Cristo Negro de Portobelo: The Black Christ of Portobelo, Panama

"The Black Christ of Portobelo is a powerful influence in Panama,"

Nobody knows exactly how or when the Black Christ (El Cristo Negro) arrived in the tiny community of Portobelo on Panama’s Caribbean coast. Some put the date at around 1658. But the stories of miracles surrounding the eight-foot wooden statue of the Black Christ are enough to overwhelm the village with tens of thousands of pilgrims every October 21.

Cristo Negro de Portobelo

Some walk the 53 miles from Panama City, thousands walk the last 22 miles from Sabanitas, and many crawl the last mile on hands and knees to worship before El Nazareno, one of the names given to the Black Christ by locals. Many wear ornate purple robes that are discarded at midnight on the steps of the church in which the statue is now housed, Iglesia San Felipe. The robes announce that the wearer is responding to a divine command, doing penance for wrongdoing, or simply making an expression of faith.

Many stories surround the Black Christ statue’s arrival in this unlikely place. All agree that it was carved in Spain, arrived on a ship and was washed ashore at Portobelo. The rest is shrouded in the mists of time and myth.

One story holds that the ship carrying the heavy statue in a wooden crate met a terrible storm that drove it back into the harbor. The ship attempted to leave five times, but every time a sudden and unexpected storm endangered the ship and everyone aboard. On the final attempt, the crew jettisoned the crated Black Christ to lessen the weight and save their lives.

Fishermen, amazed by the lack of respect shown by the sailors, carried the Black Christ to their church and gave it a place of honor.

Another myth is that the figure Jesus of Nazareth was destined for the island of Taboga, off the Panamanian coast, but the Spanish shipper incorrectly labeled the shipment. Many attempts were made to send the statue to Taboga, but all attempts to remove it from Portobelo failed. The people of Portobelo, who suspected the figure had magical powers, said it wished to remain with them.

The sick, the troubled and the needy pray before the ornately robed statue of the Black Christ for the miracles they hope to receive, but it is said that if a promise is made and not kept there will be severe retribution. One story is of a man who prayed he would win the country’s top weekly lottery prize ($2,000) and promised that if he did he would paint the outside of the church.

Sure enough, he won the lottery, but he did not paint the church. He even told friends he did not intend to carry out his promise. Unable to resist what he saw as a good thing, he was back to visit the Black Christ the next year with the same request and promise. Lottery tickets are sold everywhere in Panama where people are, and many sellers are outside the church. He bought his ticket before setting off for home. On the way, he was killed in a traffic accident. In his pocket was the winning ticket.

The foot weary take a break after walk for Black Christ.

“¡El Cristo Negro cobra!” believers warn. The Black Christ calls in the markers!

The popular name, The Black Christ, is attributed to U.S. servicemen shortly after the Second World War. Some 500 arrived in a ship to celebrate the October festival. One witness of that particular day says that many of the U.S. visitors were so caught up in the emotional fervor that they began to shout “viva El Cristo Negro!” The name stuck everywhere except in Portobelo. A more familiar name is simply The Saint.

Mass is called at 6 p.m. on October 21. (Be there before 4 p.m. if you hope to get inside the church.) At exactly 8 p.m., 80 able-bodied men carry the statue from the church to begin a four-hour parade around the community. There is a carnival atmosphere.

The bearers take three steps forward, two back, in a similar manner to that of Spanish religious processions. But, unlike those of Spain, this procession has a special Latin American twist: a quick step to lively music. The bearers have freshly shaved heads, wear purple robes and have bare feet. It is a distinct honor to be chosen to bear the Black Christ, an honor paid for by sore shoulders and aching muscles the next day.

At exactly midnight, The Saint is returned to the church.One story holds that it is impossible to return the Black Christ before midnight. “It just gets too heavy to move.”

(source: Your Panama)

El Cristo Negro-Portobelo,Panama 2009

A Cargo Of Black Barbadian Ivory for Panama

CHAPTER II: A CARGO OF BLACK IVORY

ALTHOUGH the outbreak of yellow fever in Barbados was not serious, the quarantine wrecked my plans. I had expected to leave the island on the Royal Mail boat for Colon. But as long as the quarantine lasted no ship which touched at Bridgetown would be allowed to enter any other Caribbean port. ...

I told him my troubles without further introduction.

