"If it were not for the fact that Easter's abundant big stone hare moa are overshadowed by its even bigger stone platforms and statues, tourists would remember Easter as the island of stone chicken houses. They dominate much of the landscape near the coast, because today the prehistoric stone chicken houses — all 1,233 of them — are much more conspicuous than the prehistoric human houses, which only had stone foundations or patios and no stone walls." — Jared Diamond, "Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed", 2005

Easter Island, so named for its European discovery on that most Christian of days, is apparently the most remote speck of land on Earth, that is to say from any other inhabited place. Bermuda is likely the secondmost habitat to have such a distinction of isolation, not only geographically, but occasionally perhaps in our attitudes, the latter sometimes contrary to our wellbeing in the global world. Like Bermuda, Easter Island was one of the last places to be settled by humans, probably somewhat before 900 A.D., as far as archaeologists can determine. So Easter Island has been occupied about three times as long as Bermuda, which gave the locals there time to create the extraordinary collection of statues called "moai" and to denude the place of trees completely, leading to the collapse of its society in the early 1700s. As part of the disintegration of the Easter community, all of the standing statues were toppled over, perhaps in rejection of its traditional life and leaders.

What Easter Island and Bermuda also have in common are chickens. Unlike Bermuda, the lowly hen and rooster were the only domesticated animals on Easter Island, whereas we had some cows, horses and a few pigs. Due to that fact, chickens were accommodated in palatial houses on Easter, as befitting their status as the only "beef" about the place. Their chickens were raised for food, as ours once generally were, and as far as we know, they were not raised for show, as some of ours have been for generations. The chicken, in fact, has been one of the most numerous and amusing entries in what used to be called the "Agricultural Exhibition", put on display by "poultry fanciers".

We know that people have been raising champion chickens for some decades on the island, but a recent acquisition by the National Museum now gives an early date in the last century for that practice. The object is a plaque awarded from 1911 to 1938 for the "Best Bird in the Show". Replete with the Bermuda coat of arms at the top and two chicken heads to the bottom left and right, the text on the plaque reads:

Winners

1911. His Excellency Lt. General F.W. Kitchener. C.B.

1912. His Excellency Lt. General F.W. Kitchener. C.B.

1913. Sydney P. Eve.

1914. Henry W. Watlington.

1923. Dr. C.A. Arton.

1924. W.R. Evans.

1925. W.R. Evans.

1926. Dr. R.L. Tucker

1927. J.H. Hallett

1931. J. Hallett

1932. A.E. Stephens

1938. J.M. Waterston

Presented by Major Percy Hope Falkner, R.A.M.C.

To the Bermuda Poultry Organisation Society for the Best Bird in the Show.

As you can see from the list of excelling chicken people, the Governor of Bermuda in 1911 was not above raising a goodly rooster and submitting the same to the examination of judges. After 1912, the winners are mostly members of the local aristocracy, though one, J. Hallett, may in fact have been a female fancier of fine-feathered friends. The last winner, in 1938, was a J.M. Waterson, not a usual Bermuda name and it is possibly that he, or she, was an outsider and took the plaque overseas, from whence it was acquired of late.

However, a J.M. Waterson was still associated with earthy matters in Bermuda in 1949, when he was associated with an article on "The Pests of Juniper in Bermuda" in the journal "Tropical Agricultural". The presenter of the plaque was a non-Bermudian rooster of considerable accomplishments, who was stationed on the island in 1911 with the Royal Army Medical Corps.

The then-Capt. Percy H. Falkner was likely a friend of Governor Kitchener from Africa days. Falkner was in the South African War, 1899-1902, which resulted in the accommodation of some 5,000 Boer prisoners at Bermuda. He was in at the relief of Ladysmith, including actions at Colenso and the famous Spion Kop, and thereafter in operations at Vaal Kranz, Tugela Heights and Pieter's Hill, followed by work in Natal and in the Transvaal, ending in the summer of 1901. Latterly, as an army surgeon, he travelled the British Empire, reporting on "Gonorrhoea in the Male" in Malaysia, when not attending to the chicks. As Lieut-Colonel Hope-Falkner, he retired from the Indian Medical Service, RAMC, and died at Malta in 1950.

In between his army duties, Falkner ran a farm in Britain and was renowned for his advanced methods on the cultivation of chickens, enough so to be mentioned at length in Lewis Wright's chicken bible, the "Illustrated Book of Poultry". That weighty tome of upwards of 800 pages and running through many editions with lavish pictures of strutting roosters and following hens is said to be one of the most famous books on the subject of the lowly chicken. It would thus seem that his presentation of the Bermuda plaque in 1911 was not just a nod to the Governor, but came from his lifelong passion for the chicken in its many forms and breeds.

It is possible that a silver cup trophy replaced the Falkner Plaque in the beginning year of the Second World War. Such a cup was sold a few years ago at a Texas auction and was labeled: "Bermuda. 13th Annual Poultry Exhibition. Invitation Championship. 1939. Won by". The cup apparently was not awarded, which leaves one with the faint thought that, due to the War, the champion Bermuda chickens reverted to an Easter Island role and ended up being sampled for their taste, rather than awarded for their feathers.

Comparing ourselves with Easter Island, we might find comfort in the fact that if our culture perishes, at least we will leave behind our own "hare moa" in the Hope-Falkner Plaque, which future tourists may look on in wonder, joined no doubt by the thousands of feral chickens that will outlive us all.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The opinions in this column are his own. Comments, always welcome, may be made to drharris@logic.bm or 704-5480