Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier

Jean-Baptiste Onésime Dutrou-Bornier (19 November 1834 – 6 August 1876) was a French mariner who settled on Easter Island in 1868, purchased much of the island, removed many of the Rapa Nui people and turned the island into a sheep ranch.

Dutrou-Bornier served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War, and by 1860 had become a master mariner. He abandoned his wife and young son in France, and in 1865 bought a one-third share in the schooner Tampico. He sailed to Peru, where he was arrested, accused of arms-dealing and sentenced to death. Released on the intervention of the French consul, he sailed to Tahiti, where he began recruiting labour from the islands of East Polynesia for coconut plantations.

In November 1866 Dutrou-Bornier transported two missionaries, Kaspar Zumbohm and Theodore Escolan, to Easter Island. He visited the island again in March 1867 to recruit labourers, but he then amassed huge gambling debts and, as a result of some fraudulent deals, forfeited his share of the Tampico. He acquired the yacht Aora'i, and arrived on Easter Island in April 1868, where the yacht was burnt.

He set up residence at Mataveri, began buying up land from the Rapanui. In 1869 he seized Koreto, the wife of a Rapanui, and married her. He tried to persuade France to make the island a protectorate, and recruited a faction of Rapanui whom he allowed to abandon their Christianity and revert to their previous faith. With rifles, a cannon, and hut burning, he and his supporters ran the island for several years as "governor", appointing Koreto Queen. The title had no legitimacy behind it and is not recognized by the Rapanui or modern historians.

Dutrou-Bornier aimed to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui and turn the island into a sheep ranch. He bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around Hanga Roa and moved a couple hundred Rapanui to Tahiti to work for his backers. In 1871 the missionaries, having fallen out with Dutrou-Bornier, evacuated all but 171 Rapanui to the Gambier islands. Those who remained were mostly older men. Six years later, there were just 111 people living on Easter Island, and only 36 of them had any offspring.

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