Acknowledgments
I WANT TO begin by acknowledging how very indebted I am to a handful of scholars in the fields of Pacific history and anthropology, first among them, the anthropologist Patrick Kirch, whose many lucidly written books on Polynesian archaeology provided the scaffolding for this project, and the New Zealand historian K. R. Howe, whose view from thirty thousand feet helped clarify many critical connections. I have also turned frequently to the works of J. C. Beaglehole, O. H. K. Spate, Anne Salmond, and Nicholas Thomas for orientation, while the overviews of M. P. K. Sorrenson and Alan Howard were invaluable in helping me sort out the story’s different threads. I benefited greatly from the linguistic work of Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Meredith Osmond of the Oceanic Lexicon Project at the Australian National University. And I also made use of a number of biographical and autobiographical works, including the engaging memoirs of Thor Heyerdahl, Robert Suggs, Willowdean Handy, and Ben Finney, and can only wish that more experts would undertake to write popular accounts of their experiences. In this same vein, I especially want to thank the documentary filmmaker Sam Low for sharing his book Hawaiki Rising with me; those who have read it will see how heavily I leaned on him in places.
Although I am essentially an armchair theorist, it was important, especially in the beginning, to get out into the field, and I want to acknowledge the generous assistance of several individuals who helped us way back at the start: Shelley Madsen at Aspire Downunder for executing an extremely complicated itinerary; Laura Thompson for her openheartedness in Hawai‘i; Sateki and Fine Uasike and the late Ana Uasike for their unexpected kindness in Tonga; Matthew Spriggs and Stuart Bedford for showing me around the dig at Teouma; Robert Hammar for the use of his house in Mo‘orea; Rose Corser for advice and assistance in the Marquesas; the extended Parangi family for their always-warm welcome in New Zealand; Ann, Joel, Isabel, and David for companionship in Hawai‘i; Katy and Linzee Crowe and the late Barbara Martin for getting us launched; and Tessa and Daniel Fisher for providing a much-needed crash pad on our return. Also my late mother, who waited for us; my brother who watched over things while we were away; my sons Aperahama, Matiu, and Daniel, for being good sports; and, of course, Seven, for undertaking the journey with me and, as always, for helping me see things in a different way.
This book has taken a long time to write, and several institutions provided critical assistance along the way. For grants supporting the original research—enabling me to visit places I would never otherwise have seen—I want to thank both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Australia Council for the Arts. I also wish to express my deep gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities for granting me a Public Scholar Award in 2015; I think I never would have reached the finish line without that year’s release from my other professional responsibilities. I am also extremely grateful to the Librarians of Houghton Library, William Stoneman and Tom Hyry, for generously allowing me to take leave, and to Chloe Garcia Roberts, Laura Healy, and the rest of the team at Harvard Review for keeping the wheels turning while I was gone.
Many friends and colleagues have assisted me in ways both large and small: first, the members of my longtime writing group, Elizabeth Greenspan, Greg Harris, and Sarah Stewart Johnson, who read more versions of more chapters than anyone should have to. I also want to thank Susan Faludi and David Armitage for their support at a critical moment, and the many experts—Robert Suggs, Glynn Williams, Matthew Spriggs, Michael Levison, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Kevin McGrath—who answered my often naïve questions. Several faculty members at Harvard generously allowed me to sit in on their classes, including Rowan Flad, Jason Ur, Michael Witzel, Jeremy Rau, David Armitage, and John Huth. I sometimes say that I taught myself a number of disciplines in the course of writing this book, but actually it was they who taught me what I needed to know.
I could never have written this book without the phenomenal resources of the Harvard University library system. I can count on one hand the number of obscure texts, among the hundreds I consulted, that were not held in one of Harvard’s repositories, and these were immediately procured for me through interlibrary loan. I had additional research help from a number of individuals, including John Delaney of the Historic Maps Collection at Princeton; Diana Zlatanovski of Harvard’s Peabody Museum; Jan Rensel at the University of Hawai‘i’s Center for Pacific Islands Studies; John Overholt and Susan Halpert at Houghton Library; and Cristina Monfasani, my hardworking Harvard Extension School faculty aide. Fred Hagstrom at Carleton College has been an unflagging supporter of my work over many years, for which I am truly grateful.
