Image: Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, E. Phillips Fox (1903), National Gallery of Victoria
Image: Tahitian scene by Tupaia, British Library
How Cook's punishment of Indigenous "theft" escalated over his three voyages
Dr Shino Konishi
'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation
Adjunct Assoc. Professor Alison Page
Image by Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage, from the film The Message
Image: Cooktown, Shutterstock
“Over the course of his three voyages Cook instead came to embody the ‘savagery’ he ostensibly despised, indulging in increasingly tyrannical, punitive and violent treatment of Indigenous people.”
Make no mistake: Cook’s voyages were part of a military mission to conquer and expand
Dr Stephen Gapps
Tupaia translated and negotiated with Maori people once the ship made land in New Zealand.
But the relationship soon deteriorated.
A conflict over turtles led to Guugu Yimithirr people setting fires on shore.
18 years later, the First Fleet arrived.
"We knew that our ancestors had met Cook, but more importantly, they had established a relationship with Tupaia, the Ra’iātean navigator who had joined the expedition in Tahiti. The intensity of that relationship is reflected in the lament composed by our ancestors when they heard of Tupaia’s death."
"Every European ship that voyaged the Pacific was, in the first instance, a floating fortress, an independent command, with the ability to send out small shore parties, or to concentrate firepower as needed."
The arrival almost immediately resulted in bloodshed.
Image: Official portrait of Captain James Cook - Nathaniel Dance-Holland
Image: Banksia serrata from Botanical sketches of Australian plants, John Lewin (1803-1806)
Terra nullius interruptus: James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art
Assoc. Professor Bruce Buchan and
PhD candidate Eddie Synot
“By invoking the presence of Cook, they ask their audience to recognise how colonisation and empire rendered them all but absent – and his celebration today continues to do so.”
Image: Landing of Captain Cook in New Zealand, 1769 Edwyn Frederick Temple (1880)
This site was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and the Gadigal of the Eora Nation.
We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
Sovereignty was never ceded.
"Revealing our shared history is the only way to make peace with those ghostly visitors of the past. But we will only find that peace in the truth and it's the truth of our history which will be our new voyage of discovery."
After anchoring, the pinnace (the ship’s longboat) headed ashore with some of the crew.
Image: Samuel John Neele (etching) "Pimbloy” after James Grant’s original painted image
But his Pacific voyage would not have been possible without the knowledge of Indigenous people.
Photo: Dr Christian Thompson AO, Museum of Others (Othering the Explorer, James Cook)
Another Tahitian – Ma’i (called Omai by Cook) – joined the crew of Cook’s next voyage.
"Mai, or Omai as he was mostly known by the British, shared many characteristics with Tupaia. Both were
motivated to journey
with Cook because
of intense dramas
playing out in their
home island of
Ra’iatea. And both
became useful to
the British voyagers
by brokering
introductions with other Islanders in the Pacific.”
When Māori people didn't immediately lower their spears after a warning shot was fired, a crew member shot and killed a local leader named Te Maro.
The stories of Tupaia and Omai and their vital role as Captain Cook's unsung shipmates
Dr Kate Fullagar
"The coxswain ... fired 2 muskets over their heads;
the first made them stop and look round them, but the 2nd they took no notice of;
upon which a third was fired and killed one of them upon the spot just as he was going to dart his spear at the boat."
– Cook's Journal, October 9 1769
"They started throwing their hoe at Cook, they started throwing their anchors at Cook just to get away, they even stripped down, and took their clothes to get away - they started swimming away but unfortunately Cook started shooting at them.”
– Dean Hawkins, descendent of Te Maro
The Endeavour made land in Aotearoa in late October 1769, the first Europeans to do so since the Dutch captain Abel Tasman in 1642.
Image: Ellie Shaw/ANMM
This year marks 250 years since Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific.
His arrival triggered British colonisation of the region.
We asked researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today.
Image: Great Spirit and Rainbow Serpent, Jeffrey Samuels
Cooking the books: how re-enactments of the Endeavour's voyage perpetuate myths around Australia's 'discovery'
Professor Kate Darian-Smith
Cook spent 173 days circumnavigating Aotearoa, before heading west in search of Australia.
“[Historical re-enactments] have served to reinforce Australia’s imperial and British connections, ignore the violence of Cook’s encounters with Aboriginal people and Indigenous resistance, and perpetuate the myth of Cook’s discovery of Australia.”
How Cook’s voyage led to Australia becoming a penal colony
John Gascoigne
"Britain’s defeat in [the American war of independence] brought forth an urgent problem that eventually led to the British settlement of Australia: a need to dispose of convicts who were overflowing the available prison accommodations at home."