He turned out to be a man named Earner employed by the Isthmian Canal Commission to recruit laborers. It had been an interesting job experimenting in racial types. From first to last the Commission had tried about eighty nationalities, Hindoo coolies, Spaniards, negroes from the States, from Africa, from Jamaica, from the French Islands, to settle down to those from Barbados. They have proved the most efficient. This recruiting officer was about to send over a consignment of seven hundred on an especially chartered steamer. They would avoid the quarantine restrictions by cruising about the six days necessary for yellow fever to mature. Then, if their bill of health was clear they could dock. My new acquaintance was not exactly enthusiastic.

It would be easy to arrange for my passage on this boat, he said, but he did not think that one white passenger among this cargo of blacks would have a very pleasing time. But of course I jumped at the chance; it was this or the risk of being held up for weeks. I was considerably cheered when I looked over the boat. I was to have the first cabin all to myself and the freedom of the little chart-house deck under the bridge. With a pipe and a bag full of ancient books about the brave old days on the Spanish Main, I could even expect to enjoy the trip.

I told him my troubles without further introduction. After leaving the boat I met Earner at his office and we went to the recruiting station. On our way we walked through the little park which is grandiloquently called Trafalgar Square. There must have been two or three thousand negroes crowded along one side of it -applicants for work on the Canal Zone and their friends. The commission pays negro laborers ten cents an hour, and ten hours a day. Their quarters are free, and meals cost thirty cents a day. It is a bonanza for them. Barbados is vastly over-populated, work is scant, and wages unbelievably low.

Last year the Barbadian negroes on the Isthmus sent home money-orders to their relatives for over $300,000, so there is no end of applicants. Several policemen kept the crowd in order and sent them up into the recruiting station in batches of one hundred at a time. The examination took place in a large, bare loft. When Karner and I arrived we found two or three of his assistants hard at work. As the men came up, they were formed in line around the wall. First, all those who looked too old, or too young, or too weakly, were picked out and sent away. Then they were told that no man who had previously worked on the canal would be taken again. I do not know why this rule has been made, but they enforced it with considerable care. One or two men admitted having been there before and went away. Then the doctor told them all to roll up their left sleeves, and began a mysterious examination of their forearms. Presently he grabbed a man and jerked him out of the line, cursing him furiously. "You thought you could fool me, did you? It won't do you any good to lie, you've been there before. Get out!"

I asked him how he told, and he showed me three little scars like this, .'., just below the man's elbow.

"That's my vaccination mark," he said. "Every negro who has passed the examination before has been vaccinated like that, and I can always spot them."

Then he went over the whole line again for tracoma, rolling back their eyelids and looking for inflammation. Seven or eight fell at this test. Then he made them strip and went over them round after round for tuberculosis, heart trouble, and rupture. A few fell out at each test. I don't think more than twenty were left at the end out of the hundred, and they certainly were a fine and fit lot of men.

This is NOT Barbados, but Apartheid South Africa. The visuals seemed to match the text.

All during the examination I had never seen a more serious-looking crowd of negroes, but when at last the doctor told them that they had passed, the change was immediate. All their teeth showed at once and they started to shout and caper about wildly. A flood of light came in through the window at the end, and many streaks shot down through the broken shingles on their naked bodies. It was a weird sight something like a war dance as they expressed their relief in guffaws of laughter and strange antics. It meant semi-starvation for themselves and their families if they were rejected, and untold wealth a dollar a day if they passed. They were all vaccinated with the little triangular spots, their contracts signed, and they went prancing down-stairs to spread the good news among their friends in the square.

Sailing day was a busy one. They began putting the cargo of laborers aboard at sun-up. When I went down about nine to the dock, it seemed that the whole population of darkest Africa was there. I never saw so many negro women in my life. All of them in their gayest Sunday clothes, and all wailing at the top of their voices. Every one of the departing negroes had a mother and two or three sisters and at least one wife all weeping lustily. There was one strapping negro lass with a brilliant yellow bandanna on her head who was something like the cheer-leader at a college football game; she led the wailing.

A number would be called, the negro whose contract corresponded would step out of the crowd. A new wail would go up. Again there was a medical examination especially a search for the recent vaccination marks. For often a husky, healthy negro will pass the first examination and sell his contract. Then by boat loads the men were rowed aboard.

