The Māori boys agreed he was tino tangata (a great chief) and tino rangatira (a perfect gentleman). Te Hōreta’s depiction of Cook is a tender and very human portrait of a man known to us only through the accounts of his peers and his own words, which were necessarily edited to convey the air of authority and detachment expected of an officer in the Royal Navy. The picture of the tall, raw-boned Englishman bending to pat young Te Hōreta’s head is poignant and deeply moving. Through the eyes of a child we’re given a rare glimpse of Cook, the man. This is not a side of him we see reflected anywhere else in the historical record.
As the Endeavour continued its journey along the shore, it was greeted with open hostility at every attempted landing spot. If Cook had known anything about the North Island of New Zealand, he might have anticipated such a reception. Conflict was a way of life there, and new arrivals just meant more people to fight.
It became something of a routine. The Endeavour would sail into an inviting anchorage, only to be confronted by a phalanx of waka with warriors on board brandishing weapons and pelting the ship with stones. Their war songs promised the British a bloody end.
Joseph Banks held to the principle that the only way to broker a peace under these terms was to terrify the Māori into submission, writing in his journal: ‘till these warlike people have severely felt our superiority in the art of war they will never behave to us in a friendly manner’.
The constant aggression soon began to grate on the men on board. Proving that the language of contempt is universal, a Māori warrior turned and bared his backside at the Endeavour in a move known to the Māori as whakapohane. The less technical term is ‘mooning’. Later, when confronted by a long line of armed and threatening warriors on a clifftop, the surgeon William Monkhouse could no longer restrain himself. He decided to respond in kind. And he had the perfect retort – one he knew they would understand.
New Zealand war canoe bidding defiance to the ship, Sydney Parkinson, 1770. The majority of Māori saw Cook as an intruder and regularly welcomed the Endeavour with hails of stones, curses and bared buttocks.
Bridgeman Images, BL3284310
WILLIAM MONKHOUSE (d. 1770), Surgeon, Cook’s first voyage
Seeing one man brandish his lance with great fury I was induced to retort the compliment we had received in the morning merely to try its effect upon this Quixotic hero – enraged at the insult he instantly threw his lance towards me with all his might, and took up another to try a second effort.
The now furious Māori missed his mark.
Things were degenerating quickly. Just when it was looking terribly bleak, Cook did what he always managed to do – he sailed out of trouble into safe waters.
*
Until the tragic confrontation that would end his life, Cook’s time in the Pacific was notable for the many near-death experiences he escaped by the skin of his teeth. On 23 October 1769, he sailed into an anchorage that he named ‘Tolaga Bay’.
ANNIE MCGUIRE, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti Tribe, Sociologist
The name of this place was Uawa. That’s the name of our river now. It means the great river Uawa – the great river of our parents, the legendary or mythical earth mother and sky father being the two parents.
Cook had found a safe haven. Here, the Endeavour would enjoy a cordial reception.
The crew were immediately struck by the natural beauty of the bay, calling it ‘agreeable beyond belief – a second Paradise’. As the sailors set to replenishing supplies, Joseph Banks and his assistant, Herman Spöring, spent countless hours exploring the area. There was one geographic feature that transfixed them – a pierced rock Banks described as an ‘extraordinary natural curiosity . . . far superior to any of the contrivances of art’. It’s a blessing that he didn’t know the Māori name for it: Te Kotore o te Whenua. The Anus of the Land.
Tolaga Bay would offer up a great deal more than the Land’s Anus to one man on board the Endeavour. Tupaia, a tall man, was accustomed to a tropical lifestyle and had just spent two months crammed into a small, foul-smelling ship ploughing through mountainous seas. He deserved some respite. So as soon as Cook dropped anchor, he went ashore. Finding an inviting rocky overhang, he took up residence on land. It didn’t take long for the curious locals to strike up a conversation with him. He told them about the British and the great journey they had made from a far-distant island called ‘Peretane’ (Britain) via the Māori ancestral homes in Tahiti and Ra’iatea.
