James Cook and indigenous peoples

Captain James Cook led three expeditions to the Pacific Ocean from 1768 to 1779 exploring for new lands and navigational routes. He encountered indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Hawaii, Tahiti, British Columbia, Tierra del Fuego, Easter Island, and elsewhere. In accordance with his instructions, Cook sought to establish friendly relations with indigenous people. He entered into ceremonial friendships with a number of Polynesian chiefs, and many of his crew members formed friendships and consensual sexual relationships with Polynesians. Cook and his crew bartered with indigenous peoples, mostly to replenish his ships with food, water and wood, but also for souvenirs and artefacts. Cook and his crew shared food, music, song, dance and linguistic and cultural knowledge with various indigenous peoples, particularly in New Zealand, Tahiti, Tonga and Hawaii where they spent considerable time. However, some encounters turned violent, leading to 45 indigenous deaths and 15 deaths of expedition members including Cook himself. His expeditions were also responsible for spreading exotic diseases which eventually resulted in large population losses among some indigenous peoples. The artworks and the official and unofficial accounts of Cook's voyages were popular in Europe, and raised awareness of the peoples and cultures of the Pacific. However, they also created misconceptions and fostered a particularly European vision of the region. Cook was treated with respect and even veneration in some places in Polynesia, including Tahiti and Hawaii, where he was sometimes considered to be an ariki (high chief) and a atua (an embodiment of Polynesian gods and ancestor spirits). However, in the 21st century, many indigenous people view Cook as a violent invader and a symbol of the adverse consequences of European contact and colonisation.

Relationships

Instructions to Cook The Admiralty provided Cook with written orders on each of his three missions; the orders primarily instructed him where to go, and what to search for, but they also included some directions for his interactions with indigenous peoples. Excerpts from the orders include: "You are to endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a friendship with the natives"; "[show] them every kind of civility and regard, but taking care nevertheless not to suffer yourself to be surprised by them, but to be always upon your guard against any accidents"; "[if] you find any subjects of any European Prince or State upon any part of the coast you may think proper to visit, you are not to disturb them or give them any just cause of offence, but on the contrary to treat them with civility and friendship" The orders explicitly required Cook to gain the consent of the indigenous peoples before claiming any (inhabited) land for Britain. In addition to the official orders that Cook received from the Admiralty on all three voyages, on the first voyage he also received guidance from the Royal Society, which was co-sponsoring the voyage. This relatively enlightened guidance was prepared by the Royal Society's president, the Earl of Morton, and it urged Cook to:

exercise the utmost patience and forebearance with respect to the Natives of the several Lands where the Ship may touch. To check the petulance of the Sailors, and restrain the wanton use of Fire Arms. To have it still in view that sheding the blood of those people is a crime of the highest nature. ... They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit. . .. They may naturally and justly attempt to repell intruders, whom they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country, whether that apprehension be well or ill founded. [Therefore every effort should be made to avoid violence: if it became inevitable, then] the Natives when brought under should be treated with distinguished humanity, and made sensible that the Crew still considers them as Lords of the Country.

Cook's approach to establishing relations

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