The managers of the sheep ranch and…
1864 CE to 1875 CE
Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier buys up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around Hanga Roa and moves a few hundred Rapa Nui to Tahiti to work for his backers.
Dutrou-Bornier aims to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui and turn the island into a sheep ranch.
He had served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War, and by 1860 had become a master mariner.
He abandoned his wife and young son in France, and in 1865 bought a one-third share in the schooner Tampico.
He sailed to Peru, where he was arrested, accused of arms-dealing and sentenced to death.
Released on the intervention of the French consul, he sailed to Tahiti, where he began recruiting labor from the islands of East Polynesia for coconut plantations.
In November 1866 Dutrou-Bornier had transported two missionaries, Kaspar Zumbohm and Theodore Escolan, to Easter Island.
He had visited the island again in March 1867 to recruit laborers, but he then amassed huge gambling debts and, as a result of some fraudulent deals, forfeited his share of the Tampico.
He acquired the yacht Aora'i, and arrived on Easter Island in April 1868, where the yacht was burnt.
He set up residence at Mataveri, began buying up land from the Rapanui.
In 1869 he seized Koreto, the wife of a Rapanui, and married her.
He tried to persuade France to make the island a protectorate, and recruited a faction of Rapanui whom he allowed to abandon their Christianity and revert to their previous faith.
With rifles, a cannon, and hut burning, he and his supporters ran the island for several years as "governor", appointing Koreto Queen.
The title had no legitimacy behind it and is not recognized by the Rapanui or modern historians.
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Polynesia
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