Cook would eventually encounter people in the Marquesas Islands who could understand the Tahitian language, even though 1600 kilometres separated the two archipelagos. This, for Cook, was proof of the great Polynesian migration.
GORDON TOI, Hokianga, Ngāti Wharara Tribe, Artist and Actor
For a long time the Europeans thought if they went to the end of the horizon they’re gonna slip off the edge of the earth. But our ancestors were strapping logs together and sailing around the Pacific like madmen. They were traversing the largest spans of water on the planet like they were just going down the road to get some bananas . . . ‘Let’s go to Tahiti . . . or Hawai‘i!’
Tupaia and the Māori didn’t need any evidence. They knew they were kin. And the Māori knew straight away that Tupaia was an eminent man. They welcomed him as a senior priest and eagerly absorbed the knowledge he shared with them about their history and culture.
SIR JOSEPH BANKS (1743–1820), 1st Baronet, Naturalist and Botanist on Cook’s first voyage
Tupaia . . . had much conversation with one of their priests; they seemed to agree very well in their notions of religion only Tupaia was much more learned than the other and all his discourse was heard with much attention.
When the Endeavour arrived in Tolaga Bay, it was a centre for a Māori school of learning known as Te Rawheoro. But the senior priests had large gaps in their knowledge that Tupaia was able to fill.
ANNIE MCGUIRE
The news had come up from Poverty Bay that there had been deaths and that those deaths were caused by a firestick. They also heard there was a man on board who spoke our language or spoke a language we could understand. At the time, Te Rawheoro – the learning centre – was going very strongly, and they wanted to know what this firestick was that could kill somebody at a distance.
Tupaia told them that his homeland, Ra’iatea, was the mythical launching place for all the great Polynesian voyages that had populated the Pacific, including New Zealand. It was also the home of the Māori ancestors. Havaiki – Ra’iatea – was already embedded in the local belief system. After death, it was believed that Māori spirits would plunge into the sea from Cape Reinga at the northernmost tip of New Zealand’s North Island and travel through the Pacific to Ra’iatea. It was little wonder that the Māori were so elated to meet Tupaia, a high priest who hailed from that very island.
Cook, who noted that ‘Tupaia always accompanies us in every excursion we make and proves of infinite service’, was fast learning how useful he would be for this and future voyages of Pacific exploration.
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK
Should it be thought proper to send a ship out upon this service while Tupaia lives and he to come out in her, in that case she would have a prodigious advantage over every ship that have been upon discoveries in those seas before . . . you would always get people to direct you from island to island and would be sure of meeting with a friendly reception and refreshments at every island you came to.
But to the Māori, Tupaia’s presence here was something else altogether. His arrival was life-changing. He was filling in the blanks of Māori history and giving the locals an understanding of their place within an ancient, powerful and expansive seafaring civilisation.
One other aspect of Tolaga Bay’s position as a centre of Māori learning was its focus on canoe construction and the ancillary skills of carving and weaving. The esoteric lore absorbed at Te Rawheoro was closely aligned with the carving skills that young Māori learnt there. In a non-literate society, art forms – from woodcarving
to tattoos – communicated information and preserved knowledge that in Cook’s Europe was recorded and circulated on paper.
GORDON TOI
That’s the journey. That’s what’s recorded in all these carvings. We’re lucky and really fortunate in this country to be able to have a culture that still exists and lives and breathes. We get to tell all these stories about our ancestors and how we’re connected to them and how they’re connected to us.
For example, the carving that goes into the construction of a marae, which in New Zealand is a roofed meeting house, creates something much more spiritually meaningful than just four walls and a roof. Marae were, and are, symbols of tribal prestige. Many represent a tribal ancestor. At the apex is a carved head from which extends a ridgepole representing the backbone. The bargeboards are the arms with the lower ends splayed to represent fingers. Inside, the roof’s rafters are ribs, and the interior is the ancestor’s chest and belly. A tribe’s prestige was heavily invested in elaborate carving, including of pataka, the elevated food stores that reflected a tribe’s prosperity, and – of course – the massive waka that confronted Cook and his men as they travelled around New Zealand’s coastline.
