Slave raids and epidemics in the nineteenth…
1863 CE
Slave raids and epidemics in the nineteenth century have nearly eradicated Easter Island’s inhabitants.
"Recruiting" ships looking for labor to work in the Peruvian mines had landed on Easter Island in December 1862, .
Violent abductions had continued for several months, eventually capturing or killing around fifteen hundred men and women, about half of the island's population.
International protests erupted, escalated by Bishop Florentin Jaussen of Tahiti.
The enslaved Easter Islanders are finally freed in autumn 1863, but by then most of them had already died of tuberculosis, smallpox and dysentery.
A dozen islanders finally manage to return from the horrors of Peru.