Alexander Ariipaea Salmon

Alexander Ariʻipaea Vehiaitipare Salmon Jr. (1855–1914) was the English-Jewish-Tahitian co-owner of the Maison Brander plantations on Tahiti and de facto ruler of Easter Island from 1878 till its cession to Chile in 1888.

Salmon's father, Alexander Salmon (Solomon, 1822–1866), was an English Jewish merchant. While secretary to Pōmare IV of Tahiti, he fell in love with her twenty-year-old adoptive sister Oehau. For three days the queen canceled the law forbidding a Tahitian to marry a foreigner, gave Princess Oehau the title ari‘i Taimai, and they married.

Their daughter, Salmon's sister, Johanna Marau Ta‘aroa (1846–1934), married her uncle, the future King Pōmare V, and was de facto ruler as Queen Marau (1877–1880) until he abdicated to the French colonial government. Another daughter married the Scottish merchant John Brander.

Their son, Alexander Jr, known as "Pa‘ea" (Mangarevan for 'hobble'), inherited his father's business interests and became co-owner with Brander of the Maison Brander copra and coconut oil plantations in Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Cooks.

The Maison Brander owned a large sheep ranch on Easter Island for exporting wool. The ranch was managed by the power-hungry convicted murderer Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier, who had acquired additional land and appointed his Rapanui wife "Queen". This was the low point in the island's history; by 1872 its resident population had been reduced to 111.

In 1871 Alexander Jr had picked up rudimentary Rapanui from his hundreds of indentured Easter Island laborers at the Mahina coconut plantation on Tahiti. In 1877 Queen Pōmare IV died, and Alexander's sister became regent. John Brander also died that year, and Dutrou-Bornier was assassinated. Alexander set off for Easter Island to manage the sheep station in around October 1878 with twenty Tahitian workers and an unknown number of Rapanui whose indentures had expired and ran the island for a decade. He introduced the coconut, the first sizable tree on the island since its deforestation two centuries earlier, apart from some fruit trees at the SSCC Catholic mission and Dutrou-Bornier's estate.

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