Press & Micronesian Area Research Center, 1992), 18; CONAF (Corporación Nacional Forestal), ‘Plan de Manejo Parque Nacional Rapa Nui’ (Santiago, Chile: CONAF/Ministerio de Agricultura, 1997), 46, http://bdrnap.mma.gob.cl/recursos/SINIA/PlandeManejo/PN%20Rapa%20Nui.pdf (accessed 10 June 2021), ‘Posteriormente, y luego que Bornier incendiara las viviendas de los nativos construidas en la misión de Vaihu, el Obispo de Tahiti ordena a Roussel y al asistente Teodolo Escolan partir de la isla con rumbo a la misión de Mangareva en abril de 1871. 168 isleños fueron trasladados en el buque “Burgoyne”, y un número cercano a los 109 isleños prosiguieron viaje a Tahiti a trabajar con Brander y en las plantaciones cocoteras de la misión católica’ (Subsequently, after Bornier set on fire the dwellings of the natives built in the Vaihu mission, the Bishop of Tahiti orders Roussel and his assistant Teodolo Escolan [Théodule Escolan] to leave the island and head for the mission of Mangareva in April 1871. 168 islanders were displaced aboard the ship “Burgoyne”, and an approximate number of 109 islanders continued the journey to Tahiti in order to work with [John] Brander and the cocoa-nut plantations of the Catholic mission); Patricia Štambuk, Rongo: La Historia Oculta de Isla de Pascua (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Pehuén, 2010), 31–3.9 See George H. Cooke, Te Pito te Henua, known as Rapa-Nui, commonly called Easter Island, South Pacific Ocean. Annual Reports Smithsonian Institution for 1897 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum, 1899), 717–18.10 McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 18.11 Fischer, Island at the End of the World, 129.12 Cf. Cooke, Te Pito te Henua, known as Rapa-Nui, commonly called Easter Island, South Pacific Ocean, 718; McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 18; Fischer, Island at the End of the World, 129–30; Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, 108, suggests that young Angata could have travelled to the Gambier Islands or Tahiti; in turn, Sofía Abarca, ‘1914. ANGATA, CANTATA RAPANUI’, in Cristino and Fuentes, eds, La Compañía Explotadora de Isla de Pascua, 301, mentions that Angata ‘Fue llevada por los Misioneros Católicos (expulsados de la isla por la Compañía), a Tahití en 1872, en donde estudió en la escuela de catequistas de Moorea’ (She was taken by the Catholic Missionaries (forced to leave the island by the Company) to Tahiti in 1872, where she studied in the school for Catechism in Mo‘orea).13 Cf. McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 18, 19.14 Rolf Foerster González and Sonia Montecino Aguirre, ‘A 100 Años de la Rebelión de Angata: ¿Resistencia Religiosa o Secular? Las Complicidades Tire y los Múltiples Sentidos de la Revuelta de 1914 en Rapa Nui’ [100 Years after the Angata Rebellion: Religious or Secular Resistance? Tire’s [= Chile’s] Complicities and the Multiple Meanings of the 1914 Revolt in Rapa Nui], Chungará, Revista de Antropología Chilena 48, no. 1 (2016): 98.15 Ibid., 101 note 29.16 And then there is also the matter of Angata’s interaction with members of the Mana expedition, especially with Katherine Routledge; see Routledge, Mystery of Easter Island. This may precipitate another theory as to how Angata came into the possession of an English Protestant Bible.17 Cf. Marie-Françoise Péteuil, Les évadés de l’île de Pâques: Loin du Chili, vers Tahiti (1944–1958) [The Escapees of Easter Island: Far from Chile, Headed for Tahiti (1944–1958)] (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004); Fischer, Island at the End of the World.18 ‘patenôtre’ in wiktionary.org, https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/paten%C3%B4tre (accessed 1 Aug. 2019).19 Routledge, Mystery of Easter Island, 149; Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, 117.20 The online source ‘María Angata … … … y la Rebelión de & the Rebellion of 1914’, in https://moevarua.com/en/maria-angata/ (accessed 10 Mar. 2023), relates her parental affiliation as, ‘Maria Angata Veri Tahi, daughter of Hare Kohou (of the Miru tribe [lineage group]) and Veri Tahi a Kau (of the Haumoana tribe [lineage group]) was born in 1854’.21 See e.g., Roy D. Kotansky, ‘Textual Amulets and Writing Traditions in the Ancient World’, in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, ed. David Frankfurter (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2019), 507; cf. in a broader context, J. Scarborough, ‘The Pharmacology of Sacred Plants, Herbs, and Roots’, in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. Dirk Obink and Christopher A. Pharaone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 138–74.22 For a different Indigenous Pacific context where shell