The Culture of Culture Contact: Refractions from Polynesia Author(s): I. C. Campbell Source: Journal of World History, Vol.

14, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 63-86 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20079009 . Accessed: 25/01/2011 10:13
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The Culture of Culture Contact: from Refractions Polynesia*

I. C. CAMPBELL University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

moments occasions

when

different

cultures

first came

into contact

were

of wonder and uncertainty, full of dramatic potential. The was a confrontation Each meeting with an unknown more unfathom are of such occasions able than any other social event. The dynamics as is usually matters of uncertainty also for the historian if, especially the case, the historian has a closer affinity with, and better insight into, sources are most historical the behavior of one party. Moreover, likely one side only, making to under to have been generated attempts by to partisan accounts. Further, stud stand the process of contact hostage contact often suffer a teleological ies of culture of fallacy: knowledge of the nature of the later outcome of contact influences perception and even of first contact. Thus a history of displacement early contact, in terms of aggression of first contact couched gives rise to explanations or assimilation a history of acculturation and intrusion; gives rise to collaborative explanations. to the One of the contributions of modern Pacific historiography a third model, which contact is the development of study of culture in its emphasis on native and may be called postcolonial rationality to this scenario, Pacific Islanders were neither practicality. According

* This essay is based on an address given as the Professor Frank Broeze Memorial Lec ture at the Cultural at the University in the Asia-Pacific Encounters of Region Conference in July 2001. I thank the organizers of the conference Western for their Australia, Perth, to the memory invitation and dedicate this publication of the late Frank Broeze, Professor of Maritime History, University of Western Australia.

1 Journal ofWorld History, Vol. 14, No. ? 2003 by University of Hawai'i Press

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trammeled nor victimized; they of their new histories making tact. This agency" "indigenous as to discount the publications

were active agents, not passive, in the con in the context of Euro-American was taken so far in some perspective in Pacific Islands his role of foreigners torical change, accentuating the role of islanders to such an extent that came to be seen by Pacific Islanders as apologists the new historians for

colonialism and exploitation, and as deniers of depopulation. The sense of outrage appears in recent nativist histories from Hawai'i and New where the effects of dispossession have been greatest, and in Zealand, in Australia reactions from a century-old Pacific Islander population whose ancestors were relocated by labor recruitment. For these critics, who do not wish to concede ground to these nativist to incorporate a native perspective the willingness outlooks, against the that all the written evidence was generated from the other side reality that has been only partly met. presents an epistemological challenge contact was not necessarily of two worlds, Culture either a meeting or a meeting in terms of it is often portrayed of raw instinct, although utwo worlds" and examples of Hobbesian, "state of nature" ethics are and for historians not hard may of partisan history thus raised polemical potential that the events of culture contact be avoided by the recognition present a pattern that is neither implicit in later events nor shaped by occa the existing cultures of the contacting parties. Culture-contact as sions elicited forms of behavior that might reasonably be described not being of the normal cultural of the parties part expressions involved. only, not to find. The

to the culture of contact in other words, They belonged, to the culture of daily life or the culture of normal experience. There are significant differences between the processes of early cul ture contact in the Pacific Islands and the corresponding processes else Euro where.1 These differences cluster around the fact that meeting was for Polynesians an experience more novel and less explicable peans in ordinary terms than was usual inmost other places. Polynesian-Euro to be at the extreme end of a contin pean contact may be considered the other end of the continuum lies the variety of European are distinguished which Asian encounters, by the fact that many parts of coastal Asia were already at the time of European part of discovery an international or intercultural network. Europeans were not the first or Malacca or Ceram; they were foreigners from afar to come to Calicut a different set of foreigners, their and perhaps they conducted merely uum. At

1Urs Bitterli, tures, 14Q2-1800, Clash of Cultures,

inConflict. Cultures Encounters Between European and Non-European trans. Ritchie Robertson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Brian M. 2nd edition Press, 1998). (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira

Cul Fagan,

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trade in different ways and associated military force with itmore or less than their competitors and precursors but there was a greater did, or approximate "native" between degree of comparability equivalence want of a better collective and European in than occurred (for term) and social change from contact with Chinese and Polynesia. Religious Indian merchants, and with Muslims from farther west, was already well established. of strange appearance, dress, language, and reli Foreigners were already part of the cultural in native gion landscape. Categories must already have existed, even in places somewhat off the thought beaten track, to accommodate the existence of foreigners. The arrival of Europeans therefore was a novelty rather than a shock. If anything was shocking it might have been their military but little technology, else was radically different from other people. In contrast, when Europeans arrived in Polynesia, they were not a variation on a theme. With the coming of Europeans, the simply it was is the subject how incomprehensible unthinkable Just happened. of debate, but that the nature of early contact differs from that expe is due to the extreme remoteness rienced elsewhere of insular Polyne sia, and indeed the focus of the sources and the later literature is on the more remote parts of that region. Polynesians were not merely isolated were totally quarantined. The major archipelagos of Eastern ?they the Marquesas, Hawai Tahiti and the Soci 1, (New Zealand, Polynesia Islands) had been cut off from contact even ety Islands, and the Cook with each other for some centuries before the late-eighteenth-century Such contact as might have taken place was with others explorations.2 own kind, Polynesians of their whose languages were still largely mutu same gods, social organization, social customs, ally intelligible, with the isolation had lasted long enough for their foods, and technology. Their of more distant Polynesian groups to have passed into the knowledge shadowy realm of myth. Distant places blurred with the supernatural; or to put it another way, mystical places were thought of as having physical form and location. Even in western Polynesia, where the inter are not as great, they inhabited an almost com distances archipelagic three major archipelagos pletely closed world in which (Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji) were in regular, even intimate, contact, but had no ordinary communication their own local region. Thus Polynesians did beyond not know people who were not like themselves in almost every mate rial particular. They had and could have had no mental to categories

G.

2 David theNavigators A. H. & A.W. Reed, Lewis, We, (Wellington: in Polynesia," S. Parsonson, "The Nautical Revolution unpublished, Dunedin, 1972.

1972) p. 299. Also Hocken Library,

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the new arrivals of the late eighteenth accommodate century.3 First to the Colombian contact in Polynesia was therefore more analogous in the history of European encounter than to any other contact expan it to provoke a cosmogonie crisis. Whether sion.4 It had the potential so is a matter of some controversy. there is sufficient evi did However, the experi and Polynesians, dence to suggest that for both Europeans ence of culture contact contained from the usual significant differences
pattern.

