Otaheite: European First Contact with Polynesia

• 2009 map of Oceania (CIA world factbook). More detailed view: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_ref_2009.pdf

• Political map (2001): http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_pol01.jpg

Latitude, Longitude, Time Zones

• Explanation of latitude and longitude: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Latitude_vs_Longitude

• Early Maps and Ocean Travel:http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~feegi/

• Celestial Navigation:http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~feegi/astro.html

Early Contact• Seeking “Spice Islands” (Maluku or

Molucca islands, Indonesia)• Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition (1519-

1522)– Straits of Magellan named for passage around

the difficult southern pt. of S. America (Cape Horn)

– Crew dying of scurvy, mutinous– Magellan killed in the Philippines—caught in

local island battle– One ship returns to Spain in 1522—first

circumnavigation of the globe

• Left: Pigafetta, Antonio “Figure of the Five Islands Where Grow the Cloves, and of Their Tree.” (~1521) Drawn from account of Magellan’s voyage.

• More 16th-18th- c. European maps of the Philippines / Spice islands

First complete map of the Philippines, with red markings for Spanish churches / cathedrals. Antonio de Herrara y Tordesillas, from a Spanish manuscript world map of 1575 (~1575 - 1601).

~1500s – 1600: spice and quest for a southern continent

• Spanish sail west via Americas to Philippines

• Portuguese sail east (around Africa’s Cape of Good hope) to Philippines / Spice Islands

• Early 1600s: Dutch capture Spice Islands, explore north and south coasts of Australia (Hollandia Nova, Tasmania)

1767: An eventful encounter• Samuel Wallis, HMS

Dolphin– Ship isolated and off

course--headed northward from exploration of South Pacific

– Seeking fresh food! Crew suffering from scurvy (tries vinegar and sauerkraut successfully)

– European first contact with Tahiti—1767. He names it for King George III

– Voyage logs recorded in John Hawkesworth’s Voyages in the Southern Hemisphere, Vol. 1(See Ch. 5)

Illustration: plate xxii for John Hawkesworth’s Voyages…in the Southern Hemisphere (1773)

See also Neil Rennie, Far-Fetched Facts, pp. 84-85

Plate 21 for Hawkesworth’s Voyages: See Wallis’s account of the Attack by Tahitians on Wallis’s ship (HMS Dolphin)

First Contact with European culture?• For Tahitians, maybe not:

• Spanish and Dutch ships sight various islands in this group btw 1520s and 1720s– 1590s Spanish presence in the Marquesas islands (1,000 miles north of Tahiti)– inter-island communication, trade, and travel

• HMS Dolphin is the first European ship to land here, stays about a month– Tahitians want European iron, metal– Early patterns of encounter, set by Wallis and crew:

• Offers to trade / exchange• Overt sexual advances • Canoes to board ships / landing parties• Pressed too closelyguns and cannons! • Intimidation of Tahitians• Open exchange of sex for ship’s nails

• “Queen” Purea or Oberea: first meeting…brings Captain Wallis ashore, has him dressed in Tahitian clothes, presents gift of a pig, and brings him back to ship. Weeps when they leave.– Possibly a political power play—angling for family control of Tahiti via allegiance

with Wallis

• Tahiti becomes central stopping point for French and British ships after 1767

Bougainville: La Nouvelle Cythère• French expedition (Louis-Antoine

Bougainville on the ship Etoile):– goal: find an unknown southern

continent btw S. America and Australia

• nearly wrecks on Great Barrier Reef• stops in Tahiti for 10 days in 1768

– names it “la Nouvelle Cythere” (the new Venus), and claims the “Archipelago of Bourbon” for France

– Bougainville sees the island as fulfillment of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the natural man (L’Homme Sauvage)• “Great Angry Sky”: Bougainville’s

Iroquois name—brotherhood with Iroquois during French & Indian War against England

Bougainville’s Expedition• First voyage to Pacific with a scientist on board

– studies Tahitian cultural practices, botany, animals• Discovery of a French woman, Jeanne Baret, masking as a

man on board…Tahitian curiosity over European women• Early Departure (10 days):

– Violence—4 Tahitians shot or bayonetted by French soldiers– unsafe ports for the French ships– Bougainville leaves, nevertheless calling the island, “la véritable

Eutopie” (Rennie 89).• Discovers a few sailors have contracted venereal diseases…

blames this on Wallis’s sailors, prior visit!– V.D. in Polynesia, a matter of international contention: Cook

blames it on the French, Bougainville on the English.

• Brings a Tahitian man, Aotourou, back to Paris– Arrives 1769, lives in Paris for about a year, uses a watch,

attends the opera– Bougainville attempts to bring him back home to Tahiti in 1770

—dies of smallpox on the voyage, buried at sea.