View of Charlotte Sound in New Zealand in the South Seas, 1788 – John Clovely after James Clovely
The human history of the Pacific goes back at least 65,000 years.
Again, Cook’s arrival
started almost immediately with violence.
The official version of what happened next has tended to focus almost entirely on the perspective of the colonists.
Poverty Bay
Dr Sue Anderson, Dr Lorina Barker, Dr Sadie Heckenberg
Māori tribes first arrived and settled in Aotearoa in the mid-late 13th century.
Cook estimated the Māori population
at about 100,000.
Stories of Indigenous resistance against colonial expansion are becoming better known.
Polynesian navigators first entered the Pacific about 5,000 years ago.
"Aboriginal warriors resisted invasion and fought hard for their people in the Australian frontier wars that followed British settlement.
Their stories continue to inspire Indigenous sovereignty activists today.”
A failure to say hello: how James Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people
Dr Maria Nugent
Captain Cook 'discovered' Australia, and other myths from old school text books
Dr Louise Zarmati
"Captain Cook came ashore – and the way he did set some of the terms on which later colonial relations would develop."
Photo: Captain Cook orchestra at RSL ball in Wangaratta (1970),
Le Dawn Studios archive, State Library of Victoria.
"If you were at school after the second world war to the mid-1960s, Australia still had strong links to the British Empire.
Cook was portrayed as a one of the greatest explorers in history and textbooks presented clear messages Cook 'discovered' Australia and 'took possession' of the land for England."
Dr Ocean Mercier
And a growing number of Indigenous artists are exploring colonialism – through portrayals of Cook in particular.
After leaving Botany Bay, the Endeavour travelled north but almost sank when it hit the
Great Barrier Reef.
"Polynesian migration occurred because of audacious leaders, skilled navigators, innovative engineers, precise builders and navigation techniques built upon strong connections to place. Pacific science was fully in tune with land, waters, skies and the elements."
“.. a musket was fired over them, the effect of which was that the Youngest of the two dropped a bundle of lances on the rock... he however snatched them up again and both renewed their threats and opposition. A musket loaded with small shot was now fired at the eldest of the two who was about 40 yards from the boat; it struck him on the legs but he minded it very little so another was immediately fired at him"– Banks’ Journal, April 29 (noted as April 28) 1770
The Conversation thanks Professor John Maynard, Dr Shayne T. Williams, Adjunct Assoc. Professor Alison Page, Dr Shino Konishi and Dr Maria Nugent for their advice on this interactive.
In 18th Century Britain, some believed there existed a “Great Southern Land” in the Pacific south.
A skilled navigator, interpreter and artist named Tupaia joined the crew of the Endeavour in Tahiti.
The way Australians learn about Cook’s arrival, colonialism and the Frontier Wars is changing.
The limping ship made land at what is now Cooktown in June 1770.
"People were up there, Aboriginal people. He should have come up and: ‘hello’, you know, ‘hello’.
Now, asking him for his place, to come through, because [it’s] Aboriginal land. Because Captain Cook didn’t give him a fair go ... tell him ‘good day’, or ‘hello’.”
– Mudburra man and community leader, Hobbles Danaiyarri.
Pemulwuy
An Eora warrior who, from 1790, led a 12-year campaign against colonial forces.
Botany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770
Dr Bruce Buchan
But the Royal Navy got wind of the plan.
The Endeavour first made land in Australia on April 29 1770, at Kamay, on the lands of the Gweagal Clan of the
Dharawal Nation.
Cook called it Botany Bay.
Indigenous oral histories are transforming the ways we understand Captain Cook in Australia.
“Kangooroo"
Cook and Banks believed …
“the land, its plants and its people were theirs’ to name and claim. By practising the Enlightened science of botany they presumed an emptiness they alone had the right to name. "
"A contingent of local Guugu Yimithirr men board HMS Endeavour and try to take at least one turtle back, but Cook's men soon wrest it away – refusing to share or acknowledge the possibility they'd taken too many."
Cook’s voyage began as a scientific mission commissioned by the Royal Society of London.
Image: Journal of the Polynesian Society
It handed Cook secret instructions to:
“with the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain”.
After 48 days in Cooktown, the Endeavour set sail for further repairs in Batavia, now known as Jakarta.
“A collision of catastrophic proportions.”
– Professor John Maynard
This is the land of the Guugu Yimithirr people. Their language was the first Indigenous Australian language written down in English. Several words recorded by the crew became English names for Australian wildlife.
