How did Easter Island get its name?

The earliest settlers of Easter Island were Polynesian followers of wind and wave.

Over 1500 years ago navigator Hotu Matua led a band of explorer colonists across 2 thousand miles of landless seas. These colonists gave their new home the name:

Te Pito O Te Henua- The Navel of the World.

The colonists found a lush island forested with 80' palms, hauhau, and the toromiro trees. Parrots, owls and other land birds in the flew through the canopy. And since this was the lone refuge for thousands of miles of ocean, the island boasted the largest population of sea birds in the Pacific.

The people of Te Pito O Te Henua thrived. The culture which developed in this rich environment exploited its resources and the population of this small island soared to 10,000 people.

But something went terribly wrong.

When Dutch explorer Admiral Jacob Roggeveen came upon this island in 1722 he charted the land as Easter Island. This was not because he found a Springtime Oasis, in fact the opposite it is true! His log read for April 5, 1722 (Easter Sunday) reads: "We originally, from a further distance, have considered the said Easter Island as sandy; the reason for that is this, that we counted as sand the withered grass, hay, or other scorched and burnt vegetation, because its wasted appearance could give no other impression than of a singular poverty and barrenness."

The population of Te Pito O Te Henua had crashed to less then 2000 people, it's forests and wildlife - gone.

The next 200 years saw Easter Island further decimated. Sickness and slavery claimed all but a handful of the few remaining Polynesian descendants of Hotu Matua; and the grazing of imported livestock destroyed even more of her native flora.

Modern Polynesian sailors noticed that the shape of the land is similar to a canoe blade. They began to referred to the island as Rapa Nui - The Great Paddle.

Today, the land, people and language are all referred to locally as Rapa Nui.

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