The island is renowned for its nearly 1, extant monumental statues, called moai , which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. Experts differ on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island.
While many in the research community cited evidence that they arrived around the year , a study provided compelling evidence suggesting their arrival was closer to But land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the s, and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of native inhabitants in Chile annexed Easter Island in In , the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship.
In , the island gained the constitutional status of "special territory" Spanish : territorio especial. Easter Island is one of the world's most remote inhabited islands. The name "Easter Island" was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen , who encountered it on Easter Sunday April 5 in , while searching for " Davis Land ".
The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui "Big Rapa" , was coined after the slave raids of the early s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. The phrase appears to have been used in the same sense as the designation "Land's End" at the tip of Cornwall. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island and concluded that there may not have been one. According to Barthel , oral tradition has it that the island was first named " Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka" , meaning "The little piece of land of Hau Maka".
Another name, " Mata ki te rangi" , means "Eyes looking to the sky". Islanders are referred to in Spanish as pascuense , but members of the indigenous community are commonly called Rapa Nui. Oral tradition states the island was first settled by a two-canoe expedition originating from Marae Renga or Marae Toe Hauβotherwise known as Cook Islands , and led by the chief Hotu Matu'a and his captain Tu'u ko Iho.