About four o'clock I rowed out and went aboard. Such a mess you never saw what the Germans would call "ein Schweinerei." There were more than seven hundred negroes aboard, each with his bag and baggage. It was not a large boat, and every square inch of deck space was utilized. Some had trunks, but most only bags like that which Dick Whittington carried into London. There was a fair sprinkling of guitars and accordions. But the things which threw the most complication into the turmoil were the steamer chairs. Some people ashore had driven a thriving trade in deck chairs flimsy affairs, a yard-wide length of canvas

hung on uncertain supports of a soft, brittle wood. The chairs took up an immense amount of room, and the majority of "have nots" were jealous of the few who had them. It was almost impossible to walk along the deck without getting mixed up in a steamer chair.

There were more formalities for the laborers to go through. The business reminded me of the way postal clerks handle registered mail. Every negro had a number corresponding to his contract, and the utmost precaution was taken to see that none had been lost and that no one who had not passed the medical examination had smuggled himself on board.

We pulled up anchor about six. All the ship's officers head moved into the saloon; it was the only clean place aboard a sort of white oasis in the black Sahara. For fresh air the only available space was the chart-house deck. There was so much to do in getting things shipshape that none of the officers appeared at dinner. So I ate in solitary grandeur. The cabin was intolerably stuffy, for at each of the twenty-four portholes the round face of a grinning negro cut off what little breeze there was. There was great competition among the negroes for the portholes and the chance to see me eat. As nearly as I could judge the entire seven hundred had their innings. I faced out the first three courses with a certain amount of nonchalance, but with the roast the twenty-four pairs of shining eyes constantly changing got on my nerves. I did scant justice to the

salad and dessert, absolutely neglected the coffee, and, grabbing my writing-pad, sought refuge up on deck. The steward, I suppose, thought I was seasick.

The negroes very rapidly accommodated themselves to their new surroundings. The strangeness of it in some mysterious way stirred up their religious instincts; they took to singing. A very sharp line of cleavage sprang up. The port side of the ship was Church of England, the starboard,

Nonconformist. The sectarians seemed to be in the majority, but were broken up into the Free Baptists, Methodists, etc. The Sons of God would go forth to war on the port side, while something which sounded like a cross between "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and Salvation Army

rag-time was in full blast to starboard.

There was only one song, a secular one, on which they united. The tune ran something like "Tammany," and as near as I could catch the words the chorus ran:

" Fever and ague all day long

At Panama, at Panama,

Wish you were dead before very long

At Panama, at Panama."

Not exactly a cheerful song, but they sang it with great fervor.

...That night we ran into heavy weather, and I have never seen anything messier than the deck in the morning. Seven hundred seasick negroes are not a pretty sight, but there was a certain selfish joy in seeing that this storm had made an end of those steamer chairs. They were all smashed to splinters the moment we began to roll.

"I hope," the captain said at breakfast, "that this keeps up. Seasickness will take the mischief out of them." But his wish was not granted. By noon we had run into a sea like a sheet of corrugated iron, just little ripples, and a metallic look. We were running about eleven degrees north, and it certainly was hot. There was not a breath of wind. The negroes recovered with their habitual quickness, and were in an unusually amiable mood. They turned out willingly to help the crew wash down the decks. I have never seen water evaporate so quickly. One minute the decks were glistening with water, the next they were already dry, within five minutes they were too hot to walk on barefooted.

Of course these negroes were not very comfortable. But they were free! There are many men still living who can remember when slave-ships sailed these very waters. It is hard to imagine what life on a slave-ship must have been. The effort to reconstruct the horrors of those days not so

very long past makes the inconveniences which this cargo of black ivory suffer seem small indeed. Above all, there was no one among them who was not here of his own free will. There was not one of them whose heart was not full of hope this voyage to them all meant opportunity. Think what it must have meant to their forefathers! Nothing which happened to them after they were landed and sold could have approached the agony of the long voyage in irons, thrown pell-mell into the hold of a sailing ship. Not knowing their captors' language, they could not know the fate in store for them. The world does move.

When, in the far future, the history of our times is written, I think that our father's generation will be especially remembered because it abolished the negro slave trade. They invented steam-engines and all manner of machines; they cut down a great many trees and opened up a continent and did other notable things. But their crowning glory was that they made an end of chattel-slavery.

Until these imported negro laborers are handed over to the United States authorities at Colon they are under the paternal care of Great Britain. The conditions under which they have been recruited, the terms of their contracts, have been carefully supervised by English officials. Above all, their health is guarded. Their daily menus and they are quite sumptuous have been ordered by His Majesty's government in London.

