“Pito Pito” was the local nickname given to the Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Ounésime Dutrou-Bornier, a merchant mariner.  He first saw Easter Island in 1866 as the captain of the ship “Tampico”, bringing two French missionaries of the order of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary of Picpus.  Fathers Escolan and Roussel brought the first horses, cattle, rabbits and domestic fowl to the Island, as well as seeds and fruit trees, to establish themselves on Rapa Nui, together with Brother Eyraud.

Two years later, after losing his ship due to gambling debts, Dutrou-Bornier returned with the idea of staying and making his fortune. Together with the missionaries, he created the Council of State of Rapa Nui, concentrating the majority of the population in Hanga Roa and founding the town under the name of “Villa de Santa María de Rapa Nui”. Shortly thereafter, he married an island woman called Ko Reto Pua a Kurenga, taking her from her husband by force.  Although she did not belong to the tribal royalty, he proclaimed her “Queen” and established himself as Juan I, King of Easter Island. He had two daughters with her: Caroline (1869-1952) and Marthe Hariette (1870-1917).

The discrepancies between the two camps, religious and colonizer, grew and fed on the traditional rivalries between the two tribal confederations on the Island. The wars, ever more violent and bloody, between the various tribes and the instinct for vengeance on the part of the winners, who devastated the farms of the losing side, led to scarcity and famine, which, in part and in turn, finally led to cannibalism.  Bornier, meanwhile, ruled as a tyrannical despot, tearing families and complete tribes from their ancestral lands and relocating them in Hanga Roa and Mataveri. According to the Islander Moisés Tuki: “Our people had to build the walls of their own jail. They became prisoners on their own Island.” (Fischer, “Sombras sobre Rapa Nui”, 1999)

Bornier took over all the cultivated land to develop it as a sheep ranch and began to build stone walls on a small scale to divide the Island into fields for the animals. By 1875, most of the land belonged to Bornier, while the rest was in the name of “Queen” Koreto, but, due to the abuses that he was inflicting on the Islanders, the resentment and hatreds accumulated and gave an indication that his days were numbered. The following year, he was assassinated, which left the Island in the hands of a commercial Tahitian firm for several years. Both of Bornier’s daughters married natives and formed families, the Araki-Bornier and the Paoa-Bornier, which are still important today with a vast number of descendents who continue to live on the Island. In recent years, these families have become interested in rescuing the tomb lost among the weeds and tall grass and taking care of it in Mataveri, in the sector that is today under the management of Carabineros de Chile.