Nga‘ara
The name Nga‘ara has been variously spelled Gnaara, Gaara, Ngaara, Nga-Ara, Gahara, and Gobara. The letter g is a common convention in the Pacific for the ng-sound

Velar nasal

The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....

 [ŋ], and Roussel

Hippolyte Roussel

Hippolyte Roussel was a French priest and missionary to Polynesia, a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.In 1854 he was sent to evangelize in the Tuamotus and Mangareva in the Gambier Islands...

, the one who transcribed the name as Gahara, frequently used h for glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

. Gobara may have been a typo for Gahara. Routledge's

Katherine Routledge

Katherine Maria Routledge, née Pease was a British archaeologist who initiated the first true survey of Easter Island....

 informants, some of whom had known the king, supported a pronunciation of ŋaʔaɾa Nga‘ara.
(reigned from the death of his father, Kai Mako‘i ca. 1835 to his own death just before 1860) was the last great ‘ariki

Ariki

An Ariki , ‘Ariki , Aliki , Ali‘i , Ari'i or ‘Eiki is or was a member of a hereditary chiefly or noble rank in Polynesia.-Aotearoa Ariki:Political leadership or governance in Māori society has traditionally come from two...

, or paramount chief, of Easter Island

Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

, and the last master of rongorongo

Rongorongo

Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. It cannot be read despite numerous attempts at decipherment. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, not even...

, the Easter Island script.

Before becoming king, Nga‘ara ran a hare rongorongo (rongorongo school) at ‘Anakena Bay

Anakena

Anakena is a white coral sand beach in Rapa Nui National Park on Rapa Nui , a Chilean island in the Pacific Ocean. Anakena has two ahus, one with a single moai and the other with six...

. Generally fathers would teach their sons and any other boys who were interested, and Nga‘ara was the most famous teacher on the island. Boys would study three to five months to learn rongorongo.

At the time he became ‘ariki, the real power on the island lay in the Birdman

Tangata manu

The Tangata manu , was the winner of a traditional competition on Rapa Nui . The ritual was an annual competition to collect the first Sooty Tern egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo.-Myth:In the...

 priests of ‘Orongo

Orongo

‘Orongo is a stone village and ceremonial centre at the southwestern tip of Rapa Nui . The first half of the ceremonial village's 53 stone masonry houses were investigated and restored in 1974 by American archaeologist William Mulloy...

. One of the sacred responsibilities of the tuhunga tā (scribes and reciters of rongorongo) seems to have been the recitation or chanting of rongorongo tablets at ‘Orongo during the annual Birdman ceremonies. That quarter of the village was off limits to everyone else during the ceremonies. Nga‘ara sent students, but did not himself attend.

Rongorongo was considered to contain mana

Mana

Mana is an indigenous Pacific islander concept of an impersonal force or quality that resides in people, animals, and inanimate objects. The word is a cognate in many Oceanic languages, including Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian....

(sacred power). For example, chanting a timo (vengeance) tablet could release supernatural powers to kill a murderer. A woman would carry a pure (fertility) tablet while the scribes chanted it to increase her fertility. Tablets were used to increase crops or a catch of fish. Katherine Routledge

Katherine Routledge

Katherine Maria Routledge, née Pease was a British archaeologist who initiated the first true survey of Easter Island....

 was told that one of Nga‘ara's tablets, called Kouhau ‘o te Ranga and thought to be Rongorongo text C

Rongorongo text C

Text C of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Mamari, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It contains the Mamari Calendar.-Other names:C is the standard designation, from Barthel...

, was one of a kind and had the power to "give conquest in war" and enslave the conquered.

In order to take control of the island from the Birdman priests of ‘Orongo, Nga‘ara established an annual rongorongo festival at ‘Anakena. Rather than using the tablets for specific ends, it was a festival for the tablets themselves, and it became the most important assembly in pre-missionary times:
Hundreds attended these festivals. Heuheu staves were brought by all and stuck in the ground where the attendee stood. The tablets were recited from dawn to dusk, with a break for dinner. Nga‘ara presented the reciters with veri tapa cloth

Tapa cloth

Tapa cloth is a bark cloth made in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, primarily in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, but as far afield as Niue, Cook Islands, Futuna, Solomon Islands, Java, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Hawaii...

s. Since the mana of the tablets went through him at this festival, Nga‘ara was able to assert spiritual primacy over the island.

When Nga‘ara died, his son Kai Mako‘i ‘Iti (Kai Mako‘i Jr) took over the festival at ‘Anakena for three years, until he was captured in the great Peruvian slaving raid of 1862. Although the slaves were freed the next year, Kai Mako‘i did not survive to return.