Easter Island’s Collapse Part One outlined the arrival and spread of the islanders’ communities, and the rise of the Moai cult. In Part Two, we will review those twist and turns that brought the collapse of such an uncommon society. As Van Tilburg noted “the Decadent/Restructure Phase of the island’s prehistory (1680-1722) intensified land use, continued deforestation and probable soil depletion that interacted to produce increasing events of crop failure” (1994). To answer their severe environment, concurrent with increasing social strife due to resources depletion and food scarcity, the Rapanui needed to find other ways to deal with reality. However, that implied a shift to new values, as Edwards put it “not as an immediate adoption of new religious concepts, but rather as a rejection of the perceived failed ones” (2013). Again, as in the past, since their environment did not improve despite prayers and pleas to ancestors, ritual behavior was once again given priority over reality.

It is on the rim of the extinct Rano Kau volcano at Orongo, that a cult known as tangata manu, or “Birdman,” rose to the challenge of the perceived failure of the ancestor’s link with the paramount god in the “otherworld”. The Birdman cult coexisted with the Moai cult on their respective sanctuaries, Rano Raraku and Rano Kau, from early-fifteenth century. At that time, the two cults were reciprocal rather than antagonistic for, even though the Rapanui stopped building statues toward the end of the 1600s, they continued worshipping their ancestors. The rise of the Birdman cult is associated with matato’a leaders, also called tangata rima toto or “men with bloody hands,” who had superseded the socio-political and spiritual dominance of the long-standing Ariki led clans. The cult’s aggressive effort aimed to remove the intercession of the ancestors with Make’make in the belief structure and replace it with a direct appeal to the paramount god.

Easter Island is the only landmark in over a million square miles of the South Pacific. The thirty-seven low and small Sala y Gomez Islands group, 243 miles to the northeast is home to frigates and sooty terns among other seabirds; they are no windbreakers. The island subtropical latitude lies twenty-seven degrees south of the Equator. It is a dry and cool climate that did not allow for the type of tropical crops important elsewhere in Polynesia, such as bread fruit and coconuts; the latter, introduced in modern times, grows poorly on Easter Island. In a depleted environment, the forces of the sun and the wind were intensely destructive. The ecological situation was aggravated by a stow away that came with the first group of settlers, the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans), whose teeth marks were found on baby coconuts. With no natural predator, the rodent found an ideal habitat to proliferate and travel in the extensive underground network of lava tubes.

To meet their worsening environment and concurrent community challenges, as Englert notes, “the Rapanui needed to find other ways to grasp with reality that implied a shift to new values, not as an immediate adoption of new religious concepts, but rather as a rejection of the perceived failed ones” (1973). The Birdman cult stood for such a shift initiated by matato’a leaders, the “men with bloody hands,” that superseded the socio-political and failed spiritual dominance of the long-standing Ariki-led clans. The Birdman cult brought down the Moais to cut off the ancestors’ mana to their living inheritors and assert the warrior’s political power. Studies place the shift away from the Moai cult and the toppling of the giant statues toward the end of the eighteenth century for, by then, the cult had lost most of its political and religious credibility.

On Rano Kau’s crater are seen petroglyphs of the Birdman represented as part man from the neck down, with the head and beak of a frigate bird (Fregata magnificent), a depiction that prevailed before the shift to the sooty tern (Onychoprion fuscatus). Both birds were referred to as manutara. The reason for the shift from the frigate to the sooty tern in the late part of the eighteenth century is that the frigates’ eggs and chicks in their traditional nesting habitats on the slopes of the Poike volcano, were depleted by the islanders. Edwards explain that “birds were very important to Polynesians, especially those of black and white plumage. Migratory birds, however, were most revered for their ability, it was believed, to transit between the worlds of the living and the dead. In seventeenth to eighteenth century Rapa Nui, these beliefs converged to form a religious cult specifically honoring Make’make, known as the Birdman Cult. While the Ancestor Cult deified ancestors represented by statues, the Birdman Cult had a man become the living, breathing medium to communicate with the gods” (2013)

The cult had its seat at Orongo on the crest of Rano Kau’s extinct volcano crater.

