ABSTRACT
Western explorers, anthropologists, archeologists, historians, novelists, and filmmakers create captivating and enduring stereotypes of other cultures. Once established, some of the stereotypes emerge as conceptually dominant and especially resistant to modification. Stereotypes exhibit a life of their own. They resist review, analysis, and replacement, and can function similarly to status markers. Polynesians, including Easter Islanders, have frequently been labeled savages and cannibals. Ship journals through the first half of the 19th century indicate healthy Rapanui populations; the volumes of produce bartered with the ships suggest that the economy of this small island was vigorous enough to produce a substantial surplus to barter with ships. The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its trees extinct. The Rapa Nui palm declined, perhaps gradually, then experienced total extinction, but Rapanui population continued to grow until just before European contact.
