Te Pito O Te Henua
This website is a work of fiction, part of the collaborative constructed world of Ill Bethisad. It is not intended to reflect reality or the creator's opinions on current issues.
Spnsored by the Tourism Advisorate, Council of Te Pito O Te Henua, in cooperation with the Commission for Offshore Preservation, Ecotopic Republic of Oregon.
Last updated on 17 June 2008 by Ben Karnell
History of Henua
Early History
Te Pito O Te Henua was settled sometime before AD 1000.  During that period, the early Henua had contact with Chimuic people on the coast of South America, from whom they acquired kumara,  sweet potatoes.  Like barley in Mesopotamia and maize in Mejico, the sweet potato in Henua fueled the growth of a great civilization.  The chief achievements of the civilization during this period were the enormous stone statues, the moai; and the rich artistic tradition that eventually would become the indigenous writing system, rongorongo.

For many years, the kings had absolute power over the small community, and the royal clan, the Miru, was unquestioned in its dominance of all spiritual and secular matters.  The kings maintained their economic dominance through the widespread Polynesian system of tapu, or exclusive royal right of exploitation of certain resources.  Sea turtles, sea mammals, and fish caught off Motu Motiro Hiva, for example, belonged only to the Ariki Henua.  He was free to use or redistribute them as he wished.  As the population grew, lower-ranking clans began to assert both spiritual power (through building ahu and moai) and temproal power (by managing their own affairs).

By about 1550 the island's population had grown as high as 15,000.  The various clans' competition for farmland and moai grew fierce.  Henua was threadened with both civil war and deforestation.  So one rather brutal  king, fearful that the depleating forests would cost him his fortune,  exspanded the tapu system: thenceforth, he would have control over nearly all of the remaining wood supply, as well as all terrestrial birds and many freshwater springs.  Moai were only to be built by the king, and then only upon his elevation to the throne and on certain special occasions thereafter.  This practice has been maintained, with some interruptions, to this day.  The various clans had to halt their moai projects, and today the great quarry of Rano Raraku is littered with their incomplete statues.

This as-yet unnamed king was able to enforce the tapu through a combination of religious manipulation and actual force.  The people and their chiefs hated the harsher tapu, but in the end it saved their culture by conserving their dwindling resources.  However, leaders of the other clans resented the tapu for years, and the forests never grew back fully.  The clans remained fiercely competitive and found other ways to compete once moai-building became forbidden. 

Boats, Bugs, and Birdmen
Dutch sailors spotted Henua on Easter Sunday, 1722, amd named it Easter Island.  At that point, the civilization was at a rather low ebb, and the king had little actual authority.  Following the Dutch came other sailors and their diseases.  These depleted the populaiton, reaching as low as 5000 in the mid-eighteenth century.

The Europeans did bring one good thing, however: the idea that human language could be represented by written symbols.  It is not whone who the first tuhunga ta, or writing expert, was.  But some time during the eighteenth century, the Henua created an astonishingly intricate writing system using symbols from the island's own rock art.  Classical Rongorongo, as this early script is now called, became the exclusive domain of the king's advisors.

During the crisis of the eighteenth century, the Cult of Make-Make, or the Birdman Cult, became the primary way to assert clan dominance and distribute political power.  At the beginning of spring, each clan sponsored a swimmer to make the dangerous swim to the offshore islet of Motu Nui and find the first egg of the season.  The swimmer who arrived back first with an egg would present it to his chief, who would rule the island for a year as the Tangata Manu, or Birdman

The Birdmen proved wasteful and cruel.  Around 1808, the seven leading Ariki, or clan chiefs, decided to stop competing for political power and instead institute the current system of sharing power.  The chiefly families of every clan were declared to have the right to become kings.  The written record of their joint decree, called the Agreememt of the Seven Ariki, is considered one of the earliest written constitutions in the world.  The new monarchy was able to revitalize Henua culture and strengthen the polity.

Interestingly, the Birdman rituals were not discarded, but were re-defined to fit the new monarchial system.  Since 1808, the winner of the annual contest has ceremonially presented his egg to the reigning king (or acting head of state).  In this way, the monarch receives authority from the divinely sanctioned winner.  Therefore, since 1808 the Henua monarchs have used Tangata Manu, "Birdman", as one of their royal titles.

Blackbirders and Emperors
In 1862, some men from New Granada, a national state of the Kingdom of Castile and Leon, visited Henua and were welcomed by the king.  Before they left, however, they carried off some two dozen Henua to hire off as laborers.  Henua had become the victim of blackbirding, the nefarious Western practice of forcing native peoples around the Pacific into labor that was slavery in all but name.

The blackbirders returned a few months later.  As soon as they dropped anchor, they found themselves surrounded by pa'oa-- soldiers-- in outrigger canoes.  They boarded the New Granadan ship and executed the slaving party's leaders.  After the ship departed, the clans gathered up what little foreign currency they had and sent representatives to Chile.  Their aim: to buy guns and hire people who could use them.  The New Granadan government sent a small force to Henua in 1864 to retaliate for the murder of its citizens.  They expected an easy occupation; they were not expecting the Henua to be armed with guns.  The invasion failed.