Fifty-two semi-buried oval stone-slab structures were dedicated to the clans and were used only once a year for the race. Of the three islets offshore facing Rano Kau are Motu Nui, Motu Iti and Motu Kao Kao. The nine square miles Motu Nui was the focus of the cult’s rituals. For their habitat, the sooty terns were content with a more rugged environment than the frigates. The birds nested on the rocky islet of Motu Nui to protect their eggs and chicks from the islanders.

The contestants for the annual race were tasked with returning the “first” egg of the manutara to their clan chief. In the southern corner of Orongo, at Mata N’garau near the crater’s south rim facing the ocean, below clans’ houses, were hare nui, semi-buried stone houses built for the prophets and the priests known as Tumu Ivi Atua, and for the Tangata Taku, healers and spell casters. Each priest was associated with one of the competing clans. They monitored the race from the volcano’s rim while pleading with Make’make and their beneficent and malevolent deities for the safety of their team or the demise of opponents.

There could be no scramble for so solemn an event. Only those who belonged to the select Ao clans which were in ascendancy at the time of the race, could compete. This selection gave rise, as expected, to anger and conflict that was often settled by war. Ana Kai Tangata translates as the “cave where men are eaten,” it is located near Mataveri on the lower slopes of the volcano. It was the place where contestants from dominant clans were selected for the race together with their support teams. The right to compete, however, was believed to be secured by supernatural means among which were supplications to ancestors and, foremost, to the clans’ own deities and Make’make. Clan chiefs selected men among their servants, known as “hopu manu” or “servants of the birds” to represent them in the race. Each “hopu manu,” however, acted in the name of the four gods associated with the cult. In addition to Make’make and his companion Haua, the two other gods were their wives, Vie Kenatea and Vie Hoa, respectively.

Hopu manus were tasked to go down the 986-foot nearly vertical wall of the crater, wet with sea spray, to the rocky pounding surf below, the swift currents between the islets and the main island, and the no-less swift visitors, sharks. They then swam about a mile, on a pora or totora reed float to the furthest islet, Motu Nui. The totora reeds grow abundantly in Rano Kao’s crater lake. On each float were carried provisions for a week or more on the nine-square-mile islet, where teams holed up for the arrival of the birds, coincident with the rise of the Pleiades and the Austral solstice (Sept/Oct). Meanwhile, the “servants of the birds” lived in a cave whose entrance was concealed by grass. The cries of the approaching of tens of thousands of birds were heard while the flocks were still miles away from the islet.

On arrival, their shrieks covered the pounding surf of the rocks; they then set their nests and hatched within days of their arrival.

The task of the hopu manus was to be first to bring back the one egg of the Sooty Tern to his chief waiting on the volcano’s cliff, unbroken. The going back was as dangerous if not more so than the way in, because the team lead had to beat teams from other clans that may also claim to have collected the “first” egg. The team leader that picked the first egg would run to Puku Rangi Manu, a promontory on the islet, and yell or wave across the channel to men waiting in the Haka Hongo Manu a cave at the base of the cliff, who then would scream the news to the Ariki, “ka varu te puoko” meaning “you can shave your head.” The team leader then tied up the egg into a small reed basket on his forehead and, together with his teammates on their totora read floats, through waves and a pounding surf, swam to the base of the volcano. He then climbed the rocky south wall to the mountain’s rim and handed over the intact egg to his clan chief. The first chief to receive an unbroken egg became tangata manu (tangata = man/people, manu = bird), or Birdman for that year.

Together with the title, the chief was granted sacred status. Treister, Vargas Casanova and Cristino point out that “At that time, the clan chief whose champion had won, shaved his head, brows, and lashes in preparation for the festivities. Then he went down with its retinue dancing and singing to Mataveri on the Path of the Ao. After a few weeks of feasts, he was led in procession to a boat house (hare paenga), located on the southwest exterior slope of Rano Raraku’s volcano, where he remained in seclusion for one year.” Of note is that “through the Birdman cult, the matato’a leaders managed to surpass the traditional authority of the Ariki. Not only did they obtain political power, but they acquired an eminent religious position, generating a new sociopolitical organization that was maintained into the historic period.” (2013). The chief’s hopu manu that brought the egg was also honored and secluded for a year, albeit under lesser constraints.