beads were put to use as ‘money’ and/or items of adornment, see Katherine Szabó, ‘Shell Money and Context in Western Island Melanesia’, in Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art and European Museums, vol. 2, ed. Lucie Carreau et al. (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2018), 38. It should be noted that R. M. Schoch has seen various bead-like objects of both bone and shell from Easter Island in private collections, some of which were strung on plant fibre cords and some of which were strung on cords apparently made of human hair. See Robert M. Schoch and Tomi S. Melka, ‘A Wooden Hand from Easter Island (Rapa Nui), part I’, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 77/78, no. 1 (2022): 303–17, 313 figs 7 and 8; however, to the best of our knowledge, such artefacts from Rapa Nui have never been subject to a thorough study. To help relieve this deficiency, we illustrate a select handful of such objects in the online Supplement to the present article. Additionally, it should be noted that two bone beads, each in the shape of a human skull, accompanied the ‘Rangitoki bark-cloth fragment’ (collected on Easter Island in March 1869) in its European storage case, a former pocket watchcase. See Robert M. Schoch and Tomi S. Melka, ‘The Rangitoki (Raŋitoki) Bark-cloth Piece: A Newly Recognized rongorongo Fragment from Easter Island’, Asian and African Studies 28, no. 2 (2019): 113–48, 413–17 (figs 1–7). The current anonymous owner of the piece was told by an intermediary collector and dealer that the descendants of the original collector of the ‘Rangitoki bark-cloth fragment’ believed or had the impression that the bone beads were acquired from Easter Island at the same time (March 1869) as the bark-cloth fragment painted with a short rongorongo sequence; even if this were the case, it does not demonstrate that the beads were originally from Easter Island, as they could have been trade items, but it would corroborate that bone beads were valued by the Rapanui.23 As briefly mentioned in note 5, the Rapanui word pure covered very likely a pair of cowry-shell species, namely Cypraea caputdraconis and C. englerti, endemic to Easter Island and Sala y Gómez Island. Cypraea (or Naria) englerti is the second most common of the cowry (cowrie) species from Easter Island, but still much rarer than the most common species (due to C. englerti living in relatively deep waters); the most common species is Cypraea (or Monetaria) caputdraconis (which also goes by other generic names; it lives in shallower waters and is thus more easily collected); cf. WoRMSa, ‘WoRMS taxon details – Monetaria caputdraconis (Melvill, 1888)’; WoRMSb, ‘WoRMS taxon details – Naria englerti (Summers & Burgess, 1965)’. There are additional cowry species around Easter Island in the deeper waters offshore. Note that whereas C. caputdraconis was originally named based on a specimen ‘from Hong Kong, where it was collected’, as stated in James Cosmo Melvill, ‘A Survey of the Genus Cypraea (Linn.), its Nomenclature, Geographical Distribution, and Distinctive Affinities; with Descriptions of Two New Species, and Several Varieties’, Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, series 4, 1 (1888): 214, this species is now considered to be endemic to Easter Island and Sala y Gómez Island; see, for instance, Harald A. Rehder, The Marine Mollusks of Easter Island (Isla de Pascua) and Sala y Gómez (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980), 5, 67.24 See Ramón Campbell, ‘Etnomusicología de la Isla de Pascua’, Revista Musical Chilena 42, no. 170 (1988): 24, in the caption of a photograph taken in 1965 illustrating a Rapanui dancer with the name ‘Mirto Tuki’. The description Campbell (ibid.) makes of the dress she wears is: ‘traje antiguo hecho con plumas de color blanco y negro, llamado “huru-huru”, adornado por “pure”, conchitas de caracoles marinos’ ([featuring] an old-styled dress made of black and white feathers, called ‘huru-huru’, and embellished with ‘pure’, cowry shells). Evidently, even in modern times, ‘feathers’ and ‘cowry shells’ appear to be important recurring motifs/tokens in the Rapanui cultural tradition.25 Tomi S. Melka and Robert M. Schoch, ‘On Two Different Personalities from Old Rapa Nui: Personal Effects of ‘ariki mau Nga‘ara (? – ca. 1859) and ‘Prophetess’ María Angata Veri Tahi (ca. 1853–1914) – Part I: The Pistol of Nga‘ara – SUPPLEMENTAL DATA AND ILLUSTRATIONS’, I, https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2023.2215712. Also given the local conditions and scarcity of certain raw materials, the Rapanui would have risen with clever and adaptive responses when it came to the use of bone and shells for practical, symbolic, or personal