(source: Panama, The Canal, The Country and The People, 1914)

Working and Dying on the French Panama Canal Construction Project

Southern Explorations reports: It was exotic. It was exciting. It was lucrative. Young Frenchmen with a rosy view of destinations unknown, those with nothing better to do and those with nothing to lose, all signed on to France's next great adventure, the building of the Panama Canal. Even when word leaked back to France that one in five canal workers was dying, still they kept coming, young energetic Frenchmen, recent engineering graduates and workers, all in pursuit of the dream. Called gallant by their countrymen, the recruits kept arriving, swept away by a heady mix of patriotism, bravado and frontier excitement, presumably believing luck would spare them.

Though no accurate records exist, it is estimated that as many as 22,000 workers perished between 1881 when the project got underway and when it ended in defeat eight years later. Lucky were the few who drowned or died in a machinery accident. Most of the French workers, recruited primarily from the West Indies, succumbed to a much more excruciating fate, yellow fever or malaria.

A team of forty French engineers arrived first. They were joined by a team of about 200 workers from the immediate area, as well as Colombia (then called New Granada), Venezuela and Cuba, who began clearing the mostly rainforest vegetation to make way for the canal. By June, the number of technical personnel and workers had expanded four-fold. By the following year, the work force had doubled. By 1884, a third of the way into what was supposed to be a twelve-year project, the Canal employed a workforce of 19,000.

It didn't take long for new workers to size up the situation. Those who didn't immediately succumb to disease didn't stay long. Among the recruits was French painter Paul Gauguin who arrived with fellow-artist, Charles Laval. For Gauguin, working on the canal was part of a much larger dream, a quick way to finance his transition from the staid stockbroker profession to the uninhibited life of an artist. The two landed in Panama in April of 1887 at the start of the rainy season. Laval derived income through portrait commissions, while Gauguin began his stint as a laborer. He lasted only two weeks, just long enough to earn enough cash to build an art studio on nearby Isla Taboga and make plans for further adventures after his Panama tours were over. By June, the pair was off to their next destination, Martinique.

The punishing heat and humidity of Panama's long rainy seasons, exacerbated by the close living quarters of the workers, provided just the right conditions for annual epidemics of yellow fever and malaria. Six months into the initial season of work, the first wave of yellow fever hit. In 1883, 1,300 died of disease, ten percent of the work force. From then on, some 20% succumbed each year.

Yellow fever kills quickly after an agonizing few days of flu-like symptoms and a brief remission before the symptoms worsen, causing the sufferer to vomit blood before developing heart and central nervous problems prior to death. Malaria has similar symptoms that are milder but more lethal. The rising death toll gave the French canal project the nickname "White Man's Graveyard" (though many more people of color perished) and de Lesseps the moniker, "The Great Undertaker."

To deal with the outbreaks of illness, the French built two hospitals, one in the port city of Colon on the Caribbean side of the isthmus and one at Ancon near the Pacific. For those who survived the ordeal, a fifty-room “retreat” was established built on Isla Taboga where workers could rest and recuperate.

Although some French nationals are buried in the French Cemetery at Paraiso on the Pacific side of the canal, it is mostly the foreign workforce whose final resting place is here. After the opening of the canal, the cemetery was abandoned to make way for housing but has recently been restored. Each white cross represents a thousand men who gave their lives, not for a cause they necessarily embraced, but for a wage higher than they could earn in their native lands.

All five of the Southern Explorations Panama tours visit the Panama Canal. On visits of the capital, some Panama tours include a stop at the French Cemetery, a silent monument to the nameless who changed history. (Source Southern Explorations)

Panama Canal

From Reuters, "Panama Canal's Black Builders Await Due Credit," by Tim Gaynor: Panama City (Reuters) - In the year when the United States is to cede control of the Panama Canal to Panama, the waterway's governing body has named a tugboat for its longest serving and most reliable employee.

Tugboat Cecil F. Haynes on the Panama Canal

But for Cecil Haynes, 86, a soft-spoken Panamanian of West Indian descent, it is more than just a personal tribute. It is long-awaited recognition of the role played by black labor in the canal's history.

"West Indians made a very valuable contribution to the canal," he said, sitting in the offices where he has worked since joining the commission in 1928. "But we never got the credit we deserved."

Between 1904 and the canal's completion on the eve of the First World War, more than 25,000 West Indians heeded U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's call to "make the dirt fly."

