Legends

How the Heads of Easter Island Came to Be

This is a legend I wrote for an eighth grade english class, tell me what you think! :D

                     How the Heads of Easter Island Came to Be:

Since there is no right or wrong way to start a fine tale, I will simply start with this.

The Natives began the carving of stones; the very first were on the island we now call Easter Island, Back thousands and thousands of years ago...

On the island of Numali, off the coast of Chili, South America, there were a tribe of natives, they were called the Nma, and they were a giant of a people. They forced the other natives of the island to worship them. The other natives were big and strong, forty meters tall each, but, not nearly as big or strong as the Nma tribe was.

The heads of the giants alone were seventy-five meters high! Their arms were short and stubby and they only had feet, no legs. They were horrific, creatures. They stole into people’s houses in the night, and ate their children. However, they had two weaknesses. They were self-loving creatures, and they, like trolls, could not have the suns golden rays touch them, if they did they would burn up as if they were in a furnace of fire. But the people hated the giants and constantly looked for a way to free themselves from the creature’s cruel reign. One day they came up with a plan. One of them would go to the other side of the island and butter up the Nma. He would say how they should erect idols of themselves, if they were so strong. If they were so strong, he would say, they should use the mountains as their carving granite. Then the self-loving Nma would do just that, but it would take so long, the sun would hit them and all of them would turn to stone! However, a stone sculptor, Gnaler by name, spoke up.

“But they would not,” he said, “they are much cleverer than that.”

The crowd yelled back, “if you are so smart, you get rid of them!”

“Fine I will.” And with that, he went to put his plan to action.

“What a swell head!” the crowd murmured, “we should execute our plan anyways!” and so they went to find the giants too.

◊

Gnaler went to the other side of the island. Then he started to build. One statue exactly half his size, then two, then three, then fifty it was after noon, then two hundred, evening, five hundred it was midnight, just then he heard a noise behind him.

“Bow before us you scum!”

Gnaler turned around, “if you would like me to stop sculpting these idols of your radiance, I will gladly pause and bow, but, I have already lost time talking to your holiness.”

“You are making idols of us?” the giant asked suspiciously, and hoping it was true of course.

“Why yes of course, everyone will want one of these in their homes.”

“Go right ahead,” the Nma man said

“You may watch if you like.”

The giant was outraged, the thought of being given permission by a dwarf like this! Never would he watch this man and his idol making, but, he let him continue, his pride not letting him ruin any statues of himself.

Against his will, the Nma started watching as Gnaler made ten more, than one hundred more, more Nma joined them, three hundred more, the whole Nma tribe was now watching, three hundred fifty more, it was nearing dawn.

The Nma started quarreling, over who the statues were made to look like.  Someone knocked another over the head, then the fight was on, and they were so caught up in their fight, that they didn’t notice the sun coming up over the sea.

One by one, they stopped fighting and looked up, they all screamed and started running every which way, then, all at once, they were no more, in their place was an ocean of goo stretching from the mountains to the coast. Satisfied with his work Gnaler returned to his tribe, leaving the statues behind him.

When he got to where he lived, he looked on in dismay. Everyone in his tribe had tried to carry out their plan. They had failed as he knew they would, and had died in the process, their dead bodies’ scattered everywhere.

“This island is cursed,” he said bitterly, “the only ones who will ever be happy on this island will be the evil people.”

He went back to where the statues were, there were over six hundred now, and scattered them around the island, “now when explorers come, these will warn them away.”

And with that he set out swimming away from the island.

The only people who ever saw him were the Aztecs and Incas, who, there after worshiped him as there god.

Gnaler never returned to Numali, but neither did explorers heed his warning.