beautification purposes; see Patrick McCoy, ‘Easter Island’, in The Prehistory of Polynesia, ed. Jesse David Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 148.26 Julio Tadeo Ramírez, Navegando a Rapa-Nui: Notas de Viaje de la Corbeta General Baquedano en su 30o Expedición a la Isla de Pascua el año 1934 [Sailing to Rapa Nui: Notes on the Voyage of the corvette General Baquedano in her 30th expedition to Easter Island in 1934] (Santiago de Chile: SC de Jesús, 1939), 31, quoted in Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, 105.27 Here we admittedly use the terms ‘revolt’ and ‘rebellion’ somewhat interchangeably. In some cases, a revolt is considered more localized while a rebellion is a more generalized uprising. In the case of the movement led by Angata in the context of Easter Island, the term ‘rebellion’ is arguably applicable.28 Martina Bucková, ‘Millenarian Movements in Polynesia – Their Rise and Spread Immediately after Christianization’, Asian and African Studies 14, no. 2 (2005): 228–42.29 The note could possibly have been inscribed by her husband, son, or an endeared colleague. Given the lack of solid evidence regarding the full literacy of Angata, alternative authors cannot be dismissed. Yet, out of convenience, we theorize that Angata was responsible for the written words.30 Roberto Weber Ch. and Nancy Thiesen de Weber, pers. comm., 2020.31 The authors, TSM and RMS, are similarly open to the following suggestion of Weber and Weber (pers. comm., 2020) with regard to the ‘kind of writing instrument […] used in the inscription’. During their long sojourn on Easter Island, Weber and Weber were told ‘by elderly [Rapanui] persons that, for lack of anything better to use, their predecessors sometimes wrote using pointed charred sticks’. Such ‘pointed sticks’ could have been well employed together with natural pigments to write down the passage in question. Subsequently, ‘this would account for much of the irregularity of the writing, unrelated to Aŋata’s level of literacy’. Weber and Weber, pers. comm., 2020.32 Specifically, the Rapanui did have colouring/painting materials available to them in yellowish-orange and reddish/red-coppery ochre (yellowish-orange due to the limonite iron oxide, and reddish/red-coppery due to the hematite iron oxide); they were collectively known as ki’ea; see e.g., William Churchill, The Rapanui Speech and the Peopling of Southeast Polynesia (Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1912), 216, kie → ochre, vermilion; Alfred Métraux, Ethnology of Easter Island. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 160 (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press, 1940), 236, ‘The red dye (kiea) is a red-brown, weathered and mineralized tuff which is found in several places on the island, especially on the western slope of Poike Peninsula’; Sebastian Englert, La Tierra de Hotu Matu‘a: Historia, Etnología y Lengua de la Isla de Pascua [The Land of Hotu Matu‘a: History, Ethnology, and Language of Easter Island] (Padre las Casas, Chile: Imprenta y Editorial ‘San Francisco’, 1948), 461, ki’ea ‘tierra colorada que usaban para empolvar la cara’ ([Natural] pigmented earth/soil used [by the Indigenous people] to decorate their faces); Jordi Fuentes, Diccionario y Gramática de la Lengua de la Isla de Pascua. Pascuense–Castellano, Castellano–Pascuense. Dictionary & Grammar of the Easter Island Language. Pascuense–English, English–Pascuense (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1960), 761, ‘ki’ea red dust used to powder the face’. The possible association of the yellowish-orangey mineral pigment applied via some kind of ‘pointed stick’ on the front of the back cover of the Bible with ki’ea may be a non-negligible plausibility. Continuing with further possible clues on this matter, another detail comes from Englert, La Tierra de Hotu Matu‘a, 227–8, while discussing the habits of the Easter Islanders regarding clothing, he writes, ‘También deben haber usado tierra de color para este fin: porque Roggeween [Jacob Roggeveen, the Dutch commander of an expedition of three ships during the voyage in 1721–2], dice que se notaba que pintaban sus capas con tierra roja y amarilla y que, por lo tanto, la pintura no era durable y se desteñía fácilmente al tocarla con la mano’ (Also, they would have made use of coloured earth [= soil] for this purpose: because Roggeween says that it was evident that they painted their cloaks with red and yellow earth [ochre] and, consequently, the paint was not long-lasting and easily undyed when touched with the hand). Ana María Arredondo B., ‘The Art of Tattoo on Rapa Nui’, in Easter Island in Pacific Context South Seas Symposium. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Easter Island and Eastern Polynesia. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 5–10 August 1997, ed. Christopher M. Stevenson, Georgia Lee, and Frank J. Morin (Los Osos, CA: Bearsville and Cloud Mountain Presses/The Easter Island Foundation, 1998), 360, offers an interesting detail regarding that of the painting of a bodily section on a tapa figure in the Peabody Museum with ki‘ea (reddish earth pigment).33 Specialized information on modern techniques used in the recognition and processing of handwriting is found in Arnold J. W. M. Thomassen and Hans-Leo H. M. Teulings, ‘The Development of Handwriting’, in The Psychology of Written Language: Developmental and Educational Perspectives, ed. M. Martlew (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983), 179–213; Henri S. R. Kao, Gerard P. Van Galen, and Rumjahn Hoosain, eds, Graphonomics: Contemporary Research in Handwriting (Amsterdam: North Holland/Elsevier Science Publishers BV, 1986); Rejean Plamondon, Ching Y. Suen, and Marvin L. Simner, eds, Computer Recognition and Human Production of Handwriting. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Handwriting and Computer Applications held at Montreal on July 20–23, 1987 (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 1989).34 For instance, Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Among Stone Giants: The Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 155, does mention that at one point ‘Angata was speaking in a mixture of Rapanui and her own made-up words’ while meeting with Katherine Routledge (of the Mana expedition).35 Vives Solar, ‘Una Revolución en la Isla de Pascua en 1914’, 656, quoted in Foerster González and Montecino Aguirre, ‘A 100 Años de la Rebelión de Angata’, 94.36 Ibid.37 In contrast, McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 18, and Fischer, Island at the End of the World, 167, point at ‘Daniera Korohu‘a’/‘Daniel Teave Korohua’ as ‘Angata’s only son from her first marriage’. Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, 112, sustains ‘Daniel Corohua’, as ‘el yerno de Angata’ (Angata’s son-in-law). Call him what you will – the historical figure of Daniel Teave Korohua (1872–1914?), closely related to Angata and who tried to win several Rapanui to her cause, gives further justification to his involvement in the 1914 social uprising and to his educational background.38 Van Tilburg, Among Stone Giants, 148.39 Veronica du Feu, Rapa Nui – Descriptive Grammars (London: Routledge, 1996), 85.40 Paulus-Jan Abraham Kieviet, ‘A Grammar of Rapa Nui: The Language of Easter Island’ (PhD diss., Amsterdam Vrije Universiteit, 2016), 491.41 A similar observation is made in Olaf Blixen, ‘La Oclusión Glótica del Pascuense y Algunas Observaciones sobre la Posición del Pascuense dentro del Grupo de Lenguas Polinésicas’, Moana: Estudios de Antropología Oceánica 1, no. 5 (1972): 17.42 Martin Haspelmath, ‘Coordination’, in Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol. 2, Complex Constructions, ed. Timothy Shopen, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7.43 Kieviet, ‘A Grammar of Rapa Nui’, 491.44 Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island, 251–2. In the quotation from Routledge, ‘tau’ (= ta‘u) refers to a form of supposed ‘script’ composed of ‘signs’ written by some Rapanui in the early twentieth century.45 Furthermore, if one imagines the strings of pre-missionary noun phrases coded in the still non-deciphered signs (= rongorongo) per the criterion of parataxis (plus the locally instilled ‘poetic’-like strophic measures and ‘metaphorical’ expressions across the different text passages) – it would render the system very hard or even invulnerable to an accurate analysis. We should stress that among the people who felt qualified to contribute to the decipherment of rongorongo through the decades, several have distanced themselves from these criteria. In the end, the proposed decipherments have been essentially incorrect.46 Cf. Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo Cults’ in Melanesia (New York: Schocken Books, 1957); Neil Gunson, ‘An Account of the Mamaia of Visionary Heresy of Tahiti, 1826–1841’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 71, no. 2 (1962): 208–43; Judith Binney, ‘Papahurihia: Some Thoughts on Interpretation’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 75, no. 3 (1966): 321–31; Caroline Ralston, ‘Early Nineteenth Century Polynesian Millennial Cults and the Case of Hawai’i’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 94, no. 4 (1985): 307–31; John Barker, ed., Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990); McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 17–23; Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, 91–120; Judith Ward, ‘The Invention of Papahurihia’ (PhD diss., Massey University, New Zealand, 2016), https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/9988/02_whole.