The stakes of the competition were high indeed, for the rules granted the winning chief absolute power over all clans and their resources for that year. Not all clans, however, accepted the outcome of the race, and those that did not were “convinced” by force. For some, clashes lasted the whole year of the Tangata Manu’s tenure.

The arguments raised by scholars that the “discovery” of the first egg was sanctioned by Make’make who “guided” the seeker, and who then took precedence over any other call from other hopu manus who would then willingly withdraw from the race, is an untenable argument. It not only is in contradiction with the island violent recent past, but should we forget human nature and the absolute secular and spiritual powers granted to the chief, prize, and pride of his clan?

Was the Birdman cult a substitute to the Moai? The answer is no, for it never pretended to be, and people still worshiped their ancestors, traditional intercessors with the “otherworld.” Even though the Birdman cult was believed to be sanctioned by Make’make, the ancestor factor was missing. The reason is the gap between the Moais, witnesses to lines of descent of a family or a clan, while the Birdman was collective.

As in the past, however, Birdman rituals were a call to the “otherworld” in order to make sense of their environmental collapse perceived to be the consequences of neglect in ritual and binding spiritual duties. By shifting those duties away from the ancestors identified with the Moai, it was believed that Make’make would release its mana directly to Birdman clan chiefs. Again, as with the Moai, the belief that imbalance in the natural world was linked to spiritual failure that could be righted by increasing ritual behavior, persisted and could only result in the same outcome. Predictably, the Birdman cult political influence was in decline because it could not address the dreadful island-wide ecosystem’s collapse that had reached a point of no return. The islanders’ lives were about to change in early-eighteenth century, when the Rapanui saw the arrival of men from an unknown world, who came in huge ships and belonged to an entirely different plane of existence.

Their first contact with the outside world was with the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday 1722. Roggeveen was followed within a few years by inquisitive discoverers and adventurers. In December 1862 Peruvian slave raiders visited the island. The raiders captured over 1,500 men and women, or half the estimated population at the time, while others hid in caves. Persistent public outcry by the bishop of Tahiti, together with the French government, compelled the Peruvian authorities to return about 300 Rapanui to their island. Most of the kidnapped islanders had died of diseases on the continent, and there were only about thirty who landed on the island, for most died in transit. Unbeknown to them, they carried deadly pathogens. In the late nineteenth century, the first European science-driven visitors estimated the island’s population to be a few hundred people. Their observations were supported by field investigations of gardens and the extent of cultures of sweet potatoes, yams, sugar cane and bananas. At the close of the nineteenth century, however, based on William Thompson’s 1889 census, Easter islanders numbered only 114 souls.

Credits: Photos and Illustrations

1 – ©andbeyond.com

2 – ©Duncan Wright USFWS – wikipedia.com, public domain

3 – 6 ©georgefery.com – drawings 5 and 6 were photographed in the MAPSE Museum, Hanga Roa, Easter Island

7 – 19^th Century artwork reproduction by ©art-antiques-design.com

Bibliography:
Van Tilburg, Jo Anne, 1994 – Easter Island Archaeology, Ecology, and Culture
Treister, V. Casanova P., & Cristino, 2013 – Easter Island’s Silent Sentinels
Father Englert, S., 1970 – Island at the Center of the World
Thompson, William, J., 1891 – Te Pito Te Henua or Easter Island
Edwards Edmundo & Alexandra, 2013 – When the Universe was an Island
Heyerdahl, T., 1957 – Aku-Aku
Heyerdahl T., 1975 – The Art of Easter Island
Jennings, J. D. – 1979 – The Prehistory of Polynesia
Macmillan Brown, 1924 – The Riddle of the Pacific
Noury A. & Galipaud, J-Ch., 2011 – Les Lapita, Nomades du Pacifique
Routledge, K., 1919 – The Mystery of Easter Island
Sand C., & Connaughton S. P., 2007 – Oceanic Explorations, Lapita, and Western Pacific Settlement

About the author:
Freelance writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics, from history, culture, and beliefs to daily living of ancient and today’s indigenous communities of the Americas. His articles are published online in the U.S. at travelthruhistory.com, popular-archaeology.com and ancient-origins.net, as well as in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com). In the U.K. his articles are found in mexicolore.co.uk. The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. rgs.org. As well as member in good standing of the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX mayaexploration.org, the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA  archaeological.org, NFAA-Non Fiction Authors Association nonfictionauthrosassociation.com and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. americanindian.si.edu.

