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The Mana Expedition to Easter Island:
The Butterfly Effect

An Essay by Jo Anne Van Tilburg

A horse, his head down against the Easter Island wind, walked along a wet, narrow path edged with high grass. He picked his way through a familiar forest of tall stone statues, the woman on his back lost in thought. Draped in a thick khaki duster, Katherine Routledge’s form was shapeless, her face shaded by the brim of a soft hat. She reined in her horse and raised her face to look out across the plain toward the blue Pacific. She was in the lee of the wind, her head just below chin level of a tall stone statue. Gazing in impenetrable calm overland toward the sea, the statue imparted to her, as it always did, a sense of quiet dignity, a suggestion of strength and mystery enveloped in an oddly intimate, seductive and powerful body. His face was tilted slightly upward, blind eyes patiently seeking the sun. It was nearing the end of the day, the wildly improbable Pacific sunset was fading and the images around her were gradually becoming black and bulky.

Katherine’s campsite lay far below, tents flapping wildly in the wind. Beyond, her eye caught a flicker of white on the rolling sea. She strained toward it, but it was gone. Pulling binoculars from the pocket of her duster, she scanned the horizon for a long time. Finally, she saw what was certainly a little ship. For nearly half an hour she watched the vessel flit about like a butterfly in a squall, gradually moving closer to the island until, at last, there was no doubt. It was Mana, making her way home to Easter Island from her last round trip journey to the Chilean mainland. Aboard her was Katherine’s husband William Scoresby Routledge, who had been gone nearly three months. During his absence Katherine days had been filled with peace and the richness of discovery. The serenity of the island had stilled her restless mind and silence had given her the chance to know intimately every sound on the wind, every bird’s call and the changing voice of the sea. She had come to know both people and statues as a kind of quirky and eccentric family, but the tiny sail on the horizon signaled the end of all of that. She kicked her horse hard. The startled animal jumped and then moved smartly down the path.

Katherine Routledge came to Easter Island in 1914 as co-leader, with her husband, of the Mana Expedition. She followed in the wake of many ships and many people, bringing her family history, strong intellect and troubled spirituality with her. Nearly two hundred years of post-European contact time had ebbed and flowed round the island, and slavers, missionaries, swindlers, treasure hunters, and human flotsam of every description had washed up on Easter Island’s storied shores. Disease, death and disillusionment had followed, yet the resilient islanders experienced each new arrival with a fresh surge of wary and watchful hope. In 1914 there were four times as many statues as there were people on Easter Island, and an intricate, unsatisfactory, and fragile impasse had been achieved between the remnants of a once-large native Polynesian population and entrenched Chilean and European colonials. Held captive in indentured servitude and desperate poverty, islanders were living in a society precariously balanced on the cusp of change, waiting for something to happen.

Just as, in the natural world, there is calm before a storm, island society appeared stable, even static, to Katherine when she first arrived. Beneath the surface, however, molecules of frustrated energy stirred along ancient and well-established pathways, attracting and propelling with predictable forces. Meteorologists wonder “if the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas.”¹

When Mana arrived on Easter Island on March 29, 1914 she promptly disgorged a massively voluptuous cargo of food and supplies in plain view of everyone on the island. The Routledges then isolated themselves and these riches from all but a privileged few, and Katherine dispensed largess with an iron hand. The resultant envy and anger were predictable, and added to the existing tension. Mana was the metaphorical “flap of a butterfly’s wing,” and the chain of events she set off generated a dangerous human tornado. In Katherine’s own words the “statues remained quiescent” but angry islanders didn’t. Angata, a charismatic old woman who claimed to hear the voice of God, called the islanders to battle and then brought her powerful personality to bear on Katherine’s deeply ingrained spirituality. Katherine Routledge’s life story and Easter Island’s history miraculously encountered each other at a momentous time for both. The result is an island tale that, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, is so “incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible.”²

Notes
1. Hommon, R.J. 1996:580. Unpublished ms on file, Bob Hommon.
2. Daws, G. 1980:191

 

Among Stone Giants:
The Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island
by Jo Anne Van Tilburg
Hardcover, 368 pages, with 16 pages of photographs
ISBN: 0-743-24480-X

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