Many people were generous when it came to permissions: Benedict Fitzgerald, Christophe Sand, Sandy Millar, Carol Ivy, Henry Lawrence, Na‘alehu Anthony, and Dennis Kawaharada of Kalamaku Press. And I would like to acknowledge the generosity of several institutions, including the Polynesian Society at the University of Auckland, the Story of Hawaii Museum, Princeton University Library, the Dunedin Public Library, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and Whitcoulls, New Zealand. Both Sonja Swenson Rogers at the Polynesian Voyaging Society and Tia Reber at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum answered innumerable questions about images. Rachel Ahearn was hugely generous with her time in helping prepare the graphics for publication. I owe a debt of gratitude—yet again—to C. Scott Walker of the Harvard Map Collection for providing me with maps and to my longtime friend and collaborator Laura Healy for designing them.
I want to thank my brother, Elliott Thompson, for serving as an early reader and Patrick Kirch for checking the manuscript for mistakes. Of course, there will still be errors, and for these I am entirely to blame. Finally, to my perennially optimistic agent, Brettne Bloom, and my firm, clear-sighted editor, Gail Winston, I have only this to say: Without you the whole thing would have been but a wisp of sea mist, a dream of islands and nothing more. Thank you to the Book Group, the entire team at Harper, and to the members of my family, who know how much they had to put up with for how long.
Notes
Prologue: Kealakekua Bay
“all the Shore of the bay”: James Cook, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery, 1776–1780, vol. 3 of The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, ed. J. C. Beaglehole, 4 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), part 1, 491.
There have been varying interpretations: See Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), and Marshall Sahlins, How “Natives” Think (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
“amused them with Lies”: Quoted in Anne Salmond, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 409.
“spread themselves over”: James Cook, The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure, 1772–1775, vol. 2 of The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, ed. J. C. Beaglehole, 4 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 354.
“Could the story of the Polynesian voyagers”: Elsdon Best, Polynesian Voyagers: The Maori as a Deep-Sea Navigator, Explorer, and Colonizer (Wellington: R. E. Owen, Government Printer, 1954), 15.
A Very Great Sea: The Discovery of Oceania
They had words for lash: See Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Meredith Osmond, The Lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The Culture and Environment of Ancestral Oceanic Society, vol. 2 (Canberra: ANU E Press and Pacific Linguistics, 2007), chaps. 4, 8. See also Patrick Vinton Kirch, The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), esp. chaps. 1, 7.
They probably had names for parts: See Rev. J. M. Osmond, “The Birth of New Lands after the Creation of Havai’i (Raiatea),” Journal of the Polynesian Society 3, no. 3 (1894): 136.
It was tasik: Ross, Pawley, and Osmond, Lexicon of Proto Oceanic, 2:88–89.
“a sea so vast”: J. C. Beaglehole, introduction to The Voyage of the Endeavour, 1768–1771, vol. 1 of The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1955), xxxv.
“If our Lord”: Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation, trans. R. A. Skelton (New York: Dover, 1994), 57.
“fall to destruction”: Quoted in Glyndwr Williams and Alan Frost, “Terra Australis: Theory and Speculation,” in Terra Australis to Australia, eds. Glyndwr Williams and Alan Frost (Melbourne: Oxford University Press Australia, 1988), 4.
Almost from the beginning: See Williams and Frost, “Terra Australis,” 4, n. 9.
“as great as all Europe”: Alexander Dalrymple, An Account of the Discoveries Made in the South Pacifick Ocean (1767; repr., Sydney: Hordern House, 1996), 2–3; Quirós quoted in Williams and Frost, “Terra Australis,” 10.
“the sea with its labouring waves”: Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900; repr., Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1957), 185.
