Eugène Eyraud
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eugène Eyraud (1820, Saint-Bonnet-en-Champsaur – 1868 August 23 Easter Island) was a lay friar of the Congrégation de Picpus and the first Westerner to live on Easter Island. He was a mechanic by profession.
Contents |
[edit] Arrival
Eyraud entered the Holy Ghost Fathers as a novice. Influenced by his brother, a missionary in China, he left Chili for Tahiti in 1862 and arrived at Hanga Roa on 1864 January 2. He was harassed by the islanders, and only stayed nine months before being repatriated to Chile on 1864 October 11. A year and a half later, on 1866 March 27, he settled on the island as a full priest, accompanied by Hippolyte Roussel and three Mangarevan converts.
[edit] Activities
Although fiercely opposed at first, Eyraud eventually came to be highly popular and influential among the islanders. In October 1866, Gaspar Zumbohm and Théodule Escolan joined Eyraud and Roussel in their mission, and set up schools at Hanga Roa and Vaihū.
On 1866 December 22 Eyraud wrote,
The chances of triumph show themselves day by day to be ever more certain, and the hour of Providence seems to have arrived for the inhabitants of Easter Island. The mission was established the moment the work of destruction touched its final limits: destruction in the material order, destruction in the moral order.[1]
He assisted that year in what would be the last ceremony of the Birdman cult.
Eyraud had contracted tuberculosis during his first visit to the island, and died of it on 1868 August 23, nine days after the last islanders had been baptized.
[edit] Rongorongo
During his first stay, Eyraud remarked that in each house there were wooden tablets covered with "hieroglyphs", now known as rongorongo, but that the islanders no longer knew how to read them and paid them scant attention. He didn't think to inform Roussel or Zumbohm, and never wrote of them again. In wasn't until 1869, when Zumbohm presented a gift which unknown to him included a tablet to Bishop Jaussen in Tahiti, that rongorongo was noticed by the outside world.
[edit] Traditional beliefs
Eyraud wrote of the islanders and their carved wooden statues, known as mo‘ai kavakava, that
Although I always lived with them in the greatest familiarity, I have not been able to find any positive act of religious worship. In all the houses, you can see many statuettes about thirty centimeters in height representing men, fish, birds, etc. […] These are undoubtedly idols, but I never found them given any kind of honour. I saw, on the occasion the natives take these statues outside, them making a few gestures and accompanying all this with a kind of meaningless dance and chant.[2]
[edit] Bibliography
- L'île de Paques: des dieux regardent les étoiles. Michel & Catherine Orliac. Gallimard, 2004. ISBN 2-07-053063-9
- E. Eyraud, « Lettres au T.R.P, Congrégation du sacré-cœur de Jésus et de Marie », Annales Association de la propagation de la foi, vol.38, Lyon 1866 : 52-61 et 124-138.
[edit] External links
- Correspondance of Eugène Eyraud (currently offline)
- Easter Island Foundation sells an English translation of Eyraud's report, along with those of Hippolyte Roussel, Pierre Loti and Alphonse Pinart, under the title Early Visitors to Easter Island 1864-1877.