New Granadans debated sending a larger force to seize the island.  The debate dragged for a few years: what had been a minor military occupation had become a high-profile issue, caught up in the wider debate over whether to ban the practice of blackbirding.  Nationalist New Granadans wanted to colonize Henua as a show of national power.  Others, however, opposed going through the expense and effort to colonize a remote island that seemed worthless except as a source of virtual slave labor.

The Empire of Japan, Castile's rival in the Pacific, put a stop to the debate in 1873 when it sent a warship to Henua to "safeguard the island's independence" (in other words, to prevent their rivals from gaining a new colony).  This happened at a time when Japan's reach was quickly extending: over the last four years Maui, the Marshall Islands, and the Caroline Islands had all become Japanese protectorates.  Meanwhile, Manilla, cornerstone of Castilian power in the Pacific, was just recovering from a major clerical revolt, and further expansion seemed foolhardy.  Henua seemed a small prize to risk war with the fast-growing Japanese Empire.

In 1876 Japan oversaw a treaty between the Henua ariki and the Castilian crown securing the island's independence, but acknowledging Japan as Protector.  The treaty, written in Castilian, Japanese, and Arero Henua, is the first use of Rongorongo writing in international diplomacy.  The king erected Ahu Me'i, the famous moai depicting the Emperor Meidji, thanking him for his aid.  Although Henua was now a Japanese protectorate, it kept complete internal autonomy and never recognized the Emperor as sovereign. 

The Japanese presence lasted forty years.  They built a small naval base at Hanga Piko, which remains the major port today.  The adjacent town of Hangaroa became Henua's largest because of the port.  The Council moved there from Mataveri in 1894.  Japan also built three lighthouses at the island's corners and a fourth on Motu Motiro Hiva.

In 1895 Japan decreased the garisson at its base, as it needed resources for its war with China.  After Japan's position in the Pacific was secured with its victory over Russia, Henua became less strategically significant and the base was reduced further.  When the First Great War ended in 1918, China loomed again as a threat to Japan, creating pressure in the Empire to focus more on protecting its homeland than on distant protectorates.  By this time, the Henua leaders felt  confident that foreign protection was no longer necessary.  The treaty was renegotiated in 1919.  The 1919 Treaty merely left Henua with the obligation never to enter into a future protectorate relationship with any nation but Japan.  Japan received limited fishing and whaling rights in Henua waters in exchange for the transfer of the naval base and the lighthouses.

Hakapuna, the Nationalist King

In the 20th century Henua became an outspoken advocate of anti-colonialism.  The government began to encourage immigration on a limited scale to show off their great civilization, supposedly free of European or East Asian influence.  Immigrants from Tahiti gave Henua a new name: it reminded them of the remote island of Rapa (meaning "extremity"), but it was bigger and more remote.  So they dubbed it Rapa Nui, the "great extremity", the name it is known by throughout the Pacific today.

In 1931, King Hakapuna VI, considered the father of Henua nationalism, ordered a reform of Rongorongo.  He wanted ordinary Henua to become literate without adopting "imperialist" scripts like Japanese cana and Latin letters.

Hakapuna's policies in the Second Great War remain puzzling to many outsiders.  On the one hand, Henua joined the Austronesian League in fighting an expansionist China in what is called the Great Oriental War; Henua even controled a small "occupation zone" in Canton for a short while.  On the other hand, Henua also supported China's ally Ethiopia, which was attempting to drive European imperialists out of Africa in what is called the Ethiopian Liberation War.  A rather inconsequential number of volunteers went to fight alongside Ethiopia in the Battle of Aden in 1943, with Hakapuna's blessing. 

After Ethiopia's defeat, Henua was at the forefront of a Pan-Pacificist movement in imitation of Ethiopia's Pan-Africanism.  In general, the movement failed, but it did establish Henua as a leader within the Austronesian League.  Hakapuna's successor built a moai dedicated to the Ethiopian Emperor, Ahu Haile.

Recent History
Henua has become a tourist destination since the 1970s.  This has brought massive changes to Henua society, including immigrants from Japan and the Americas and the ongoing conversion from a barter to a cash economy.  The government is now taking steps to limit immigration out of fear that the population may reach the unsustainably high levels of the sixteenth century.

Some of the powers-that-be in the Ecotopic Republic of Oregon have taken an interest in Henua.  They have sent an expeditionary team to the island to look into reforestation projects, as well as start a program of global education on the island's history and ecology.  This website is part of that effort.  The Council expelled the team in December 2007 as part of their latest power struggle with King Nga'ara, but Oregonian leaders hope to continue their efforts to preserve the Henua environment, and thus ensure that Henua's ancient civilization can continue to uphold its traditions for a long, long time.

More on History
Motu Motiro Hiva, The history of Henua's tiny colony
How Henua Saved Civilization, An interesting historical tidbit on Henua's role in the history of the Americas
henua.tk
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