First Contact: Mendaña in the Marquesas
“At all hours”: Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas (1896; repr., Rockville, MD: Arc Manor, 2009), 69.
But archaeological sites: Patrick Vinton Kirch, The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 89.
“thickly inhabited”: Pedro Fernández de Quirós, The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606, trans. Sir Clements Markham, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1904), 1:20.
As the Frenchman: See “Le Voyage Autour du Monde du Capitaine Étienne Marchand,” in Bulletin de Géographie Historique et Descriptive (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1896), 280. The exact passage is: “Mon dessein était de prendre possession de l’île Marchand . . . au nom de Roi, quoique je n’aie jamais pu concevoir comment et de quel droit une nation policée pouvait s’emparer d’une terre habitée sans le consentement de ses habitants.”
“half a pint of water”: Quoted in O. H. K. Spate, The Spanish Lake (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979), 125.
“sunk in a religious stupor”: Spate, Spanish Lake, 127, 130.
“pressed” on the water: Quirós, Voyages, 1:16.
the development of the outrigger: I. C. Campbell, “The Lateen Sail in World History,” Journal of World History 6, no. 1 (1995): 12.
“with much speed and fury”: Quirós, Voyages, 1:16–17.
“a friendly bit of advice”: Robert C. Suggs, The Hidden Worlds of Polynesia (London: Cresset Press, 1963), 31.
“They looked at the ships”: Quirós, Voyages, 1:17–18.
“It was a sight to behold”: Ibid., 1:17–18.
The encounters between: Ibid., 1:29, 21, 24.
“exquisite beyond description”: Quoted in Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas, 1774–1880 (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988), 126.
“as fine a race”: Cook, Journals, 2:373.
This, of course, was tattooing: Willowdean Chatterson Handy, Tattooing in the Marquesas (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1922), 14.
“than the ladies of Lima”: Quirós, Voyages, 1:152.
“They gave us to understand”: Ibid.
“islands which are supposed”: Quoted in E. S. Craighill Handy, The Native Culture in the Marquesas (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1923), 19.
“some country where”: G. S. Parsonson, “The Settlement of Oceania,” in Polynesian Navigation, ed. Jack Golson, 3rd ed. (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1972), 30–31.
“the Land”: Dening refers to the Marquesas as Henua te Enata, but there are two dialects: in the north the islands are called Te Henua ‘Enana, and in the south they are known as Te Fenua ‘Enata. Dening, Islands and Beaches.
“other islands which lye”: Quoted in Parsonson, “Settlement of Oceania,” 12–13.
Barely an Island at All: Atolls of the Tuamotus
“manning the foreshrouds”: Baron George Anson, Anson’s Voyage Round the World in the Years 1740–44, ed. Richard Walter (New York: Dover, 1974), 75.
“this tempestuous ocean”: William Bligh, A Voyage to the South Sea (Dublin: H. Fitzpatrick, 1792), 48.
“sailing on some variant”: Beaglehole, introduction to Journals of Captain James Cook, 1:xxxiv.
“as flat as a plate”: Stevenson, In the South Seas, 95.
“A long and brilliantly white beach”: Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839; repr., New York: Dutton, 1979), 386, 447.
“animalcules”: See D. R. Stoddart, “Darwin, Lyell, and the Geological Significance of Coral Reefs,” British Journal for the History of Science 9, no. 2 (1976): 200.
“On what have the reef-building corals”: Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, 449.
One theory popular at the time: See Stoddart, “Darwin, Lyell,” 204.
What they did manage to observe: See Quirós, Voyages, 1:204; Jacob Le Maire, The East and West Indian Mirror, trans. J. A. J. de Villiers (London: Hakluyt Society, 1906), 192; Charles de Brosses, Terra Australis Cognita; or, Voyages to the Terra Australis, or Southern Hemisphere, During the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Hawes, Clark, and Collins, 1766), 2:237; Jacob Roggeveen, The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen, ed. Andrew Sharp (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 97.
