"Although the Easter Islanders still cautiously kept all their small stone and wood carvings in hiding, they did reveal their own artistic talent and activity by carrying forth colossal paina figures in the presence of the Spaniards [1770]. These were skilfully made light-weight dolls of superhuman size, fashioned from painted bark-cloth stuffed with branches, grass, and reeds.

They were carried in processions and erected at the side of old image platforms, as if they represented some substitute for the giant stone men of the Middle Period that this historic or Late Period population was unable to carve or erect.

Agüera (Ibid., p. 95) gave the following account of the paina figures, after a description of the ancient stone statues of which an unspecified number were still standing on ahu:

'They have another effigy or idol clothed and portable which is about four yards in length: it is properly speaking the figure of a Judas, stuffed with straw or dried grass. It has arms and legs, and the head has coarsely figured eyes, nostrils, and mouth: it is adorned with a black fringe of hair made of rushes, which hangs half-way down the back. On certain days they carry this idol to the place where they gather together, and judging by the demonstrations some of them made, we understood it to be the one dedicated to enjoyment..."

(Heyerdahl 3)

"Der Cultus bestand in Anrufung der Götter, deren Willen der Priester erklärte, in Opfern an Lebensmitteln, auch an Menschen, und in der Feier gewisser, zu bestimmten Zeiten wiederkehrender Feste (rakauti), von denen das erste im Früjahr 2 Monate dauerte, das zweite im Sommer mit der Errichtung einer Pyramide aus Zweigen (paina) endete, das dritte in den Winter fiel; bei allen fanden Tänze, Gesänge, Spiele aller Art statt."

(Churchill: "From 'Die Inseln des stillen Oceans' by Carl E. Meinicke; zweiter Theil, 1876, p. 228.")