Contact:
Georges Fery – 5200 Keller Springs Road, Apt. 1511, Dallas, Texas 75248,(786) 501 9692 –gfery.43@gmail.com – www.georgefery.com

by Georges Fery    

Easter Island history turn and twist through time, as all human histories do.

We are familiar with the “when,” “what” and “how” of the island’s past, its society’s rise and fall in the confine of an extreme isolation, but we are still grasping with the “why.” The island’s past is a tragedy for, unlike events that shaped other cultures of the Americas, its past unfolds through the mind-made faith in “another world” that, together with its unusual environment and isolation, ended dreadfully. We are familiar with the settlement of people on this isolated speck of land and its archaeology, so let’s examine the undercurrents that led to the islanders’ demise.

What happened on Easter Island is not unique and is found in the histories of other cultures. The uniqueness of Rapa Nui, its Polynesian name, is that the ecological collapse took place on sixty-seven square miles of a volcanic island in the middle of the South Pacific. The now extinct three major volcanos and seventy-tree minor volcanic cones are a testimony to the geologically tumultuous birth of the island; today there are no volcanic activity. We know that the people of Pitcairn and Henderson islands interacted with the islanders during the early phase of their settlement. The interaction may have stopped in about 1150 or 1200, why? The record is not clear, but we are confident that it took place within that time frame. From late thirteenth century, the isolation of the island had its people believe that they were at “te pito o te henua” or “the end of the land” in Polynesian. Generations that followed the last wave of settlers never saw another human being for hundreds of years. They believed that they were the only living people on earth, but for the seasonal migrations of sea bids in time with the rising of the Pleiades and the Austral Solstice.

The Moais are at the heart of Easter Island’s history. Today the distinguishing feature of the island are its giant stone statues called Aringa Ora which means “live face” a name that applies to ancestors in Rapanui language. Ninety-five per cent of the statues are made from a single solid block of volcanic tuff from the Rano Raraku volcano, while others are made of trachyte, red scoria, or basalt. Once shaped, the Moai was transferred to a clan’s altar located at the apex of its land closest to the seashore. It was then raised on a rectangular platform made of massive rock slabs, with a core filled with stone rubble.

On Rapa Nui the Moais were those of ancestors at the head of each clan and family. In the “otherworld” those ancestors were believed to receive mana the supernatural power from the paramount god Make’make, that was then passed on to their living descendants. Mana was entrusted to clan heads, the Arikis and the supreme chief, the Ariki Mau who received the most. Moai carving and erection on clan lands illustrate the importance of knowing the ancestry of each family, as well as clan hierarchy and its members subordination, as are the Tikis in the Tuamotus. The increasing need to demonstrate power and prestige through the Moai eventually led clans to severely tax the environment to the extent that people had to fight for resources, essentially food and wood.

A small lake of fresh water in Rano Raraku volcano caldera, supports a bed of totora reeds. At last count, there are 887 recorded Moai. Of those, 288 were moved to their destination, while 46 are still in the quarries inside the crater and 103 outside on the southern slopes. 92 are scattered beyond, lying down on the way to their altar, and are mostly intact. The statues are unique for there is nothing quite like them anywhere else. There are large stone statues, such as the Tikis in the Marquesas and other islands of eastern and central Polynesia. But never do they occur in size or number approaching those of Easter Island, and their shapes are different from that of the Moai. With few exceptions, the statues represent a man’s body from the head to the level of the hips with hands and long fingers placed bellow the belly button, sculpted in low relief. A posture common in the Cook, Austral and Society Islands’ art, and recognized as a burial posture in the Tuamotus.

The carving of a Moai was both a technical and a ritual process that required two constituents to transfer nature, the rock, to culture, the Moai. A team of five to six carvers worked on each statue using basalt and obsidian tools. Repeated incantations with magical power, was believed to help ancestors, through the carvers, to materialize the Moai out of the rock. The close similarity in the shape of the faces of Moais underline the fact that they are not actual physical representations of dead ancestors. Why then did they not have identifiable facial features specific to ascendants, as remembered in each family, or that of a clan leader? This observation leaves one possible option to the riddle: it is because they represent souls in the other world believed to have no identifiable features. The uniformity of the Moais physical aspect is grounded in a common model that did not intend to show appearances that vary with individuals, but that of the common shape of a soul in an indescribable world.