The exquisite beauty of Māori carving impressed Cook and his men. Even in the absence of knowledge about the deeper meaning of the sculptural work, it was acknowledged that the Tolaga Bay artists were masters. They were beneficiaries of a long lineage of Polynesian artisans. The high priests of Polynesian society – Tupaia, as an arioi, was one – were expected to acquire artistic skills; art was yet another implement in their professional toolbox. On the Society Islands, the arioi were a class of artists in their own right; the priests would master woodcarving, dance, music and tattooing. Which is probably why, when given the chance, Tupaia seized upon the opportunity to try out a new medium. Watercolour painting.
The British Library has in its collection a delightful series of watercolour studies from Cook’s first voyage. They are naïve in style, in the sense that they are clearly the work of an untrained artist, but until relatively recently nobody knew who painted them. Because watercolour paints were expensive and as there is a focus on plant life in a number of the studies, it was assumed that the mystery painter was Joseph Banks. But painstaking research has shown that the man who painted these exquisite works of art was Tupaia, whose preternatural skills as an artist were described by Banks.
SIR JOSEPH BANKS
Tupaia the Indian who came with me from Otaheite learnt to draw in a way not quite unintelligible. The genius for caricature which all wild people possess led him to caricature me and he drew me with a nail in my hand delivering it to an Indian who sold me a lobster but with my other hand I had a firm fist on the lobster determined not to quit the nail till I had delivery and seizing of the article.
The caricature is also noteworthy as it’s the only portrait of Banks executed on the voyage itself.
Tupaia’s arrival in New Zealand made an enormous impression on the Māori people.
ANNIE MCGUIRE
Tupaia, standing up in his cave with his audience below, really captured the audience by telling them about his homeland, which it turned out was also their homeland. Tupaia was the interpreter and the carrier of messages for both sides, and the Māori living here decided he was the captain of that waka with sails. He ordered Cook’s crew around in his own language like he was in command and when he spoke to them in English he spoke to them in such a way that it seemed he was giving orders. That’s typical Polynesian humour. Tupaia would’ve had a marvellous time telling them he was the boss here. Cook and the rest of the crew wouldn’t have been aware of what he was saying back to the locals.
News of his presence on board the Endeavour was telegraphed up and down the coast. Each time the British ships appeared in a bay or harbour, canoes would arrive alongside the ship and the men on board would hail Tupaia by name. After the ship departed New Zealand’s shores, it was Tupaia, not Cook, who was remembered.
As for Cook, he developed an enormous respect for the Māori people. He understood why they were trying to keep him from their shores and admired the determination with which they fought him off. He also knew they were people he could do business with. On his second voyage, he described the Māori as having ‘a brave, noble, open and benevolent disposition, but they are a people that will never put up with an insult if they have an opportunity to resent it’.
Cook’s admiration for the Māori remained steadfast, even as the journey progressed and the men on the Endeavour began to see hints of practices that had previously been unimaginable to a boatload of eighteenth-century Enlightened Englishmen. But many of his crewmates – including Tupaia – would be shaken to the core by what was to come.
SIX
MORTAL REMAINS
The Bay of Islands is such a peaceful and beautiful place. But of course it wasn’t always like this. It was a very violent and disturbing place in the early 1800s. There’s a part of me that rather wishes that some of that excitement was back. I don’t know – perhaps we’re all a little attracted to the dangerous side of life. Anyway, I’m too old for that now. So, forget about it.
SAM NEILL
Who’d be a sailor in the eighteenth century? To start with, there was an exhaustive list of superstitions to keep up with. No bananas on board. No singing or whistling into the wind. No people with flat feet, no women and no redheads, and certainly not anyone who was unfortunate enough to be all three. And don’t learn to swim.
