The Hanau epe or Long-ears were a group of semi-legendary people who are said to have arrived at Easter Island

Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

. According to some theories (particularly the one popularised by Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a background in zoology and geography. He became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands...

), they were a South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

n indigenous people, but most evidence suggests that the original Easter Islanders were Polynesian

Polynesians

The Polynesian peoples is a grouping of various ethnic groups that speak Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic languages within the Austronesian languages, and inhabit Polynesia. They number approximately 1,500,000 people...

 in origin.

Sebastian Englert

Sebastian Englert

Father Sebastian Englert OFM Cap., was a Capuchin Franciscan friar, Roman Catholic priest, missionary, linguist and ethnologist from Germany....

 states that "Long-Ear" is a misinterpretation of Hanau ‘E‘epe "stout race".

The legend

There are two legends about how the Hanau epe reached Easter Island. The first is that they arrived some time after the local Polynesia

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

ns and tried to enslave them. However, some earlier accounts place the Hanau epe as the original inhabitants and the Polynesians as later immigrants from Oparo / Rapa Iti

Rapa Iti

Rapa or Rapa Iti as it is sometimes called in more recent years , is the largest and only inhabited island of the Bass Islands in French Polynesia. An older name for the island is Oparo Its area is 40 km2 with a population of almost 500 and a max elevation of 650 m...

. According to this story, after the arrival of both groups, mutual suspicions led to a violent clash and the Hanau epe were exterminated, except for one. In 1772, a description of the islands demographics by Jacob Roggeveen claimed that there were two distinctive ethnic groups: Polynesians and 'White' people, whose earlobes were lengthened a great amount. This suggests that the Hanau epe were not exterminated, but still lived peacefully alongside the Polynesians.