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y (accessed 4 Mar. 2019).47 Bucková, ‘Millenarian Movements in Polynesia’.48 See Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island.49 M. Riet Delsing, ‘Colonialism and Resistance in Rapa Nui’, Rapa Nui Journal 18, no. 1 (2004): 27.50 Cf. Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo Cults’ in Melanesia; Barker, ed., Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives; McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 17–23; Fischer, Island at the End of the World, 171.51 See, e.g., in the local context, the observation of Jo Anne Van Tilburg, ‘Lost and Found: Hoa Hakananai'a and the Orongo “Doorpost”’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 123, no. 4 (December 2014): 386–7, ‘While the underlying cause of the [1914] uprising [on Rapa Nui] was embedded in years of privation, unfair treatment and resentment of colonial management, the match that lit the fuse was the Mana Expedition’s vast quantities of food and supplies, their showy display of wealth, their stiff-necked unwillingness to negotiate for objects collected and, I submit, their removal of the Orongo “doorpost” and other objects’.52 Cf. e.g., Bucková, ‘Millenarian Movements in Polynesia’, 241.53 See e.g., McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 19; Štambuk, Rongo: La Historia Oculta de Isla de Pascua, 36.54 Castro Flores, ‘Ariki, Catequistas y Profetismo Milenarista. Rapa Nui, 1882–1914’, 115.55 See McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 20.56 Cf. Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island, 149; Delsing, ‘Colonialism and Resistance in Rapa Nui’, 27; Fischer, Island at the End of the World, 170–1.57 A photograph of Vives Solar with a group of Rapanui children with the Orongo ‘doorpost’ is reproduced in Van Tilburg, ‘Lost and Found: Hoa Hakananai'a and the Orongo “Doorpost”’, 390 fig. 5.58 Henry Percy Edmunds tops the list of ‘the managers of the Easter Island estate’ in J. Douglas Porteous, ‘Easter Island: The Scottish Connection’, Geographical Review 68, no. 2 (April 1978): 148–9, ‘To appreciate fully the transformation of Easter Island after 1868 it is necessary to trace the cultural origins of the entrepreneurs and their island managers. The Branders, the Darsies, and the CEDIP partners were all from eastern or southern Scotland. Many of the managers of the Easter Island estate, boasting such surnames as Edmunds, Harris, Clark, Sanders, Munro, Morrison, McKinnon, and Murdoch Smith, came either directly from the Lowlands of Scotland or from the Scottish sheep-rearing operations in Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Australia, or New Zealand’; see also McCall, ‘37 Days that shook the (Rapanui) World’, 17, ‘In 1904, Henry Percy Edmunds, a lowland Scot, came from a stint in Argentina and began a quarter-century of nearly continuous residence as the economic and entrepreneurial ruler of Rapanui’; and Christine Laurière, L’Odyssée pascuane. Mission Métraux-Lavachery, île de Pâques (1934–1935) (Paris: Lahic-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 2014), 70, ‘De tous les managers, ce fut précisément Henry Percy Edmunds qui allait rester le plus longtemps sur l’Ile de Pâques, de 1908 à 1933’ (Of all the managers [of the Company], it was exactly Henry Percy Edmunds who was going to stay longer on Easter Island, from 1908 to 1933). Furthermore, Laurière, ibid., 75, specifies, ‘Un an avant l’arrivée de la mission franco-belge, le manager Edmunds quitta l’Ile de Pâques avec son contremaître. Ils furent remplacés par d’autres Écossais, Murdoch Smith (qui vint avec sa jeune épouse …) et un autre administrateur, W. B. Cater’ (A year prior to the arrival of the Franco-Belgian Mission [in 1934], the manager Edmunds together with his foreman left the island. They were replaced by other Scots, Murdoch Smith (who came with his young spouse …) and another administrator, W. B. Cater).59 Some non-Rapanui commentators may have viewed Angata as a ‘sorceress’ or affected with ‘Biblical madness’; for the indigenous members of the community, however, she would become an apostolic emissary of their church; cf. Foerster González and Montecino Aguirre, ‘A 100 Años de la Rebelión de Angata’, 99 note 31; Florencia Muñoz Ebensperger, ‘Sonia MONTECINO, Fuegos, Hornos y Donaciones. Alimentación y Cultura en Rapa Nui’, IdeAs [Online] 3 (Winter 2012): 3, describes Angata as ‘una sabia local’ (an indigenous wise woman), who led one of the most emblematic events after the annexation of Rapa Nui by Chile against