CAVES AND CAVE-HUNTING
Residential Caves—Caves as Hiding-Places for Treasure—Burial Caves.
Easter Island, from its geological formation, is a land of underground
cavities; between the harder volcanic strata lie softer deposits, which
have been gradually washed away, either by subterraneous streams or, as
in certain localities round the coast, by the action of the waves,
leaving above and below the more durable substance. There are thus
formed grottoes and crannies innumerable; they were used, as has been
seen, for sleeping-places and for burial, and they also came in handy as
treasure deposits. Large caves are comparatively rare, though in one
district underground ways filled with water extend to a great length,
and the whole surface rings hollow to the tread of a horse.
We daily examined such caves and grottoes as came under our notice; and
systematically excavated some half-dozen, which had apparently been used
in former days as native habitations. Below the floor of one, Mr.
Edmunds had already discovered a small chamber walled and roofed with
slabs, which the natives said had been used as a place of hiding in
cannibal days; but generally the earth deposit is very shallow, and the
yields were the same only as those of the houses at Orongo, a few spear
heads, bone needles, and sea-shells whose contents had been used for
food. There were few objects among the natives which lent themselves to
preservation for any length of time; they never made pottery, although
there is clay in the island; wooden articles would generally rot, and
they had no form of metal. This reflection reconciled us in some degree
to what was otherwise a disappointment, our inability to reach the most
thrilling of the caves, which are half-way up the great sea-cliffs; they
can be seen from the ocean, and are known to have been used, but the
original track has either been washed away by the encroaching waves or
lies in a tumbled mass on the beach below. A special voyage was made
round the island in _Mana_ with the object of studying these caves; some
of the Expedition went in the yacht, and signalled their situation to a
second party, who rode along the coast and placed marks on the cliff as
a guide for subsequent exploration. We finally, however, gave up the
idea of attempting to reach them; it would have been possible, no doubt,
to have done so from the top, with a rope and experienced climbers, but
a certain amount of danger would have been inevitably involved, and,
considering the smallness of our numbers and the circumstances, we felt
it unwise to take the risk of accident. We do not believe, in view of
our experience elsewhere, that they are likely to contain anything of
material value, but, in any case, they remain unrifled for our
successors.
Articles which were considered of value by the owners were kept, not in
these larger caves, but in little holes and crannies where they could be
easily concealed. This practice still continues, both for legitimate and
illegitimate purposes; it made it, for example, impossible to trace the
stores which were stolen soon after our arrival. The natives are
naturally secretive, and do not confide the whereabouts of their
hiding-places, so that when a man dies his hoard is lost. One old leper,
who was said to have some five tablets, reported to his friends that
when Mr. Edmunds was making a wall on the estate, the men went so near
his cache that he was in momentary dread of its discovery, but they
passed it by; he died soon after, and all knowledge of it was lost. The
most tragic story is the authenticated one of a man who disappeared with
his secret store. He had been bargaining with visitors, and went to
fetch for sale some of his hidden possessions; he was never heard of
again. Presumably some accident happened, and he either fell down a
cliff or was buried alive. Sometimes a man on his death-bed will give
directions to his son as to where things are hidden, but natural
landmarks alter, and this information seems seldom sufficient to enable
the place to be recognised; treasure-hunting on Easter Island is
therefore a most disappointing pursuit, as we found to our cost. Soon
after our arrival a man died in the village who was said to have things
hidden among the rocks in a part of the coast not far from the village.
His neighbours turned out to dig. We offered high rewards for anything
found, which were to be doubled if the objects were left untouched till
our arrival on the scene, and we wasted much time ourselves
superintending the search, but nothing appeared. A young man volunteered
the information that he had a cave on Rano Kao where his father had
hidden things, and another half-day was spent in riding to the spot; the
whereabouts had only been described generally, and he could not find the
place.
Yet another day we rode round the eastern headland to find some stone
statues, the locality of which had been confided to Juan by the old man
Kilimuti, who was a member of his family. The search was again in vain,
and Juan indignantly characterised his ancient relative as “a liar.” An
interesting, but equally futile, expedition was made to look for a
tablet, said to have been hidden by a rongo-rongo man near Anakena; the
cave in this case proved to have an entrance like a well, artificially
built up, and to be a long, natural, subterranean chamber. There were
certain traces which might have been those of decayed wood, but nothing
more. We subsequently discovered that this sort of thing is usual; the
natives possess, not “castles in Spain,” but caves in certain localities
which they speak of definitely as “theirs,” but which are quite as
reluctant to materialise as any southern château.
Mr. Edmunds assured us, with amused sympathy, that his initial
experiences and disillusionment had been precisely similar to our own.
The natives themselves, nevertheless, continue to hunt with undiminished
zeal for these hidden articles, whose value is well known; it is the one
form of work which they enjoy. Rumour had come from Tahiti, shortly
before we reached the island, that articles were hidden in a recess in
the coast not far from the Cannibal Cave; the whole place was dug over
and ransacked by treasure-hunters from the village, without result so
far as we ever heard.
Caves were frequently used as places of burial. Generally, as in the
case of Ko Tori, an isolated corpse was placed in a grotto, but on Motu
Nui we came across two subterranean chambers which had been definitely
prepared as vaults. One of these had obviously not been visited for some
time, as a considerable amount of clearance had to be effected before it
could be reached. The entrance proved to be a small, properly
constructed doorway, two feet high and eleven inches in width, from
which a short passage descended at a sharp angle. To wriggle down this
narrow way felt much like a rabbit going into a burrow. The cave below
proved to be a circular vault, under ten feet in diameter. Four corpses
lay side by side on the floor, while a fifth had been hurriedly shoved
in, head foremost, through the doorway above. The ceiling and walls were
artificially made and covered with white pigment. On the walls were
three heads, carved in relief, the only ones encountered; they were
adorned with touches of red paint. The one which was best wrought was
twenty inches in length, and projected some two to three inches from the
surface of the wall; it had a pronounced “imperial.” The sides of the
cave were also adorned with incised drawings of birds. In order to copy
these carvings by the light of a small candle, it was necessary to
encamp among the damp mould of the floor in contact with the remains of
the dead. The proceeding felt not a little gruesome, even to a now
hardened anthropologist, and the return to daylight was very welcome.
The other cave on the islet was very similar, but smaller in size, and
the carvings were not so good. The corpses which it contained had
evidently been buried in tapa. No information of special interest was
forthcoming to account for these burials on Motu Nui; if they were
associated with any particular family or class the fact has been
forgotten.
The custom is said to have existed of enclosing such articles as chisels
and fish-hooks in the wrappings of a corpse, and it is recorded that the
bird-man’s egg sometimes accompanied him to his last home; the idea also
of placing her _prie-Dieu_ in Angata’s grave seemed to be a survival of
such a practice. With the one exception, however, of the beads in the
canoe-shaped ahu, we never found any objects with the dead. The natives
who were generally most anxious to reach the inaccessible caves in the
hope of treasure, felt no interest in one which can be seen from below
to have a wall across the mouth, and which was said to be a place of
burial; they considered that it would contain nothing of value. It seems
therefore probable that belongings buried with the deceased were
speedily stolen and have not been available in the memory of this
generation. It is difficult to suppose that any fear of punishment here
or hereafter would deter an Easter Islander from appropriating any such
article for which he had a fancy.
There may still be accidental discoveries in grottoes of forgotten
hoards, or a few things treasured in this way by old men may be
disclosed, but personally we are persuaded that the secret of this land
must be sought elsewhere than in its caves.
[Illustration:
FIG. 122.
AHU OROI.
An outcrop of rock utilised as an image ahu.
]