Models Culture

of Culture

Contact

in ways that reflect contact generally has been conceptualized A popular conceptual of historical the usual models interpretation. These and consensus. is the dualism of conflict framework categories or accultura to an outcome-model of assimilation roughly correspond on the other.5 Pacific histori tion on the one hand, and displacement a conflict model ans on the whole have avoided of culture contact,

preferring Westerners

between of relationships instead to see the development of the obliteration Without and islanders as collaborative. has been the dominant traditional theme, and thus culture, continuity in a displacement does not have much model except application was settlement Hawai'i and New Zealand, where foreign large-scale is the case for a conflict model Without displacement, overwhelming. "fatal the now derided absent. For example, weak, but not entirely or "nativist" and the more recent nationalist impact" interpretations overt from Hawai'i present a "conflict" scenario without interpretations nonetheless.6 but with cultural displacement and oppression conquest

3 H. A. H. Canoes and Glorious Driessen, Beings," Journal of Pacific His "Outriggerless of the coming of Europeans and their likely tory 17, no. 1 (1982): 3-28 discusses prophecies source in earlier contacts. 4 At in Conflict, See Bitterli, Cultures least as usually p. 72 for the supposed imagined. view of the Central Ameri and the conventional of Europeans by the Caribs, perceptions less strange to seemed can perceptions. would have For technological reasons, Europeans than they did to the islanders of either the Carib of Central America continental peoples or the Pacific. 5 Conflict to be the most common seems generally and Fagan, Clash of Cultures. flict, 6 Lilikala Native Land and Foreign Kame'eleihiwa, Press, 1992). The (Honolulu: mony? Bishop Museum The Fatal Impact. An is Alan Moorehead, the Pacific bean model. See Bitterli, Cultures inCon

Desires: How Shall We Live inHar for "fatal impact" account paradigm Account of the Invasion of the South settlers Price, White (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966). Also A. Grenfell Pacific 1767-1840 whites and abo and native peoples: An historical study of racial contacts between English-speaking and New Zealand (Melbourne: Georgian riginal peoples in the United States, Canada, Australia 1949).

House,

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idealism embracing The fatal impact thesis is a variety of historical contact between Pacific Islanders and Euro the following propositions: shock to the former, who classified the peans was an epistemological latter as supernatural; contact was also a psychological shock, in which their own identities and lost their sense of the islanders questioned mastery of their own situations; contact was a cultural shock in which role expectations became confused and normal responses became inap was such a severe cul encounter the European propriate. Altogether, tural and psychological shock as to have fatal consequences for popu lations and cultures alike. The introduction of exotic diseases and tobacco and alcohol use were both biologically and socially destructive; while the introduction of values such as materialism, such as practices and a new religion that was not rooted in the existing cul prostitution, demoralization and anomie. The "fatal impact" that the effects of contact on a pristine society were is perfectly The deleterious. congruent with the interpretation wholly "noble savage, civilized decadence" dualism. While eighteenth-century a good deal of the destruction was caused by material agents (microbes, the "fatal impact" thesis is distinguished industrial products), alcohol, on the intellectual and emotional of consequences by its emphasis tural fabric caused thesis thus holds as assuming an this extent, the thesis may be classified as distinct from the materialist bias of conflict or theories. displacement Pacific historians have on the whole rejected the "fatal impact" and in doing so, implicitly rejected idealism. However, they have not whole a pragmatic embraced materialism. Rather, heartedly they envisage contact. To idealist mechanism "islander agency" and negotiated interactions, emphasizing the pragmatism and rationalism of the islanders, which was stressing in their exploration evident of European attributes and cul certainly in borrowing and their selectivity and discrimination and incor ture, culture.7 They stressed the porating foreign articles into their material of their bargaining Polynesians' ready exploitation strength, noticing rates and choice of their success in having their own way in exchange empiricism,

Came ments

are Dorothy written within this paradigm key monographs Shineberg, They (Carleton: Melbourne Press, Scarr, Frag for Sandalwood University 1967); Deryck National Press, 1967); Peter Corris, Pas of Empire (Canberra: Australian University The sage Port and Plantation (Carleton: Melbourne Press, 1973); K. R. Howe, University Islands. A History National Loyalty 1840-1 goo (Canberra: Australian of Culture Contacts

7 The

Press, 1977); Caroline Ralston, Grass Huts and Warehouses (Canberra: Australian University National Tahiti Nui. Change and Survival in French Press, 1978); Colin Newbury, University The University Press of Hawai'i, (Honolulu: Polynesia 1767-1945 1980); Judith Bennett, runs Wealth of Hawai'i theme (Honolulu: Press, of the Solomons University 1987). The the Journal of Pacific History (Canberra: through 1966 to date).

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for the "rational savage" became practi The admiration commodities. a mantra of an entire genera running through the historiography cally of the cultural consequences tion. However, this approach downplayed as simply the rational choices made by contact, which were dismissed in their selective adoption of foreign ways. Similarly, intelligent people of contact were all but denied, not the demographic consequences cases of catastrophic collapse.8 withstanding which was as much this historiographical revisionism, However, as to elucidate to rehabilitate their history,9 intended Polynesians culture contact behav and thus explained stressed cultural continuity the "fatal impact" ior in terms of the cultural status quo ante. Whereas the new histories emphasized discontinuity, and earlier mission-inspired or analogues to inform strove to find traditional historians precedents of In this way they asserted a native assimilation the contact behavior. to prostitution, to trade, sexual hospitality and tradi gift exchange on ships. The new historians were care to enlistment tional voyaging from other idealists whose themselves ful to distinguish interpretations of "Fatal Impact" fame, such as Alan Moorehead seemed sentimental, of the labor trade,10 and the the pioneer historian and E.W. Docker, or mission-inspired historians.11 of missionary earlier generation Early were also pro-native such as Pitt-Rivers sym anthropologist-historians was distinctly more idealist than material pathizers whose orientation with their sympathetic ist.12 These portrayal of island interpretations as racist in demeaning ers were often described by the revisionists the rational action. To describe capacity of the islanders for independent, to be asserting that islanders as the victims of history was understood were merely passive, unable to frame their own inadequate people they Such representations their own choices. (or mis responses or make the new served to define of earlier historiography representations) to be outlook their less sympathetic school and allowed rationalist as scholarly and fair-minded. justified

8 See Norma Island Populations (Canberra: Aus McArthur, of the Pacific especially Fall (Sydney: theWaves tralian National Press, 1967); and K. R. Howe, Where University 1984). George Allen & Unwin, 9 K. R. New Zealand Jour "The Fate of the 'Savage' in Pacific Historiography," Howe, 11 (1977): nal of History 137-154. 10 E. W The Recruiting The Blackbirders. Docker, of South Seas Labour for Queensland. 6k Robertson, 1970). 1863-1907 (Sydney: Angus 11 "Fate of the 'Savage.'" Howe, 12G. H. L. F. The clash of culture and the contact of races; an anthropological Pitt-Rivers, to the depopulation and psychological study of the laws of racial adaptability, with special reference Routledge, 1927). See also of subject races (London: of the Pacific and the government W. H. R. Rivers, Essays on the depopulation University Cambridge (Cambridge: ofMelanesia Press, 1922).