But who qualified as ancestor? As a rule, it was a senior male that traced his line of descent with the descendants of Ariki Hotu Motu’a’s six sons. They also were those which left significant resources or position in their community. Above all, ancestors were “go-between” with the “other” world and its paramount god Make’make, dispenser of the all-powerful mana. This wellspring of ancestral power was common in the mythological pantheons of most cultures of the Pacific and beyond.

With such perception of life and Make’make’s backing through their ancestors, the Rapanui people could not possibly come to terms with the cumulative cause and effect of their actions, nor their failures. In other words, they did not relate, as in modern minds, to the consequences of their actions for they assigned those to a third party, the ancestors in the “other” world”. But, from where did Make’make came from? For the name is unknown elsewhere in the Pacific where the paramount god is Tangaroa, creator god and master of the seas. Make’make can only be the Ariki Hotu Motu’a’s creation for its power yielding dominion over its own Miru clan, paramount in all social and religious affairs. Of note it that Hotu Motu’a was not a political ruler but the main mana holder.

Make’make’s mythological powers were like those of Tangaroa, in command of the climate, animal migrations from birds to fish, food crops success or failure and other life sustaining needs. Those and more were now believed to be Make’make’s exclusive domains. As for all human communities, the society in the new land needed spiritual guidance beyond that of secular authority, Make’make was Hotu Motu’a’s answer to that need. Furthermore, Make’make was believed to be the sole master and dispenser of mana he granted or withheld at will through ancestors. No success or failure, from nature’s rewards to joy or sadness, wellbeing or deprivation could happen in this world without mana.

Most activities including cooking, took place outside. A several yards away from the house or cave, was the manavai or garden, where edible plans were grown in two to three feet deep holes below the ground surface, covered with a bed of lava rocks. The purpose of a bed of rocks for the manavai was to create a two to three feet deep sunken garden to grow small plants, or a three to five feet high rock enclosure above ground for trees, such as bananas or others. The function of the manavai was to protect the plants from extreme weather and winds in a depleted environment. This so-called lithic mulch agriculture was the answer to trap humidity in the soil to slow its dissipation to the winds and the sun.

It is estimated that a sharp population decline through famine and wars took place in the period late 1500s to early 1600s, from an estimated six to eight thousand souls at the peak of the period, to about half that number at the beginning of the Decadent Period. Several factors need to be taken into consideration for such a precipitous decline. Of note, is that Rapanui people, like others in similar exacting environments, tend to see ritual requirements as an integral part of their natural environment. This perception stresses that neglect of ritual duties was believed to cause imbalance in the natural world and, that imbalance could only be righted by extending or increasing ritual behavior. Since their environment did not improve, despite pleas to ancestors, ritual behavior was given priority over reality. The Rapanui were unable to overcome the “ancestor factor” that governed their lives, for that factor was deeply rooted into a mind-made belief, that had them dig their own grave.

Easter Island sixty-three square miles is the only landmark in over a million square miles of the south Pacific, with no other landmass to slow the winds blowing from all quarters. Foremost, the two forces, the sun, and the wind in a depleted environment, were intensely destructive. The question is: how Easter Island’s environment looked like before human arrival? Archaeobotany support the historical record that, upon arrival of the Ariki Hotu Motu’a and his people, the island was covered by a sub-tropical forest with massive coccoid trees, the sixty-foot tall Chilean Wine Palm (Jubea chilensis), witnessed by channels cut by its roots underground, and baby coconuts remains found in lava tubes, with Polynesian rat teeth marks.

