Make-make, the avian zenith of Rapanui. At the beginning, Make-make made the sky, sun, moon, sea and the earth. In this newborn state, Make-make gazed into the infant water, his own reflection creating his first son Haua. Make-make then desired to create something like himself, to do so he began to fertilize various things. From water Make-Make fathered the fish of the sea, yet this was unsatisfactory. Next he tried with stones, but he failed once again. Finally, Make-Make fertilized red earth and fathered the gods Tiva, Hova, Rarai, and Arangi-Kote-Kote, these gods would eventually give rise to humanity.
According to one myth, a priestess once looked after a skull with immense spiritual power. One day, a large wave came and took the skull, with the priestess leaping into the sea in pursuit. The priestess swam for what seemed like an eternity until she finally grew exhausted in the middle of the ocean. Eventually she washed up on an island only to be greeted by the god Haua. Haua asked her what she was doing, when she answered that she was looking for her lost skull Haua informed her that it was no ordinary skull, but rather an incarnation of the god Make-make. Make-make then showed himself and spoke to his son, saying that the birds were at risk of extinction from overhunting. With Haua, Make-make drove the birds from island to island. However each time they drove the birds to an inhabited island, they were once again threatened with overhunting. Lastly, the duo drove the birds to the uninhabited islets of Motu-nui and Motu-iti. Make-make and Haua would then teach the local Rapanui people about the Tangata Manu selection ritual in order to preserve the bird population. The priestess then taught these people how to give offerings to Make-make and Haua.
According to oral tradition, the Rapanui king Tuu Ku Ihu called upon the power of Make-make to command the constructed Moai statues to walk to their resting grounds.
Make-make lords over the afterlife as well, he consumes the souls of evildoers, while those who did good rest with him.
—————
Make-make was by far the most important god in Rapanui religion, paramount to their culture. Make-make was conceived of as the chief god and the origin by which everything traces back to.
Like all the gods of Rapanui, Make-make exercised his will through the island’s priests, of which his will was preeminent in importance. There were both male and female priests, these priests would be possessed by the spirit of Make-make who would declare his desires through them, often placated with offerings of food. If these offerings weren’t given, it would anger Make-make. Despite his anger, it’s known that Make-make was quite forgiving, quickly forgiving those who showed remorse in their disrespect of him. Despite their religious importance, more important rituals were instead organized and held by the noblemen and chiefs.
It’s possible that Make-make’s myths were recorded in the Rongorongo tablets. Etched onto these tablets is a script lost to time, and while many attempts have been made to decipher them, and some claiming to have succeeded, none have truly been successful. While originally thought to be an entire writing system, the modern consensus is that it was rather a “proto-writing system”, a script with a specific individual meaning that is unable to be read by others.
Make-make was the main subject of Rapanui rock art. Predominantly, Make-make was depicted as a face with large eyes and a long nose. Researchers have tried to explain these traits, some believe that the face was meant to represent a skull pointing to the face’s large orbits, this however does not explain the large nose. The most popular and most likely theory is that the face was based on bird, with the elongated nose being akin to the long beak of a bird.
The god’s primary companion was the god Haua. The two were so connected that Haua was never mentioned outside of Make-make. The creation myth detailing the creation of Make-make’s first son does not detail the son’s name or identity. Some have postulated that the first son was the Tangata Manu or “bird man”, pointing to the plentiful rock art depicting bird men. However, the Tangata Manu acted more like a title rather than an actual character, with the native Rapanui people instead relating the bird man rock art to Make-make. I instead believe that this first son was Haua. While there is no concrete proof, Haua’s character as the primary and constant companion of Make-make, I feel like this is an apt conclusion.