“both sides were in the dark”: De Brosses, Terra Australis Cognita, 2:236.
“roving migratory habits”: Quoted in Parsonson, “Settlement of Oceania,” 30.
“from within the island”: Gaspar de Leza, quoted in Quirós, Voyages, 2:336.
“by far the oldest complete hull”: A. C. Haddon and James Hornell, Canoes of Oceania (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1975), 65.
“exceedingly well wrought”: Quoted in Haddon and Hornell, Canoes of Oceania, 80.
“reminders of the courage”: Katharine Luomala, Voices on the Wind: Polynesian Myths and Chants (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1955), 173.
“many small pieces of wood”: Roggeveen, Journal, 91–92, n. 1.
Outer Limits: New Zealand and Easter Island
Two of New Zealand’s three bat species: See Timothy Fridtjof Flannery, The Future Eaters (Melbourne: Reed Books, 1994), 64.
“ecological equivalent of giraffes”: Flannery, Future Eaters, 55.
“groot hooch verheven landt”: “Tasman’s Journal or Description,” trans. M. F. Vigeveno, in Abel Janszoon Tasman and the Discovery of New Zealand (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1942), 33, 45.
“a rough loud voice”: Ibid., 49
“since there was good anchoring-ground”: Ibid., 50.
Māori is a common Polynesian word: See An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, ed. A. H. McLintock (Wellington: R. E. Owen, Government Printer, 1966), https://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/maori-pakeha-pakeha-maori.
“over which some planks”: Abel Janszoon Tasman, The Journal of Abel Janszoon Tasman, ed. Andrew Sharp (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 121–22.
“very cleverly”: “Tasman’s Journal or Description,” 50.
“detestable deed”: Ibid., 53.
“painted Black from the middle”: Tasman, Journal, 153–56.
For “hog” they had recorded: See James Burney, A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, 5 vols. (London: L. Hansard, 1803–1817), 2:440–45.
“the precursor of the extended coast”: Roggeveen, Journal, 89–93.
Although Roggeveen found: See Jared Diamond, Collapse (New York: Viking, 2005), 103–7.
“the most extreme example”: Ibid., 107.
One argument points: See Diamond, Collapse, chap. 2, for a full statement of this argument.
“heating, drying, wind, and rain”: Jared Diamond, “Easter Island Revisited,” Science 317 (September 21, 2007): 1692.
Others—partly in response: See Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, The Statues That Walked (New York: Free Press, 2011), esp. chap. 2. For thoughts on cutting down the last palm tree, see Diamond, Collapse, 114.
“in all respects similar”: Roggeveen, Journal, 138n., 151.
“To make an end and conclusion”: Ibid., 154.
Tahiti: The Heart of Polynesia
“visitations”: O. H. K. Spate, Paradise Found and Lost (Rushcutters Bay: Australian National University Press, 1988), 204–8.
“one of the spoilt children of fortune”: Beaglehole, introduction to Journals of Captain James Cook, 1:cxii.
“The island of Tahiti”: J. C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 132–33.
Tahiti is the largest: The Society Islands were named, by Captain Cook, not for the Royal Society, as is often claimed, but in recognition of their close proximity to one another.
“made us all very uneasy”: George Robertson, The Discovery of Tahiti, ed. Hugh Carrington (London: Hakluyt Society, 1948), 136.
Estimates of the pre-contact populations: Donald Denoon, “Lives and Deaths,” in Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 113.
“at a Moderate Computation”: Robertson, Discovery of Tahiti, 154.
“nothing could be hade without blows”: Ibid., 142.
“a Little surly”: Ibid., 136–38.
“some supposed that it was a floating island”: W. N. Gunson, “Cover’s Notes on the Tahitians, 1802,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 15, no. 4 (1980): 220.
“by any standard of objective discourse”: Greg Denning, “Possessing Tahiti,” Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania 21, no. 1 (1986): 107. See also Anne Salmond, “Their Body Is Different, Our Body Is Different,” History and Anthropology 16, no. 2 (2005).
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