Ship logs and journals from Easter Island visits

Eyewitness excerpts from Dutch, Spanish, British, German, and French voyages (and a missionary account)—a window onto how Europeans first described moai, ahu, and daily life before photography.

First-hand travel journals are fascinating primary sources—but remember their limits: crews often misunderstood what they saw, repeated rumour, and wrote for sponsors or readers back home rather than as neutral ethnographers.

Click the name of the voyager/author to view the journal.