As the Dec. 31 transition to Panamanian control looms, Haynes hopes the thousands of black workers who labored to build the canal will finally be honored alongside its white engineers.

Panamanian West Indian Museum

Housed in a one-room former colonial church in Panama City's rundown Calidonia district, the Panamanian West Indian Museum has championed the memory of the canal's black work force since the museum opened in 1981.

"The Americans were known for their engineering skill," said Melva Lowe Goodin, the museum's president. "But it was the West Indians who gave the sweat and the blood."

Black Labor On A White Canal

For the black workers from Barbados, Jamaica and Martinique who made up two-thirds of the canal's labor force, the work was hard, dangerous and indifferently paid.

"My father came here in 1904 to dig the ditch. Back then it was just jungle and mosquitoes," Haynes recalled with a smile.

White employees of the Canal Commission were given comfortable housing, while many black workers lived in railway boxcars or shacks in the forests bordering the work site.

In the early years, malaria and yellow fever were rife and accidents were frequent. Records at the wooden museum show that of 5,600 employees killed by disease and accidents between 1904 and the project's completion 10 years later, 4,500 were black.

Particularly hazardous were the vast excavations at Culebra Cut, a 9-mile(5.6-km)-long navigation channel blasted through the cordillera, the range that divides Panama, with dynamite.

Work crews were vulnerable to landslides as they dug the unstable slopes of the cut and accidents with dynamite were common. An explosion in 1908 killed 23 workers and injured 40.

With tragic irony, an action by the Canal Commission intended to improve public health put workers in even greater danger from landslides and explosions.

"Many workers went deaf as a side effect of the heavy doses of quinine they were required to take to treat malaria," Lowe Goodin said. "They just didn't hear the shouted warnings to get out of the way."

Canal Zone Caste SystemMore than seven decades after drawing his first paycheck, Haynes recalls the two-tier pay system that led to segregation of white and black workers in the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone.

"While white workers were paid on the gold roll, in U.S. dollars, we were all paid on the silver roll in local currency," he said.

Silver roll employees had to drink at separate drinking fountains and stand at different lines in the post office under what one observer called the "Canal Zone caste system."
The Canal Zone, a 10-mile(16-km)-wide security strip the length of the waterway, was run under U.S. federal laws, with its own court system and police force, until it reverted to Panamanian control in 1979.

"You couldn't go into gold roll shops," Haynes said. "And after working hours you couldn't be seen in the zone. You would be arrested for loitering or trespassing."

Black workers were classed as "helpers" although they might be qualified in a range of canal-related trades and were paid at half the rate of white co-workers.


American Experience The Panama Canal

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

The Traditions of the Panamanian Congos

African slaves in the fierce struggle for freedom against the Spanish Empire (the 'runaways') were also land in the jungle magic Portobelo. And after escaping deep into its dense forests and hills, the Maroons built fortified villages, known as Palenque, from which declared war against their former slavers. So successful were these courageous battle in the Spanish fugitives were forced to declare several truces, and finally to recognize their freedom and independence.

The traditions of the Congos consist of unwritten traditional performances, with characters from mythology, rituals, costumes, architecture, music, food and dance. Its impromptu street performances recall was metaphorically describe their ancestry and the victory of good over evil.

Congo culture survived thanks to the use of 'double effect' that enslaved Africans used as a weapon of resistance, which allowed them to communicate with one another while confusing the Spanish. By distorting the meaning, the reality becomes ambiguous making the African teachers in the exchange of information. The ability to communicate with each other without being discovered, they made it possible to plan escapes and riots, as well as operate an elaborate system of espionage. The result is a story full of symbolism and idiosyncratic culture, paradigms and metaphors that arouse fascination among visitors to Portobelo ready to be wrapped in mists of light.

One of the traditions of the people is the drummer of "Congos" during Carnaval this tradition dates from the time of slavery in colonial times.

One of the main traditions of the people is the drum of "Congos". It usually occurs during the carnival in February. This tradition dates back to slavery in the colony. It is a mockery of the Spanish kings and during the dance, which lasts several days, the participants assume the role of runaway slaves fleeing the Spanish. They hide in different parts of the village and take captive.

The dance has a story in which characters representing the Congolese fight against the devil, who is on the loose in those days. At the end are saving the "Queen Conga" with the help of "bird" and "John of God" in these traditions is easy to see the syncretism between Catholicism and African rituals Antilles.

Congo, Evocation of complaints from black ancestors and now facts and incidents of everyday life.