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to the displace earlier scholars on the whole, Whereas subscribing ment model of culture contact, have little to say about the expansion this last that culture contact presented, of horizons and opportunities an article of faith among in is practically the new rationalists who, an acculturative that of culture contact, believed model advancing (and other Pacific Islanders) they were raising the status of Polynesians to takers, from passive to active, from victims or bene from receivers to agents and perpetrators, makers of their own history. to distinguish from the older themselves idealists, but Wishing to embrace Marxism of the without wanting either, Pacific historians last half-century have on the whole adopted a rigorous if conservative to engage with a new brand of that left them ill-equipped empiricism ficiaries The foremost including both structuralists and postmodernists. and of the Marshall of the former is anthropologist Sahlins, exponent and structuralism, more will be said Of Sahlins latter, Greg Dening. is in culture contact historiography below. The postmodern tendency to consider contact situations more significant for their universal aspects this trend in contact than for their unique features. More particularly, idealists in primitive studies is less about the study of social change society, or than about the cultural history of of the meeting, about the dynamics nos.u This is reflexive history rather than contact history as such. Said's a main Orientalism,14 inspiration, has very little to do with the realities it is instead about European per with Asia; of Europe's relationships in the context of of Asia and even European ceptions self-perceptions Asia. Said and those who work in the same paradigm would meeting are a component of contact history. perhaps respond that perceptions are not; a history of perceptions may be quite divorced Sometimes they from any actual contact. Conversely, perceptions culturally determined often have no place among the realities of contact on the frontier. is not how the new postmodern idealists see it; to This, however, of knowing makes the quest of objective the cultural component them, is so influential a The culture of the observer knowledge problematic. that reality is always represented rather than factor in the observation is extreme philo denies that his position Dening apprehended. While to it difficult makes idealism or solipsism,15 his perspective His forte is in elaborating mean explain how and why things happen. encounter characters and allusion. His historical ings via metaphor sophical

is, plural of ego. 14 Edward Said, Orientalism 15 The Death Greg Dening, of Hawai'i (Honolulu: University

13 That

and Kegan Paul, 1978). (London: Routledge Gooch. A History's Anthropology, of William Press, 1995), p. 13.

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in their own meanings. It is an extreme statement of a but itmakes culture contact seem like Zeno's truth, fairly commonplace ever closer, but never meet.16 They paradox: people approach trade, but their they injure, they observe, they talk and listen and copulate, minds do not engage. There is always a cognitive screen and affective true perception true understanding and between them illusory. making only are incomprehen for the historian, the contact Similarly relationships texts and these are never compre sible because the evidence ismerely or transparent. Moreover we read them the only hensive, complete, we can, and that is according to the meaning that they have for us way today. The screen of culture separating voyager from native also serves to separate the historian from the voyager and his journal. The histo rian therefore is at a loss to understand cross-cultural relationships. to philosophy Such a view is unnecessarily defeatist, owing more than to historical method. The evidence establishes that quite clearly and Europeans in ways communicated that elicited Polynesians of the communica responses that were congruent with the intentions tion. In other words, they understood each other. When the crew of the met the inhabitants in 1767, mutual at of Tahiti Dolphin intelligibility the level sought was practically instantaneous. and By sign language utterances it perfectly clear to the Tahi the sailors made onomatopoeic tians that they wanted provisions and water, and the Tahitians grasped the notion of price when goods were offered in exchange. immediately So did the Hawaiians and other Polynesians. the second Bougainville, of Tahiti, discoverer learned quite a lot about Tahitian soci European a single word or cognate in ety after only nine days there and without common. about the physical geogra Indeed, he made a greater mistake in general quickly phy than he did about social organization. Explorers learned enough local language to be able to elicit a good deal of infor so much so that their mation about Polynesian society and culture, to provide a baseline continue for subsequent journals anthropological and historical research. However, there are certainly aspects of early contacts to understand, that are difficult and that might yet yield to how new, unthought-of interpretations.17 European preconceptions, ever, were not capable of imposing a screen of the opacity supposed by the postmodernists.

16 works include Islands and Beaches (Carleton: Melbourne Dening's University 1980) and The Bounty: An Ethnographic History (History Department, University bourne, 1988). 17 inOceania 21, no. 1 (1986): Greg Dening, "Possessing Tahiti," Archaeology

Press, of Mel 108.

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The Sahlins in Culture There

Controversy Contact

Supernatural

to the arrival of Euro in Polynesian reactions is a consistency for accounted peans across both time and space that is not adequately contact behavior with precontact customs or by either by assimilating to account for it by rationalism. W. H. Pearson attempted pragmatic were sufficiently mobile that Polynesians for there to be a suggesting custom of receiving strangers from abroad, and these pan-Polynesian customs were applied to Europeans when they first arrived. Meritorious as the argument for all aspects of early contact is, it does not account

for what happened and especially after the first meeting.18 behavior, to which issue hinges on the extent The Polynesians regarded their as analogous encounters to their meetings with Europeans with other or as a fundamentally It different category of experience. Polynesians, is argued below path by which that the evidence points to a separate category. One is to suppose that would be so classified the encounter as gods. It has been suggested recently regarded Europeans

Polynesians that Polynesian

of the supernatural the rapacious concepts explain about which and the eagerness every explorer complained, thievery that nubile young women should copulate with sailors, in that these actions resemble the unrestrained that Polynesians showed eagerness on religious festivals to appropriate attributes of divinity.19 in Poly For perhaps a century and a half, writers on early contact

asserted that when Europeans first arrived, they were taken for The explorers themselves seemed to have picked up the idea, gods. which thereby found its way into the source literature, but the mission aries who followed in their wake got the same idea from the islanders. The words that Polynesians coined to identify the foreigners?includ nesia and pakeha Islands), papalangi (Tonga and Samoa), ing popaa (Society a belief in their supernatural (New Zealand)?imply provenance.20 That primitive with Europeans mis peoples on their first encounters took them for gods soon passed into European folklore, and the mis

18 on Polynesian W. H. Pearson of European Voyagers "The Reception Islands, 1568 " 26 (1970): Journal de la Soci?t? des Oc?anistes 121-153. 19 "The Tears of Some Polynesian Girls," a seminar at the Macmil Serge Tcherkezoff, 2001. Also Mar lan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, 24 April and Mythical shall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors Realities, Structure in the Early History of the 1797 Sandwich Islands Kingdom of Michigan (Ann Arbor: University 20 I.C. of Europeans," Perceptions Campbell, "Polynesian 64-80, 64-69. especially Press, 1981), pp. 40-41. Pacific Studies 5, no. 2 (1982):

