Rongorongo text I

There are reproductions at the Institut für Völkerkunde, Tübingen (prior to 1989); Bishop Museum, Honolulu; Musées Royaux de Bruxelles, Belgium (as of 2008 temporarily housed in the Musée du Malgré Tout in Treignes); and in Steven Fischer's personal collection in Auckland.

It is in good condition, but with some splitting, and it is battered on one side of the thick end, evidently from resting diagonally on the ground when held.

The Staff was presented to the officers of the Chilean corvette O'Higgins in 1870 by the French colonist Dutrou-Bornier, who claimed that it had belonged to an ꞌariki (king).

At that point it disappeared,[citation needed] but in 1876 it was given to the director of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Rudolf Philippi.

When Anacleto Goñi, the commander of the O'Higgins, asked the Rapanui people its significance, he reported that he was, Pozdniakov (1996:290, 299) notes that the Staff shares short phrases with texts Gv and T (or at least Ta), but has nothing in common with the rest of the rongorongo corpus.

The Staff provided the basis of Steven Fischer's attempted decipherment, which is widely known through his book, but which has not been accepted by others in the field.

Fischer believes the Staff consists exclusively of creation chants in the form of "all the birds copulated with the fish; there issued forth the sun".

Guy (1998) argues that this is untenable, and further that if Butinov and Knorozov are correct about a genealogy on Gv, then Fischer's putative phallus is a patronymic marker, and the Staff would consist almost entirely of personal names.