Mateo Veriveri’s shorter Makemake cycle differs in detail from Arturo Teao Tori’s fuller version on the main Make-Make page here. Koha U Motu flags it as an incomplete variant; it is still useful for seeing how multiple elders framed creation imagery before publication in Englert’s bilingual compendium.
Makemake the Creator (English column)
The English paragraphs below reproduce Koha U Motu’s page for Mateo Veriveri’s telling, including its editorial note that the version is incomplete and differs from the original text. Wording follows that digitisation of Father Sebastián Englert’s Leyendas de Isla de Pascua (1980 University of Chile edition).
Makemake the Creator told by Mateo Veriveri. Obviously an incomplete version the details of which differ from the original text. Makemake is the first.
Makemake took a water gourd, he made a hole in it and he fecundated the water; only the small fishes called paroko were plentiful; his travails had been in vain.
Then he took a stone, he made a hole in it and fecundated it; nothing happened again
Makemake went back to work, he piled up some dirt, made a hole in it, and fecundated it; Man resulted, who was to live on the earth. Note 4 on Koha’s page: the narrator did not recognize the expression ihoiho kiko mea, which does not fit with this version of the text.
Two published Makemake cycles side by side
Scholarship often treats Teao Tori’s longer narrative as the canonical printed form while noting that Veriveri’s field session produced a briefer, partly garbled variant—exactly the situation Koha’s header comment records.1
Readers comparing both legends on this site should still open Englert’s own bilingual book or Mulloy’s English translation for pagination, footnotes, and missionary-era commentary absent from the web mirrors.2
Stone, sea, and soil imagery
The Veriveri text keeps Makemake’s creative gestures tied to gourd water, coastal stones, and piled earth—imagery consistent with other Englert-era informants who thought in maritime and littoral terms.3
Because the narrator could not gloss ihoiho kiko mea, translators caution against over-interpreting a single lexical puzzle in isolation from the fuller Teao Tori manuscript tradition.
Pedagogy for visitors
Guides sometimes condense both Makemake legends into one campfire story; pointing listeners to both Koha pages helps them understand that Rapa Nui archives preserve multiple coexisting variants rather than one Disney-ready script.4
Pair this page with the bird-year cosmology article on Make-Make and with Hotu Matu’a migration narratives when visitors ask how creator stories relate to settlement epics.5
Sources
- Koha U Motu — Mateo Veriveri’s Makemake (English + Rapanui columns). Open link
- Koha U Motu — fuller Makemake cycle (Arturo Teao Tori), linked from this site’s Make-Make page. Open link
- Englert, S. (1970). Island at the center of the world (Mulloy trans.). Internet Archive scan. Open link
- Métraux, A. (1940). Ethnology of Easter Island — comparative discussion of creation narratives. Open link
- Wikipedia contributors (ongoing). Makemake (Rapa Nui deity). Open link