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hands

at Europeans' suffered subsequently indigenous peoples all the more reproachful for the divine dignity that had on them. been bestowed originally For the historians of the age of decolonization, these however, seemed

sentiments reports seemed incredible. The spirit of the age demanded was both an article of faith of racial equality, and primitive rationality The new rationalist and demonstrable historians empirically. simply the notion that Polynesians could ever have thought Euro rejected idea embarrassed peans were supernatural. The them, as well as con rationalist of the native mind and the perception It was the sort of idea that of contact relations. apparent pragmatism to "fatal impact" theorists whose work was so comprehen appealed the idea of the supernatural sively rejected. Tainted by association, was summarily dismissed. An apparent exception European appeared in an early article by Hawai'i historian Gavan Daws, who accepted that tradicted their to be the god Lono. However, Hawaiians believed Captain Cook there were particular circumstances: at the time Cook had arrived in Hawai'i of a festival, the makahiki, which was the annual visit of Lono. More over, resembling ence. The Hawai'i like Lono, Cook circumnavigated the cloth-draped cruciform poles that did not stop there: Lono resemblance the end of the festival; Cook was killed more or same schedule. Throughout, Cook was addressed his sails clockwise, heralded Lono's pres was ritually killed at to the less according as Lono, and treated

with

veneration.21 extraordinary in Daws's essay that Europeans there was no suggestion However, were regarded as gods, and the extraordinary circumstances generally at of Cook were not duplicated the Hawaiian perceptions surrounding or elsewhere. was divine. It seemed that only Cook other times Indeed, it was only the priests of Lono who thought him so, and it was their rivals, the chiefs of the war god, Ku, who killed him. Thus, Daws's con tribution was not

in Hawaiian in asserting of Europeans the divinity events with Europeans had to be that contact eyes, but in suggesting in terms of Polynesian had a history understood Polynesians politics. stumbled in. Careful textual and were having a history when Europeans aided by sound ethnographic and a constructive imagination reading it in the Poly information could explain contact history by locating nesian historical context. Daws's argument paradigm therefore of Pacific than contradicted the emerging confirmed rather contact history.

21 Gavan Journal

Daws,

"Kealakekua 3 (1968):

of Pacific History

Bay Revisited. 21-23.

A Note

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the Death

of Captain

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and the question of putative divinity were of inter for whom Marshall the intrusion of Euro Sahlins, For Sahlins the history had an added significance. in death of Captain Cook provided a test case for theoretical questions and in particular the relationship between culture and anthropology, events have a logic of their own as historians believe, history: whether or whether of long-term structural they are merely manifestations The same events est to anthropologist peans into Hawaiian to of society. At issue was the capacity of anthropology characteristics explain social change. The death of Captain Cook was to show how a structure can be upset by an event that itself owes its various meanings to the respective structures of its contexts. This event in Hawaiian his it occurred for the future because tory was pregnant with implications at a point where two structures normally different worlds occupying came into contact. As Sahlins put it, a conjuncture occurred between two structures. The conjuncture came to have a structure of its own: the structure of the conjuncture, and if this structure of the conjuncture not just why Captain could be explicated then we would understand died, but how cultures change when they come into contact.22 on a particular understanding Sahlins's hypothesis of the depended events of December to February The point was that the 1779. 1778 to their understanding like all peoples, behaved Hawaiians, according as unprecedented as the arrival of Europeans, of events. For something came from the repertoire of myth their understandings that provided the nearest parallels, and in this case, the parallels were extraordinarily Cook to events close. Overall, seemed to be reacting although Hawaiians as events as they happened, in the long term their strategies simply can be seen as fitting in with the meanings that they already possessed. Sahlins eschewed the idealist-materialist Thus, although polarization, was distinguished his interpretation from the orthodox historiography and in particular the subtlety of his reconstruc by its idealist elements, to the argument was the claim tion of the Hawaiian mentality. Central that Cook was generally taken to be the god Lono. The fournal of Pacific History published review articles of the two books in which Sahlins developed his interpretation. reviewer Neither (both had postmodernist credentials) of the historical events, pretation specifically though both addressed his inter gave their general

22 Sahlins Metaphors contexts

in several publications these arguments but mainly Historical developed and Mythical Realities. Several in different essays dealing with the same problem are published in Islands of History of Chicago Press, 1985). (Chicago: University

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even admiration.23 This was typical of the historiographical Sahlins was much admired, but not emulated. Nor was he to any published criticism by historians the notwithstanding exposed lent itself to misin fact that his account of the death of Captain Cook as saying that Cook was killed Sahlins was understood terpretation.24 approval, response: his visit in any other way could not understand because Hawaiians than as Lono's annual return. Not they realizing that he was a man, that was always the fate of the god Lono because killed Cook simply the chiefs of the god Ku each year.25 when he came ashore to confront This own to take history out of the explanation Cook's altogether: the actions of his crew, the the disputes over property, actions, the two peoples, were all basically between imperfect communication were con the Hawaiians irrelevant as causes of Cook's death because seemed

to the requirements of the ritual cycle. They strained to act according events as they really were, but instead perceived them did not perceive as the realization of the myth. it was all fore-ordained. In other words, a challenge to Sahlins was published, it came not When eventually a Pacific historian, Gananath but from an anthropologist, from Obeye an orientation toward structuralism, sekere, who, though expressing in the language of the empirical rationalism of his critique couched He that Hawaiian historical what had become argued orthodoxy. at the time of first contact and subsequently, exhibited both behavior, it was inconceivable Hawaiians could that and rationality; pragmatism as divine because they obviously were not; have regarded the Europeans for his own death because of his own hubris and Cook was responsible not Hawaiian myth or struc ill temper. European misjudgment, violent events. The to those unhappy idea that Cook was ture, holds the key to be a god was wholly European. Indeed, Europeans always thought believed held that native peoples everywhere they were gods, and no sooner had news of the great navigator's death reached England than

Some Recent and Ethnographic Trends," History: "Ethnography Douglas, On the "Reflection: (1984): 36-42; Greg Dening, Pacific History Bibliography and Comment and Sahlins and Valerio Valeri," of Marshall Cultural Bibliography Pacific History History Comment (1986): 43-48. 24 Some mention review in the book forum on Gananath their views of Sahlins in the Pacific, Pacific Stud The Apotheosis of Captain Cook. European Mythmaking Obeyesekere in particular, David Hanlon, ies 17, no. 2 (1994): p. 108; Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, 103-155, reviews of either Thomas, p. 123. Pacific Studies did not publish 115; Nicholas pp. 111-112, nor even of Sahlins' Realities or Islands of History, and Mythical Historical Metaphors rejoin 'Natives' Think. der, How 25 K. R. Howe "The Making 113. (1996): of Cook's Death," Journal of Pacific History 31, no. 1