The Tangata Manu selection was one of if not the most important ritual to the Rapanui people. The first step entailed the selection of numerous contestants, who were chosen by priests via prophetic dreams and were men of significant status. These contestants would then choose a representative of a lesser prestige called a hopu who would actually partake in the event. These hopu would then be provided with living supplies before they swam to Motu Nui. Each of the hopu would then wait for the arrival of the migrating sooty terns who would lay their eggs on the islet. Which ever hopu claimed the first egg would climb to the highest point in Motu Nui and call out to their respective contestant to proclaim their victory. The losing hopu would swim back to the main island empty handed, while the winning hopu would swim back with the egg in a reed basket tied to their head. Upon presenting the egg to their sponsor, the contestant (not the hopu) would shave their head and paint it red or white and be crowned the Tangata Manu. Following their victory, the Tangata Manu would then lead an entourage to Rano Raraku or Anakena depending on which group of clans they were from, either the Ko Tuꞌu Aro or Hotu Iti respectively. The Tangata Manu, now seen as the earthly representative of Make-make and exceedingly holy, would be privy to numerous gifts and offerings while his clan would have the sole right to claim the eggs of the island for themselves. The Tangata Manu would be sent into isolation for a year, letting their hair and nails grow out and only sleeping and eating.
Make-make has an incredibly interesting relationship with the Christian faith. After Rapanui was ransacked by slave traders, the next notable foreign influence was from Christian missionaries. Most notably, the Rapanui seemed to have conflated Make-make with the Abrahamic God themselves. There’s actually direct evidence of this, as in a separate account of creation, Make-make was said to have created man from red earth and when he noticed that the man was lonely he took one of his ribs and created a woman, a clear analog to the Abrahamic Genesis. The missionaries used this as a springboard for colonization. Conversion destroyed much of Rapanui religion and culture, with the vast majority of myths and gods being lost to time, with those who could read the Rongorongo that recorded them dying out from the effects of colonization. Many of the surviving myths are garbled and hard to understand, missing integral context and entire portions leaving the majority of figures in Rapanui mythology to be only known by their names. Despite this, Make-make seems to be the clear exception, with his importance and reverence surviving to the modern day, modern Christian practices by the Rapanui even synchronize the two religions.
The historical development of Make-make is hard to trace for the previously explained effects of colonization. Some have however posited a framework for the timeline. It’s hypothesized that the Rapanui religion was originally centered entirely around ancestor worship, epitomized by the erecting of the Moai. It was only later with the erosion of the Island’s ecology and the alleged spread of warfare did a new warrior class emerge and introduce Make-make and the Birdman cult. Despite how widespread this theory is, it’s notably faulty and relies on the ecocide hypothesis. The notion that the decline of the Rapanui was self inflicted has been historically criticized. While the Rapanui did log their trees, the island itself was more susceptible to deforestation than other Polynesian islands. Archaeology has proven that warfare was actually quite rare, being restricted to small tribal conflicts. Weapons were more often used for farming rather than actual fighting. The Rapanui population, while small, only ever grew continuously. The die off only started after the arrival of Europeans and once colonization reared its head. While I do agree that there was probably a paradigm shift sometime in the past that shifted towards the later culture, I doubt that Make-make was completely absent in that early mythos. I find it hard to believe when Make-make’s character is so ingrained with the traditional themes found within the greater Polynesian cultural landscape. I think that Make-make, or some ancestral form of his, was present in the old ancestor cult but only took on his more modern form later.
While Rapanui’s mythology was more isolated than the rest of Polynesia, Both Make-make and the religion itself still holds connections with the greater mythos. Make-make is believed to have descended or is at least related to the Māori Tane, the god of forests and birds. Some have even theorized that Make-make even absorbed some of Tiki’s attributes as well, as seen in a largely damaged myth that associates Tiki’s wife with Make-make. While the majority of the mythological figures found in traditional Polynesian mythologies are uniquely not present in Rapanui, some do still have a presence in the culture. Rather than being full on worshipped deities, they’re instead interestingly reconfigured into mythological ancestors, examples include Tangaroa, Tūmatauenga, Ruanuku and Rongo (note that this god is seemingly unrelated to Rongorongo nor Orongo).