So, what happened? By the end of the seventeenth century the land, devoid of trees, was left open to the harsh and ill-force winds blowing from the four quarters. With no significant vegetation to speak of to slow the winds and reduced trees and bushes to hold humidity and plant decay to feed the topsoil; evaporation took place rapidly; it could not be stopped. When the first settlers arrived, the archaeological record indicate that the island was lush with Chilean Wine Palm and other trees, among which was the eight to ten feet hard wood Toromiro (Sophora toromiro), small bushes, and undergrowth plants. Annual rainfall averaged forty-five inches, but water from the rains quickly filtered below a porous volcanic soil in the extensive network of lava tubes that crisscross the island underground, draining the water in the ocean at low tide. As their environment deteriorated, the islanders did work at finding other ways to protect their shrinking ecosystem to grow their food; the manavai was one of the answers.

Impact of severe storms and droughts together with the island extreme geographical isolation, were not overriding factors for, extreme climate events took place in the past, without lasting outcome. Over population and unchecked depletion of resources, were the destabilizing factors. The Rapanui people were aware of their shrinking ecosystem and mobilized to find ways to overcome it. However, the mindset of ancient cultures merges actual and mythic views of life and their existence. In other words, nothing happened in this world without its simultaneous counterpart, positive or negative, in a mythic world, abode of benevolent or malevolent gods and deities, and home to ancestors. Were they not assured by ancestors that with mana, nature would forever replenish itself? After all, so said the Arikis, the lineage chiefs and shamans, backed up by generations of successful petitions to the ancestors and to Make’make provider of the inexhaustible mana.

The belief in an inexhaustible bounty had dramatic consequences. Large birds, such as Frigates, avoided the island for their nesting habitat, depleted by humans, had shrunk dramatically, they kept flying to the Marquesas and beyond. There were no more wood to build boats to go out to deep water fishing grounds for, unlike most coral islands, a volcanic island like Rapa Nui lacks a lagoon for inshore fishing. Fish and shellfish made a smaller contribution to the islander’s diet, as found in kitchen middens. The Rapanui could no longer build canoes to escape from a condition of need and fear, they were trapped! The ancestors had failed their descendants, and people realized that Make’make had turned its back on their ancestors by withholding its mana.

The ecological disaster could not be assigned to clan leaders alone. Studies place the abandonment of belief in the Moai cult, towards the end of the 18^th century for, at that time, the cult had already lost most of its political and religious credibility. The Rapanui, however, could not understand that they were the ones responsible for their ecological disaster that, even the unblinking eyes of the Moai, were unable to foresee.

This is the first of a two-part article. Follow this link to see Part Two.

Photos & Credits:
1. Rapa Nui Ancestors
2. Ahu Tahai
3. Make’make by https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rivi~commonswiki licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
4. Long House and Manavai
5. Rapa Nui
Photos #1, 2, 4 and 5 are ©georgefery.com

Bibliography: 

Van Tilburg, Jo Anne, 1994 – Easter Island Archaeology, Ecology, and Culture
Treister, V. Casanova P., & Cristino, 2013 – Easter Island’s Silent Sentinels
Father Englert, S., 1970 – Island at the Center of the World
Thompson, William, J., 1891 – Te Pito Te Henua or Easter Island
Edwards Edmundo & Alexandra, 2013 – When the Universe was an Island
Heyerdahl, T., 1957 – Aku-Aku
Heyerdahl T., 1975 – The Art of Easter Island
Jennings, J. D. – 1979 – The Prehistory of Polynesia
Macmillan Brown, 1924 – The Riddle of the Pacific
Noury A. & Galipaud, J-Ch., 2011 – Les Lapita, Nomades du Pacifique
Routledge, K., 1919 – The Mystery of Easter Island
Sand C., & Connaughton S. P., 2007 – Oceanic Explorations, Lapita, and Western Pacific Settlement

About the Author:
Freelance writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics, from history, culture, and beliefs to daily living of ancient and today’s indigenous communities of the Americas. His articles are published online in the U.S. at travelthruhistory.com, popular-archaeology.com and ancient-origins.net, as well as in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com). In the U.K. his articles are found in mexicolore.co.uk.
The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. rgs.org. As well as member in good standing of the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX mayaexploration.org, the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA archaeological.org, NFAA-Non Fiction Authors Association nonfictionauthrosassociation.com and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. americanindian.si.edu.
Contact: Georges Fery – 5200 Keller Springs Road, Apt. 1511, Dallas, Texas 75248 (786) 501 9692 –gfery.43@gmail.com – www.georgefery.com