23 Bronwen

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his status as a Hawaiian god was the subject of various literary ventures. it passed into European general knowledge that this was how Inevitably to Hawai'i Hawaiians had regarded Cook. Travelers fed the idea to the Hawaiians with their unending about him, so that Hawaiians questions soon learned that that was what Europeans wanted to hear. Cook was not by Hawaiian myth-acting, thus apotheosized but by European myth making.26 Sahlins argument, responded with an entire book dissecting Obeyesekere's out among other things the fatal flaw that while pointing were too rational to allow structure to over Hawaiians Obeyesekere's whelm the English were trapped in their own structures experience,

are gods"), which them ("natives always think Europeans prevented from understanding in this case, Hawaiian mundane testi experience, about the death of Cook.27 The consensus followers of mony among the debate seems to be that Sahlins won, but historians have remained cautious. Obeyesekere's rationalist received warmer reviews challenge than Sahlins's original thesis, and of the rejoinder, the Journal of Pacific on points.28 reviewer awarded the fight to Obeyesekere History's as such, but about The debate was not about Sahlins's structuralism the use of evidence. Its significance is that it brought into the open what historians had been loath to broach: the uncomfortable question, "Did Polynesians think that Europeans were gods, and if so what part did this play in the development of culture contact relationships?" Part to accept that they did arises from con of the reluctance of historians a failing that idea of God with the Polynesian, fusing the Christian to Obeyesekere. Sahlins also attributes issue was not so much The that a god could be born as a man, or that a god could be present in a man, but that in Polynesian there was no fundamental distinction thought between gods and men. Men, of course, mostly were not gods: they were not immortal, and did not have exceptional powers. But men were not all the same. Some men could be gods; chiefs were gods, or very close to it, and yet could suffer human infirmities, become sick, and die. After death to be gods but with different attributes from those they continued had formerly. When they gods did appear among men, they seemed in

The Apotheosis in the Obeyesekere, of Captain Cook. European Mythmaking Princeton Press, 1992). University 'Natives' Think: About Captain Cook, For Example Sahlins, How (Chicago: of Chicago Press, 1995). University 28 K. R. Howe "The Making 1 of Cook's Journal of Pacific History Death," 31, no. 108-118. This review article reviews both The Apotheosis (1996): of Captain Cook and How 'Natives' Think. Pacific (Princeton: 27Marshall

26 Gananath

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is why they were mistaken for men, every respect to be men?that and so on. Similarly, could be gods, could impregnate women, objects have not understood the extent and so could birds and fish. Historians as out of the ordinary was regarded by Polynesians to which anything in substance or origin?even the most mundane objects, supernatural to say nothing of subtle contrivances like pocket watches, compasses, in Polynesian and muskets. Thus there was no impediment thought to nor gullible It was neither that blasphemous Europeans being gods. who had should have classified as gods these extraordinary beings they in their bodies whence objects could be produced, who breathed their skins, could make people could change sick, and could kill fire, at a distance domesticated thunder and light through having people are full of stories of young women bear ning. Since Polynesian myths at that in the of gods, it is scarcely to be wondered ing the children at the first sailors century Polynesian girls threw themselves eighteenth doors they saw, not only in Tahiti and Hawai'i, but elsewhere also.

European If Polynesian to Europeans,

Perceptions

were so important in shaping their response perceptions some scru likewise deserve then European perceptions to tiny. The currency of the "noble savage" belief has been invoked between the two peoples, but it was more a explain the early harmony case of the relationship between the image. The relationship evoking is bound up with in their early encounters and Polynesians Europeans of races and the coincidence classification the evolving philosophical of eighteenth with the efflorescence influential meetings of the most a reassessment century science. The meeting with Polynesia occasioned of this process is as but the historiography of worldview for Europeans, as the other is controversial.29 of Polyne The rediscovery consensual reached its peak sia30 at precisely the time that noble savage enthusiasm in France was continued of the first perception for subsequent imaginings. The importance as an earthly paradise, of Polynesia by Europeans

29 Henri Baudet, Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Yale University Man Press, 1965); H. N. Fairchild, The Noble Savage: A Study (New Haven: 6k Russell, in Romantic Naturalism (New York: Russell 1961). See also E. H. McCormick, Auckland Press, 1977). Omai, (Auckland: University Pacific Envoy 30 For the with parts of Polynesia of this discussion earlier contacts may be purpose in terms of European and their conse been ephemeral both perceptions ignored, having in 1595; the Dutch in of the Spanish for Polynesia. These include the expeditions quences 1616, 1642, and 1722; and the English in 1765.

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in those terms by the travel industry, is the and its continued marketing of a structure that came into being in 1767. Ever since that expression initial encounter there have been travelers who have fled to Tahiti or to find what could other Pacific destinations looking for and expecting was neither not be found elsewhere. the first nor the last Paul Gauguin romantic ofthat kind.31 Haifa Herman Mel century before Gauguin, in the Marquesas Islands and subse ville deserted his whaling ship virtue the antithesis of primitive quently wrote a novel that promoted was Melville's and civilized decadence.32 So convincing experience based fiction that for years afterward travelers visited the islands trying to locate the scenes and people he wrote about. Other places have been far less subject to Utopian or romantic rep virtuous resentation. El Dorado, and Montaigne's cannibals Utopia, were all placed in South America; but whereas the literary world always that these places were fictitious, created for philosophical understood status was actually conferred on Polynesia. In a sim purposes, Utopian ilar contrast, what was once the "mysterious Orient" had multiple was a images, but along with squalor, disease, and teeming populations of fabulous wealth, mystery, the promise of spiritual enlighten mystique in such and sensual allure. Europeans never perceived ment, Polynesia terms: as a utopia it was always natural, and sensual. braided secular, is that Tahiti was The reason for this particular image of Polynesia twice in 1767, first by the English discovered (Captain Samuel Wallis

in HMS Dolphin), and second by a French expedition led by Louis

Antoine gation means

narrative de Bougainville. of his circumnavi Bougainville's to its highlight this was by no gave prime position (although or its most of the voyage the objective result): the important nine days on Tahiti where human society appeared free, uninhibited, and happy.33 Long before Bougainville's book was published, however, a brief the expedition's Philibert naturalist, Commerson, published account to confirm the in its enthusiasm for primitive life seemed that of Rousseau's that natural man was naturally Discourses, philosophy were cor virtuous and guilt-free, and that reason and accomplishment among rupting and decadent. Diderot, both as critique of French civilization others, used the image of Tahiti a and model of its alternative

31 Paul trans. O. F. Theis Noa Noa, L. Brown, (New York: Nicholas Gauguin, 1919). 32 Herman in 1846, was the first of three autobiograph Melville, Taipi, first published ical novels about his travels in the Pacific. 33 L. A. de A Voyage Round theWorld, Performed by Order of His Most Bougainville, in the Years 1766, Christian Majesty, Forster 1767, 1768, and 1769, trans. John Reinhold in 1771. and T Davis, (London: J. Nourse 1772). The French edition was published