Capt. Cook’s First Pacific Voyage

• 1768-1771: HMS Endeavour• joint Royal Navy and Royal Society Expedition:

– British astronomer (Charles Green) and botanists Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander (student of Carolus Linneaus), and Hermann Sporing (Finnish) (Sporing dies of dysentery on the trip back, 1771.)

• Goal: to observe the Transit of Venus across the Sun, 3-4 June, 1769, from a good location—in South Pacific– Significance: earlier observations of the Transit

of Venus helped to calculate distance from Earth to Sun

– This particular observation wasn’t too successful, problems with documenting precise times for the transit…and Green died on the trip back, could not make a full report to the Royal Society

• Four months in Tahiti (late April – August 1769)

Cook’s chart of the Society Islands (including Otaheite)

Cook’s First Pacific Voyage (1768-1771)

• Rediscovery of “Queen” Purea / Oberea– Joseph Banks’ “ceremonial” involvements with Tahitian women– public nudity / sexual rites: accounted for as ceremonial

• Thefts: of Banks’s waistcoat, of astronomical quadrant (found in pieces around the island)

• Two British sailors try to stay on Tahiti with their new “wives”– Tahitians guard the sailors from arrest, until Cook threatens the

lives of their chiefs

• HMS Endeavour leaves Tahiti in July 1769 for points southward, with a Tahitian man, Tupuaia, and his servant boy, Taiata, on board– Serve as interpreters in contact with the Maori of New Zealand

(related languages)– Both Taiata and Tupuaia die later in the voyage in Jakarta

(Indonesia), 1770.

Joseph Banks and Captain Cook…and a recent book on Banks, “the loves of plants,” and Banks’s role in using botany to build Britain’s mercantile empire.

Cook’s Endeavour Voyage continues…

• Botany Bay: landing point in Australia, named for Banks, Solander, and Sporing while the Endeavour was undergoing 7 weeks of repairs from damage on Great Barrier Reef (summer, 1770)– First English sight of kangaroos!

Sydney Parkinson’s sketch of a kangaroo in 1770, Cook’s Endeavour voyage

http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/maps/01_world.html

James Cook’s Pacific Voyages: 2 of 3

Second voyage: 1772-1775: HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure

Disproves myth of a continent between S. America and Australia (New Holland)• Comes close to Antarctica

– Omai: comes aboard Capt Furneaux’s ship, the Adventure– carried to England

(Right: Portrait of Omai by Joshua Reynolds)

A Tahitian “morai”

http://www.captcook-ne.co.uk/ccne/exhibits/003452/index.htm

Cook’s Last Voyage: 1776 - 1780• HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery

– To Pacific by way of Cape Town (S. Africa)

– Return Omai to his home island– Seek NW passage

• Discovery of Hawaiian islands• Northwest

coastVancouverBering Strait…blocked by ice

• South again to winter in Hawaii—warm welcome during festival

• Cook’s ships leave, but return unexpectedly soon for ship repairs– Conflict, theftsviolence

Cook’s violent death / dismemberment on the island of Hawaii, Feb. 14, 1779

Ships return—1780. Mourning for Cook…

Lost Ships, Assassination, Mutiny• Capt. Jean-Francois de la Perouse: both ships lost in a Pacific storm near

Solomon islands, 1788• William Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and the Mutiny on the HMS Bounty

– Botanical mission: transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to Caribbean (to feed slave plantations)• 5 months in Tahiti collecting breadfruit plants• Blight’s crew socializes with Tahitians, gets tattoos• First mate, Fletcher Christian takes a spouse, Maimiti

– Mutiny starts at Tahiti (April 1789)– Bloodless revolt. 22 loyal crew with Bligh are sent off in the ship’s open boat

• Bligh successfully navigates a long and dangerous voyage of 47 days in the open boat to the Dutch port of Coupang (near Australia).

– Fletcher Christian and mutineers take the Bounty. • A group remains in Tahiti—later most are arrested by the Royal Navy and carried to England

in the Pandora (held in “Pandora’s Box”) • Christian and a small group of mutineers and Tahitians sail the Bounty to Pitcairn Island,

land and destroy the ship• Pitcairn’s mixed English-Tahitian colony—descendents of this group. First discovery by

Mayhew Folger of the U.S. ship, the Topaz in 1809/1810…• Death of Cook, Loss of la Perouse, Mutiny…darken European views of the

Pacific…

Tahiti as Colony and Protectorate• 1770s – 1790s: rival missionary groups– Spanish priests vs. London missionary society– Tahitian kings: monarchy established after contact

(1768) • Pomare I, II, III, IV, V• Last king of Tahiti—reigns to 1880, dies 1891

(France annexes the island group, June 29, 1880)

• Sovereignty? Language?• European and U.S. interests in Polynesia: vying for

commercial and cultural authority in 19th c