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Peruvian Slave Raid on Easter Island

When: December 1862
Where: Easter Island
Part of: Event of 1862: Peruvian slave raiders land on Easter Island, beginning a decade of the destruct

Eight Peruvian ships arrived at Easter Island in December 1862, capturing a third of the population for the labour trade.

At the end of 1862, eight ships organised under Captain Marutani conducted an armed operation at Easter Island. Over several days, the combined crews systematically surrounded villages and captured as many of the Rapa Nui islanders as possible. In these raids, a third of the island's population (1407 people) were taken for the Peruvian labour trade.

Sources

History of Easter Island Wikipedia
Blackbirding Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.