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view that was reflected in popular literature as well.34 The enthusias tic embrace of primitivism in France probably owes more to the Com of Tahiti than to any representations merson-Bougainville-Diderot whom Bougainville had thing else.35 The specimen Tahitian, Ahutoru, well-mannered, brought back to France, was a good-natured, gentle, as part of his "natural" sentimental state, attributes, figure, which as a shaper of good character.36 proved the superfluity of civilization as well "natural" society from which he came was represented The its people hospitable, and the arts of love practiced with nei ordered, ther secrecy nor shame. As to hierarchy and authority, they existed to be sure, but Tahiti was also a place where a king could paddle his own canoe without loss of dignity. The setting for this perfect society was a supremely beautiful so fertile and the island, quarantined by nature, so benign that food production could hardly be called work. climate of Eden. Pace Voltaire's Dr. Pan likened it to the Garden Bougainville there really was a place where everything was for the best in the gloss, best of all possible worlds. The impression was false in almost but the image rected by later experience, convention and erful European literary to the later, disillusioned of depictions and was cor every particular, nevertheless lived on as a pow lent conviction and poignancy a decadent, dis priest-ridden,

in Samoa of Indeed, the massacre eased, and dispirited community.37 in 1787 may be traced to misjudg members of La P?rouse's expedition ments that the image of Tahiti based on the conviction represented circumstances The immediate of Tahit primitive reality.38 ubiquitous, were usually overlooked, ian hospitality and these cast a different light the first modern meeting between to be with Englishmen. happened on Tahitians and Europeans. This

34 Rousseau's influential tract, A discourse upon the origin and foundation Jean-Jacques of was published au voyage in 1761. Denis Diderot, the inequality among mankind, Supplement was first published soon after the voyage. in 1796, but apparently written de Bougainville, 35 Bernard Smith, (London: Oxford European Vision and the South Pacific 1768-1850 Press, i960), pp. 24-32. University 36 McCormick, Ornai, pp. 16-18. 37 Colin Such Tahiti Nui. Change and Survival in French Polynesia, pp. 66-68. Newbury, accounts The Fatal informed the popular but academically despised Alan Moorehead, Hamil (London: Hamish Impact. An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific 1767-1840 de Galaup de la Perouse, of Jean-Fran?ois pp. lxiii, 395, 540. La Perouse person of his about natural man, but members speculations were in his dealings with "native" peo also felt hampered expedition in effect, to err on the side of humanity, ples by the orders of the King of France that were or Rousseau. instructions the influence of Commerson that also reflected (trans, Society, Hakluyt with Rousseau's impressed. La Perouse 1994-1995): 1966). 38 John Dunmore (London: 1785-1788 ally had no patience ton, and ed.), The Journal

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Left to the English, Tahiti would never have given European culture It is La Mirage Tahitienne. The English response was more phlegmatic. with the from remarks of Cook both that he was acquainted evident and also that he was not influenced by it.39 idea of primitive perfection to wonder?probably moved stimulated He was nevertheless by his the Australian Banks and Solander?whether companions, were not perhaps happier than Europeans, the and whether Aborigines never contacted off had Europeans Tahitians might have been better raised these questions; he did not purport them. Cook, however, merely to answer them, nor use them to launch into a larger philosophical dis for Tahiti may be credited with IfCommerson's enthusiasm cussion.40 in Paris, then perhaps Cook's fuelled the ardor of primitivism having on the other side of the Channel. such ardor dampened phlegmatism scientific such as there were, were dismayed at Cook's cultural rel Philosophers, ativism and its endorsement which seemed to sug by Dr. Hawkesworth, rationalism.41 Whereas gest cultural betrayal rather than enlightened sent philosophers and other literary fig the French explorers' accounts ures into rhapsodies the corresponding litera of enthusiasm, English ture evoked paroxysms of ridicule and satire. Joseph Banks's amorous sex were widely the accounts of uninhibited adventures lampooned; amused, but did not compel any serious philosophical There were no philosophical flights of fancy though the speculation. man for and the implications of the nature of primitive questions human nature and social affairs generally were certainly debated among shocked and intellectuals. Away generally was more from the salon set, the contact culture of voyagers akin to Cook's phlegmatism than to Commerson's of the English As the Spanish and Dutch predecessors romanticism.42 and French had discovered earlier, it was well to be wary around sav

39 For these matters and others, see W. H. Pearson, "Hawkes worth's Alterations," Jour nal of Pacific History 7 (1972): 45-72. 40 C. Hak (ed.), The Journals of Captain James Cook, 3 vols. (Cambridge, J. Beaglehole 1969): I 399; II 175. luyt Society, 41 Smith, EuropeanVision, pp. 27-30. See also Dening, "Possessing Tahiti," pp. 112-113. 42 There are several accounts A 1800: John Turnbull, for the period up to or around . . . , 2nd edition in the Years 1800, theWorld 1801, 1802, Voyage Round 1803 & 1804 (London: Bishop Atlantic Edmund Marine Roe (ed.), The Journal and Letters of Captain Charles Maxwell, 1813); Michael . . . to the South A Voyage Society, Hakluyt 1967); James Colnett, (Cambridge: . . . (London: into the Pacific Ocean the author, and round Cape Horn 1798);

in the South Seas, and Discoveries (Massachusetts: 1792-1832 Fanning, Voyages in the Years 1788 and 1789, Research Society, Voyages Made 1924); John Meares, . . . to the North West Coast Press, (London: 1790 from China of America Logographic and New York: 1967]); John Mortimer, Observations Israel/Da Capo, Amsterdam [Reprint to the Islands . . . (London: the author, and Remarks made during a Voyage 1791).

8o ages, and even demonstrations situations.43 way to dangerous respect to Europeans.

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The

of friendship could often mask or give islanders found the same thing with

stimulated a series of ques Thus, Europe's encounter with Polynesia tions for European intellectuals about their own place in nature and the structure and function of human society. Itmay be supposed, or at least the same encounter had similar consequences for Poly asked, whether nesian of Sahlins's and Tcherkezoff's work thought. The implications are that at the very least, the Polynesian between natural and boundary supernatural was called into question. Not seeing as much of European saw of theirs, a more comprehensive society as Europeans Polynesian was unlikely. Nevertheless, intellectual revolution the Polynesians in a situation without found themselves their precedent. Although visitors might have seemed like gods, they were not gods; but even if in this form, in such numbers with they were, gods had never come or willingness to engage with men and women such possessions the the French and English sailors did. way

Understanding

First

Contact

a permanent In terms of shaping European and launching perceptions encounters historical with the Pacific Islands engagement, Europe's with the discovery of Tahiti. It was not only the beginning, but began became the archetype as well, involving ceremonial neutral suspicion, and finally sexual manipulation.44 violence, reconciliation, in 1767 was fairly initial experience of HMS Dolphin at Tahiti of what Tahitians and other Polynesians considered the normal typical toward strangers: caution with hostility, way of behaving tempered mixed with an ardent desire to be either rid of the strang apprehension ers or to bring them within their power. Their first reaction was to dis suade the strangers from coming close to shore, and when that failed, ization, The in ceremonies and the presen they engaged involving long speeches in rituals that Pearson has shown to be a pan tation of green branches formal reception of voyagers. It is clear that these cere Polynesian were performed as the Tahitians monies somewhat unwillingly, really wanted with to do with the visitors. Ceremonies nothing in scale and artfulness assaults that increased of peace alternated as each preceding

43 C. J. Beaglehole, 1966). 44W. H. Pearson, History 4 (1969):

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6k C. Black, of Pacific

"European 199-217.