The Congo is the one that has persisted and is alternated with salsa dancing or popular. As for the special clothing is congo: change of chintz, striking large flowered skirt, head, crown fitted with colored ribbons, mirrors, flowers typical of the season (Caracucho, jasmine, papos, Havana), pinned at Trez in circle on the sides of the head.

Men use ketones, pants backwards subjects with rope, tape crowns interspersed with mirrors, a motet or quirky bag that serves to put few things picked up.

The Congos are the descendants of the Maroons, who have preserved the stories of their ancestors in a living tradition which is essentially a work of art. You travel back in time achieving power and strength as they approach their African ancestors of the seventeenth century. (source: Webscolar)

Peruvian Government Apologies For Racism, Not Slavery

Amamda Todd of the Liberation reported, "Peruvian government apology for racism leaves out slavery," on 4 December 2009: The government of Peru has issued an apology to citizens of African descent for the first time. A public ceremony will be held for African Peruvians, who are 5 to 10 percent of the population.

Peruvian type: During the course of the slave trade, an estimated 95,000 slaves were brought into Peru from Africa. The last group arrived in 1850 and slavery was abolished in 1856.(Photographed by E. Maunoury of Lima.)

The statement admits that discrimination still exists, but makes no reference to slavery, referring instead only to the "abuse, exclusion and discrimination" of African Peruvians. The first Africans in Peru were the slaves of the Spanish conquistadors. More were brought over to work the land until slavery was abolished in 1854.

Not surprisingly, the apology did not mention what will or should be done to fix the racism and discrimination still present in society. Of course not. Racism is an institution that is part and parcel of capitalist society. Racism is a handy wedge to divide workers and keep them from banding together to fight for their common interest. It has been one of the most effective weapons against working-class struggle available to the rich. (source: The Liberation)

Slavery and Disease on Easter Island

Easter Island's earliest contacts with the outside world occurred before 1800; after that time, whalers began to stop at the island, looking for fresh vegetables and women. They left behind venereal diseases. In 1808, after a bloody battle, an American ship, Nancy, kidnapped 12 men and 10 women with the intent of taking them to the Juan Fernandez Islands to work as slaves in seal-hunting efforts there. Three days' sail from Rapa Nui the captain allowed the captives to come out of the hold; they promptly leaped overboard and began swimming away. Attempts to recapture them failed. The ship sailed onward, leaving the islanders to drown at sea.

Such cruel acts had their affect; many arriving ships were greeted with hostility. In return, islanders were shot, sometimes for the sport of it. Atrocities such as these changed the islanders perceptions of the strangers who appeared on their horizon. While the first few explorers were received as strange but wonderful sources of clothing and goods, subsequent raids and vicious acts perpetrated against the Rapanui made them wary of foreigners. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning.

The most traumatic set of events occurred in the 1860's when the Peruvian slave raids began. It was at this time that Peruvians were experiencing labor shortages and they came to regard the Pacific as a vast source of free labor. Slavers raided islands as far away as Micronesia. But Easter Island was much closer and became a prime target.

Easter Island Map

In December of 1862 eight Peruvian ships landed their crewmen and between bribery and outright violence they captured some 1000 Easter Islanders, including the king, his son, and the ritual priests (one of the reasons for so many gaps in our knowledge of the ancient ways).It has been estimated that a total of 2000 Easter Islanders were captured over a period of years. Those who survived to arrive in Peru were poorly treated, overworked, and exposed to diseases. Ninety percent of the Rapa Nui died within one or two years of capture.

Eventually the Bishop of Tahiti caused a public outcry and an embarrassed Peru rounded up the few survivors to return them. A shipload headed to Easter Island, but smallpox broke out en route and only 15 arrived to the island. They were put ashore. The resulting smallpox epidemic nearly wiped out the remaining population.

Missionaries came to the island and rapid conversion to Catholicism further obscured the ancient life ways. The ship captain that had brought the missionaries, Jean Baptiste Onexime Dutrou-Bornier, decided that the island had possibilities for becoming a sheep ranch. He traded for some land and eventually became a power in the island society. With fire and gun he intimidated the missionaries, who eventually gave up and fled the island. Bornier then declared himself king By 1877, only 110 disheartened Rapa Nui inhabitants remained, some employed in Bornier's sheep raising activities. Bornier, a violent man, was murdered by the abused islanders.

(source: Easter Island)