Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/389

Rh and her three younger sisters had been taken at the same time to the ahu of Orohié; both parents went and the mother took two chickens, one in each hand, and the mother and children stood upright and the maori sang; they did not go to Orongo because there was war. A drawing was made for us of the poki manu in ceremonial attire, from which it appears that concentric circles of white pigment were made on the child's back and also one on each buttock. A circle in the same position is seen on the back of both the stone and wooden images, and in the case of one stone statue, which had been buried in the sand, was also found on the buttocks.

We have at present, therefore, the following evidence connecting the Bird Cult with the images: the bird-man spent his official year on the mountain where they were quarried, the bird initiation for children was performed in connection with statues and the ring design on the back of the images was reproduced for the ceremony on the back of the children. The old people recognized the rings and girdle of the images as a tattoo design of their youth, and it was volunteered that it was especially affected by tangata-tapa-manu. Above all, we have the fact that in a place of honour in the village of Orongo, which was solely devoted to the Bird Cult, is a typical image. It appears then evident that the people who originally celebrated the Bird Cult included in it reverence for the statues. The ancestors of the present inhabitants were, therefore, either the makers of the monoliths of Easter Island, or, if the bird worshippers represent a more recent immigration, the old religion of the images blended into and survived with the newer culture.