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In this sequence of events the Tahitians tried to lure the or another where harm might be more ashore by one means English that failed the scale of assault increased done to them. When easily until the Tahitians realized that nothing was to be gained thereby. The for their part desperately tried to avoid a clash so that they English water and fresh food. They had no difficulty getting the might procure to understand Tahitians how to trade, but the Tahitians immediately their own ideas about commercial Indeed, Tahi morality. developed to launch a final, care tians used trade and the spectacle of seduction mass assault on the ship, which and coordinated left the fully planned English inflicting Peace no alternative but to resort to the use of their great guns, tremendous was finally carnage.45 established

on with a good deal of nervousness in the relationship both sides. The between turning point ship and a trade that the old men of of prostitution, shore was the establishment in bringing about. Before long the laws of sup Tahiti were instrumental ply and demand fixed the prices, and all other trade was spoiled in con sequence. The officers' attempts to preserve the provisions of trade were threatened nails from the hull of the ship with by the crew extracting to pay the women whose prices had been rising steeply.46 Mean which the greatest friendship seemed to prevail, and sailors could go while, ashore and wander about the country in perfect safety. When after only (and only five days the supposed queen departed, that the ship's disappointment or motives: affection, genuine days nine of the the decisive the Dolphin battle), island evinced such distress and company was divided as to her possible at lost (perhaps bitter disappointment after

sinister) opportunity.47 A new cultural form came into being during those few days when were trying to take the measure the Tahitians of the English. Once the normal, culturally prescribed response to voyagers had been seen to fail, the Tahitians had embarked on experimentation, first by increasing the it altogether. and later by changing intensity of their former conduct, when Consequently, Tahitians knew how arrived several months later, the Bougainville in the presence of Europeans: should behave they above all they should avoid provoking and they could obtain conflict, wanted up a steady supply of women who everything they by keeping charmed the pants off the French sailors to their enduring reputation

45 The Discovery Hugh Carrington, of Tahiti. A Journal of the second voyage of HMS Dol in the years 1766, 1767 and RN, phin round the world, under the command of Captain Wallis, (London: Hakluyt 1768 written by her master George Robertson Society, 1948): 135-54. 46 Ibid., pp. 207-208. 47 Ibid., p. 227.

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an abundance for free love and unstinted They provided hospitality.48 and artifacts for trading, and they traded honestly but were thieves of things that were not for sale. They accepted trifles in expert and trust. themselves with both confidence conducted payment. They sor They made no attempt to attack the ship, and they evinced much of food the expedition departed after nine days, instead of the agreed encounter demonstrates that a new panoply of behav eighteen. iors had already come into being. They were not part of the usual pat tern of conduct either in their dealings with them among Tahitians, visitors. They came selves or in their dealings with other Polynesian This into being during and as a result of the English encounter. Trade, theft, traits of the culture would be the defining and hospitality prostitution, of culture contact. When James Cook came two years later (1769) on a scientific mis sion that required a three month sojourn in Tahiti, he knew the details 's encounter, but not those of Bougainville's, the narrative of of Wallis until 1771 in France and 1772 in England. which was not published the Tahitians the same, proven When strategy, Cook was employed aware of the contingency and did not mistake of Tahitian hospitality it for anything the terms of contact was a challenge else. Controlling were From the beginning, of Cook's resolution. the Tahitians threat being the transmis and friendly, the greatest submissive sion of venereal diseases, about which Cook wrote "all I could do was to little purpose for Imay safely say that Iwas not assisted by any one Cook person in ye ship."49 Theft also was a constant worry. However, in all matters of discipline: Tahitian insisted on absolute consistency or at their either by the English thefts and assaults were punished, were punished behest by the Tahitian chiefs; sailors who misbehaved asWallis in view of the Tahitians, had done before him.50 Cook's part were typical of his unromantic outlook: ing reflections We . . . took our final leave of this people after a stay of just Three the most part of which time we have been upon good terms Month, with them: some few differences have now and then happen'd, owing partly to the want of rightly understanding one another and partly to their natural thievish disposission which we could not at all times, neither bear with or guard against, but these have been attended with no ill consequences to either side except the first in which one of them even for a man row when

48 228, 257. pp. 218-219, Voyage Round theWorld, Bougainville, 49 I 99. Journals, Beaglehole, 50 The Life of Captain Carrington, Discovery of Tahiti, p. 159. J. C. Beaglehole, Cook (London: A. & C. Black 1974): 187, 382.

James

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was kill'd, and this I was very sorry for because from what had hap I thought it would have been no hard pen'd to them by the Dolphin matter to have got and kept a footing with them without bloodshed.51 that was not typical of In the sequence of events we see behavior to It was not normal for the English century Englishmen. eighteenth treat "savages" by the same rules as they treated themselves. Nor was it as lightly normal for them to punish theft and assault among themselves more normal as they punished A far reaction transgressing Tahitians. in 1595, of the Spanish at the Marquesas heavy loss of life, most of it gratuitous.52 The killings visit were both reluctant and defensive, and the during the Dolphins behavior of the English may be described generally as uncharacteristi restrained (for all the allegations cally restrained. Cook was certainly in some critiques about his violent and rages and cruel punishments), more than that, he taught his officers to practice similar prudence with would which have been occasioned the violence of exploring that when voy they too became commanders in the face of provocation and dan withheld their hands they to Polynesian provocation, ger.53 La P?rouse's disciplined approach years after Cook's first voyage, has been referred to above. twenty was set aside, or The European culture of discipline and punishment a new culture of culture contact at least much modified; took its place. the result ages, this was a culture of comparative tolerance and mild For the Europeans the islanders' point of view, respect ness, and of attempts to understand and study their culture on its own their property rights and sovereignty, terms. Traders who followed the explorers also acted with patience and their purposes, but had less for the most part to achieve imagination take when put at a dis about the measures compunction they would in 1788, the trader John Meares threatened the In Hawai'i advantage. of a town when an anchor cable was cut, if the anchor was destruction not retrieved from the seabed.54 Whereas traders usually show us an version of rational behavior, the explorers generally century eighteenth the glare of the eighteenth-century display Enlightenment. For the Polynesians, the culture of culture contact also involved set
51

I 117. Journals, Beaglehole, 52 Sir Clements Markham (trans, and ed.), The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez d Quiros, 1595 to 1606, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1904): I 15-26. 53 . . (London: William George Nicol, 1792): 124-126, Bligh, A Voyage to the South Sea. A Voyage of Discovery in theNorth Pacific Ocean and Round the 151-153; George Vancouver, World 4 vols., ed. W. Kaye Lamb (London: Hakluyt 1791-1795, Society, 1984): 83-84. 54 to theNorth-West in the Years 1788 and 1789 from China John Meares, Voyages Made . . . , Coast Press, 1790 (London: Israel/Da Logographic of America [Reprint Capo, Amsterdam and New York: 1967]): 341.