From a superstitious viewpoint, the no-swimming edict came from the idea that you’d goad the sea gods into whipping up a storm if you taught yourself to stay afloat. But there was also a practical consideration. Back in the day, the lumbering great sailing ships that plied the ocean weren’t exactly nimble. If you fell overboard, there was no slamming the motor into reverse to come back and pick you up. Unless you were in a shallow bay or harbour where the anchor could be used, the crew had no way of halting the ship’s progress. It was deemed better to sink quickly beneath the waves than to tread water and dog paddle for hours – or days – before finally succumbing to exhaustion . . . or to circling sharks.
The fact of the matter is, few of the men on the Endeavour, including Cook, learnt to swim because the thing that terrified them more than anything was the thought of being lost at sea. That would change once they spent time in New Zealand. They then realised there might be a far more horrifying fate awaiting them.
That fate? Well, there’s no more avoiding it. The pachyderm in the room demands attention. Cannibalism. There. It’s been said.
On his return to England, Cook brought two legends of the South Pacific that captured the public imagination and would persist above all others. One was the seductive myth of pliant Tahitian maidens basking on sugar-soft beaches in the shade of emerald coconut palms. The other was a tale of fierce, tattooed warriors so enflamed by blood lust they tore each other limb from limb and devoured each other’s flesh.
To Cook and the men on board the Endeavour, cannibalism was the ultimate taboo. According to the Western way of thinking, the only vaguely acceptable reason for indulging in cannibalism has been when people are pushed to extremes. In what would become known as the ‘Custom of the Sea’, shipwrecked sailors would draw straws to determine which of them should be sacrificed to save their crewmates. And in the frequent and protracted sieges of cities and towns during wartime, starvation would force people to throw the deceased in the pot. This was widely accepted as aberrant, if justifiable, behaviour – a last resort.
In short, in Western society cannibalism has never been something you generally discuss over biscuits and a cup of tea.
*
When James Cook and his men returned to England, their accounts of Māori cannibalism fed the appetite of an eighteenth-century public ravenous for implausible tales from exotic lands. But they viewed these stories through a lens coloured by their own heritage and preconceived ideas. As far as the English public were concerned, ‘canniba
l’ meant ‘savage’. Uncivilised. To eat another human’s flesh was, to most of these Englishmen and women, unimaginable. When Māori people were labelled ‘cannibals’, they were lumbered with all the baggage that came with it in Western culture, without allowing for the likelihood that the practice meant something altogether different in the Pacific islands of Aotearoa than it did in the backstreets of London town.
The practice of cannibalism in Māori society was underpinned by complex cultural and spiritual meaning.
KILEY NEPIA, Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne Tribes, Descendant of Kahura
Kaitangata, or the eating of people, wasn’t for protein or the eating of nutrients. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence. It was very rare. You’re talking about strict tapu rules, so a specific type of person would have carried out that ritual. Not everybody was permitted to do those things.
It was an important ritual associated with war. After a battle, warriors would consume flesh taken from the bodies of their fallen enemies. This was all tied up with the sacred Māori concept of mana. As Cook had encountered on Tahiti, for the Polynesians, mana is the force that determines an individual’s prestige, status and authority – a spiritual gift that works through that person. A man or woman is not the source of mana; the human being is its agent. So for the Māori, when an enemy fell on a battlefield, a warrior could diminish his victim’s mana by consuming his flesh, while also enhancing his own prestige.
At first, Cook and the other occupants of the Endeavour couldn’t credit the idea that the Māori ate each other. The first hint they had of it came from the three boys they had abducted near Poverty Bay. When Cook indicated he was going to put the abductees ashore, the boys were less than thrilled when they realised the landing spot chosen was enemy turf. When Tupaia questioned them about their fears, they told him the members of the other tribe – or iwi – would kill and eat them.
The Pacific Page 9