" ... The little old man now came forward to us carrying in his hand a lance without a point.
He halted several times and as he stood employed himself in collecting the moisture from under his arm pit with his finger which he every time drew through his mouth.
We beckoned to him to come: he then spoke to the others who all laid their lances against a tree and leaving them came forwards likewise and soon came quite to us.”
- Banks’ Journal, July 19 1770
18-20
January 1788
“Dhigul"
Photo: Takiroa Rock Art, Tony Hisgett
As Cook noted earlier in his diary as he left Botany Bay: “All they seem’d to want was for us to be gone.”
Cook rose from relatively meagre beginnings to captain the HMS Endeavour, and is widely regarded as a very capable navigator.
At the time of Cook’s arrival, there were around 500 nations, with 400 language groups still existing in some form today.
Cook shot one man and threatened others before a truce was negotiated – without words – by an older Guugu Yimithirr man.
“Taquoll/Jaquoll"
(Quoll)
Gangaru
By 1896, disease and conflict had reduced the population to just 42,000.
However, Cook would return to the Pacific for two more voyages.
'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation
Adjunct Assoc. Professor Alison Page
“He indicated something Cook would understand—they didn't want any more fighting.
But also on top of that he performed a gesture. A custom which means collecting your sweat from under your arms — a very personal gesture where the sweat is rubbed over people — but he grabbed it from under his arms, he blew it in the air, and mumbled some words as he came towards Cook.
It's just described so simply in the journals but the intention of bringing about peace was so significant.”
- Alberta Hornsby, Bama historian and Guugu Yimithirr woman
Image: The Death of Captain Cook (1784), Francesco Bartoluzzi
Image: Tupaia’s map, 1769
Tahiti
My ancestors met Cook in Aotearoa 250 years ago. For us, it's time to reinterpret a painful history
Dr Peter Meihana
Feature artwork:
Great Spirit and Rainbow Serpent
by Jeffrey Samuels
Images by Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage, from the film The Message
At the time of Cook’s arrival, there were around 500 nations, with 400 language groups still existing in some form today.
"They started throwing their hoe at Cook, they started throwing their anchors at Cook just to get away, they even stripped down, and took their clothes to get away - they started swimming away but unfortunately Cook started shooting at them.”
– Dean Hawkins, descendent of Te Maro
The way Australian students learn about Cook’s arrival, colonialism and the Frontier Wars is changing.
Pemulwuy
An Eora warrior who, from 1790, led a 12-year campaign against colonial forces.
Scroll down
Australia
How Cook's punishment of Indigenous 'theft' escalated over his three voyages
Dr Shino Konishi
NZ
“A collision of catastrophic proportions.”
– Professor John Maynard
After
The Endeavour first made land in Australia on April 29 1770, at Kamay, on the lands of the Gweagal Clan of the Dharawal Nation.
Cook called it Botany Bay.
"If you were at school after the second world war to the mid-1960s, Australia still had strong links to the British Empire.
Cook was portrayed as a one of the greatest explorers in history and textbooks presented clear messages Cook ‘discovered' Australia and 'took possession' of the land for England."
Dhigul
Dr Sue Anderson, Dr Lorina Barker,
Dr Sadie Heckenberg
"Mai, or Omai as he was mostly known by the British, shared many characteristics with Tupaia. Both were motivated to journey with Cook because of intense dramas playing out in their home island of Ra’iatea. And both became useful to the British voyagers by brokering introductions with other Islanders in the Pacific.”
Gangaru
"The coxswain ... fired 2 muskets over their heads;
the first made them stop and look round them, but the 2nd they took no notice of;
upon which a third was fired and killed one of them upon the spot just as he was going to dart his spear at the boat."
– Cook's Journal, October 9 1769
Tupaia translated and negotiated with Maori people once the ship made land in New Zealand.
"If you were at school after the second world war to the mid-1960s, Australia still had strong links to the British Empire.
Cook was portrayed as a one of the greatest explorers in history and textbooks presented clear messages Cook 'discovered' Australia and 'took possession' of the land for England."
“He indicated something Cook would understand—they didn't want any more fighting.
But also on top of that he performed a gesture. A custom which means collecting your sweat from under your arms — a very personal gesture where the sweat is rubbed over people — but he grabbed it from under his arms, he blew it in the air, and mumbled some words as he came towards Cook.
It's just described so simply in the journals but the intention of bringing about peace was so significant.”
- Alberta Hornsby, Bama historian and Guugu Yimithirr woman