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ting aside their everyday culture, but the substitution was circumstan tial: the new form was practiced only in the presence of visiting ships, and did not become part of their daily lives. This creates a difficulty for in the contact scholars who have sought to understand island behavior zone in terms of their ordinary conduct, who explain that Polynesians were hospitable because that was an established cultural form, that they about property rights, and stole things because they did not understand that their women took to prostitution because they had always had lib eral ideas about sex.55 However, has recently argued Serge Tcherkezoff so free and easy as trav that normal sexual behavior was by no means it. On the con elers at the time, or scholars subsequently, portrayed sex between island leaders tried to normalize their young women trary, and visiting sailors by performing nuptial ceremonies, just as they tried women to capitalize on the opportunities to the ships.56 by presenting The was itself into prostitution free love that was so easily transformed and not a prior circumstance. the product of contact, the Similarly, to property as an explanation for what Europeans indifference putative called culture. Polynesians had theft was not authentic Polynesian notions of property similar to Europeans and recognized theft as theft.57 i in Polynesia. In Hawai The pattern was broadly similar elsewhere was greeted with a combination the first discoverer, Cook this time, of seizure of property, but without and opportunistic reception ceremonies as the inter assault. Trade and prostitution quickly became established or suspicion face behaviors but without the initial violence that had occurred during the first contact on Tahiti.58 Cook tried unsuccessfully to prevent sex between his crew and island women, and the latter when and abusive.59 This was not rebuffed were both learned indignant nor commerce as such existed previously, behavior: neither prostitution but nor did Europeans teach prostitution and trade to the Polynesians. These behaviors simply sprang into being in the moments Nor did prostitution and trade become part of Polynesian of contact. mainstream

Reception 56

Grass Huts and Warehouses, "The Ralston, pp. 3-4, 7-8; W. H. Pearson on Polynesian of European Voyagers Islands," pp. 121-153. "The Tears of Some Polynesian Girls," a seminar at the Macmil Serge Tcherkezoff, 2001. for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, lan Brown Centre 24 April 57 I. C. A Critique of the Pearson The Encounters. Campbell, "European-Polynesian Also Carrington, sis," Journal of Pacific History 29, no. 2 (1994): 222-231. Discovery of in this happy island." Tahiti, p. 187: "there is both Justice and Property 58 Cf. a native Hawaiian Samuel account, Journals, III 263-277, 474-491. Beaglehole, Kamakau, 59 Ruling Chiefs Journals, of Hawaii III 255-256, (Honolulu: 475 n. The 2. Kamehameha Schools Press, 1961): 92-96.

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village the races tended to elaborate the between experience Subsequent new medial side more than on the Euro culture on the Polynesian favored the Polynesians who pean. As contacts increased, experience received repeated visits, rather than the visitors, many of whom came was a way of life for only once and others only several times. Contact a who lived in frequented those Polynesians places, but it was merely for the people of the ships.60 passing experience

Brothels life.

and markets

features

Conclusion stress the supposed divinity of Europeans Both Tcherkezoff and Sahlins and offer that as an explanation for the behavior of the Polynesians toward them. Their arguments are accepted here but with the rider that as a divine visitation, the coming of Europeans had so many novel fea tures that new ways of responding had to be and were developed. Con of culture contact take account discussions only of overt and that suggests that the Polynesians them accommodated behavior, of European The mental selves very readily to the novelty discovery. are another matter. The the behavioral processes behind adaptations use of adjectives like "astonished," "curious," "eager," "friendly," "hos ventional and so on "shrewd," "generous," In trying to render conduct. explain Polynesian behavior Polynesian intelligible, historians have been inclined to focus on institutions and practices rather than mentality. Early contact histo with the differences between Polynesian and Euro rians, preoccupied confusion and bewilderment; later historians, pean, supposed preoc the fundamental of cupied with asserting homogeneity psychological in the that Polynesian behavior was intelligible humanity, supposed same terms as their own. Recent to restore mentality to Poly attempts nesian history have been extremely and reflect these ear contentious, tile," "opportunistic," describe but do not "dishonest," lier divisions between cultural opacity and psychological universality.

60 Detailed accounts of the post initial contact sequences may be found in R. S. Kuyk Press of Hawai'i, 3 vols. (Honolulu: University endall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1938): I; and H. W. Bradley, The American Frontier inHawaii, the Pioneers, (Stanford Univer 1789-1843 Tahiti Nui for Tahiti; Nicholas Thomas, Marquesan sity Press, 1942) for Hawai'i; Newbury, in Eastern Polynesia Societies: Inequality and Political Transformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, on a Silent Land, Marquesas Islands and Beaches. Discourse 1774 1990) and Greg Dening, 1880 (Carleton: Melbourne Press, 1980) University A History (Suva: Government of Fiji, revised edition for the Marquesas; and R. A. Derrick, Press, 1950) for Fiji, among others.

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in Polynesia In this context the debates about culture contact have is not about contemporary missed the point, which values concerning into which issues of postcolonial rectitude the rationalist historians of it when the 1960s and 1970s made condemned the shibboleth of they a stereotyped, and instituted the rational islander, work passive native, of denying the ing out his own destiny. They accused their predecessors strictures against Sahlins their humanity; Polynesians Obeyesekere's amount to much the same charge, that he was locking the Hawaiians into a European, colonialist the futil stereotype. Sahlins demonstrated was an in response that Obeyesekere of this strategy by suggesting ity of cultural Hawaiians of their own voice agent depriving imperialism, and making them into Europeans. Sahlins's work on Hawai'i should put the question of Polynesian back on the historiographical perceptions idealist approach needs to be agenda. Not only that, the much-derided to the profundity and attention of the intellectual and revived, given of Polynesia's emotional the rest of the world. discovery novelty by On the European side the culture of culture contact took the form it did because of the influence of the Enlightenment rather than the Romantic that is, by an intellectual method rather than a movement, as rational creatures dealt with Polynesians preconception. Europeans savage objects of admi side the significant factor was not Polynesian or fighting, ideas about sex, property, but their exchange, traveling, without ideas about gods. This cannot be understood realizing that the lived in a world of immanent None of Polynesians supernaturalism. this is inconsistent with their trying to control, subdue, or repel Euro the peans, or of trying to gain whatever they might. Unlike advantage were not Montezuma the Polynesians of obsolete American histories, by the arrival of gods and did not feel that they should disempowered of the surrender all they had to them; but as the rationalist historians in their arrival an 1970s correctly averred, they recognized to enrich themselves of which take advantage, opportunity they might and to defeat their enemies. For the first few decades after first contact, went about their affairs as if the coming of Europeans did Polynesians not represent a turning point in their history. Their self-perception and 1960s and circumstances affirmed their own cul of their changing explanations but in their actual dealings with Europeans, their tural understandings; rise to a of the occasion, behavior was directed by the novelty giving new cultural form for culture contact. with minds ration. On of their own, the Polynesian rather than as noble