On Malakula the ships were at first regularly visited by men in the early dawn, coming aboard unarmed and “swarming up the masts with the greatest readiness and confidence” (Sparrman 1953, 137). When the numbers became too great, orders were given to the boatwatch to restrict the visitors. “One Indian who was motioned away however took the sign in an unfriendly manner” (137). One of the sailors pushed his canoe off with a boat hook and the man shoved back with a bamboo cane. The “Indian” took an arrow from his quiver and was about to shoot with his bow when one of his compatriots already on board leapt out of the cabin window to try to stop him. In the ensuing struggle Captain Cook was called on deck and aimed his gun at the man, who then turned around and aimed at Cook instead. At this point Cook shot him in the head with smallshot:
[B]ut after the wounded man had merely rubbed the wounds on his face a little, he soon plucked up courage again for revenge with a choice poisoned arrow, which he placed in his bow, but was frustrated again with a larger charge of shot [this time from Pickersgill, not Cook] so that his comrades had to paddle away with him (Sparrman 1953, 137).
Another man who fired an arrow at Cook was shot with a musket ball (which missed) and then a cannon was fired, which caused all the Malakulan men to paddle back to shore. Marra claims that one of the men in departing discharged an arrow at an officer and “paid for his audacity with his life” (1967 [1775], 262).
Cook tried to undo the effects of this spiralling violence later that day by landing alone and unarmed and carrying a green branch. The man who seemed to be leader of the Malakulans likewise disarmed and offered Cook a green branch and a pig. From this point onward there was an extended exchange of goods, by which the Europeans hoped to show their willingness to be friends. The Malakulans “did not show any enthusiasm over our iron ware” (Sparrman 1953, 138; and certainly did not try to steal nails like the Tahitians). They showed far more interest in red cloth, marble paper and barkcloth from Tahiti. In exchange for these “few trifles,” the Malakulans offered weapons, but, according to Marra, were deaf to Cook’s entreaties for water and more food. “None of these people brought either flesh or fruit to dispose of; nor could the captain procure more than one lean hog, though there were many within sight” (Marra 1967 [1775], 263).
Although Cook and the Forsters were allowed to do some sightseeing that afternoon around a village where they saw lots of alluring fresh food – piles of yams and many pigs and chickens – they were not offered any (which rather subverts the image of abundant supplicatory offerings to returning ancestral spirits). They were eventually allowed to cut wood, but penetration further inland was refused:
However, we botanists sometimes managed to creep three or four paces inside the edge of the woods from the bare coral beach, and succeeded in hastily gathering a few plants, much as people pull firebrands out of the fire; but soon they motioned us back to the beach, as being impertinent, unjustified, and thrusting violators of their prohibition (Sparrman 1953, 138).
The strangers were vulnerable not just because of their need of wood, water and fresh food but also because of their scientific curiosity. It is unclear what the Malakulans made of their strong desire to collect leaves, but their prohibition on the strangers’ movement seems to accord more with resistance to unwanted invasion, or perhaps suspicion of motives of sorcery, than the way in which dangerous ancestral spirits might be treated (see also Mosko this volume).
Later cycles of violence on Erromango and Tanna might again have induced ni-Vanuatu to see these strangers as unwanted and bellicose invaders rather than returning ghosts who had to be supplicated.[48] In early August, Cook anchored off the east coast of Erromango, taking two armed boats ashore in search of a safe harbour. He disembarked in a bay, carrying only a green branch, and was surrounded by a large crowd of armed warriors. He exchanged a few trinkets for a bamboo tube filled with water, some coconuts and a yam with a man who seemed a leader. But then, when Cook climbed back on board one of the boats, some of the armed warriors grabbed the gangplank while others seized the oars. Cook pointed his musket at the leader, who he thought had betrayed him, but his musket misfired and in the ensuing rain of arrows and spears discharged by the warriors, Cook ordered his men to open fire. Despite the unreliability of the British flints, at least four Erromangan men appeared to have been killed by musket fire,[49] while only two of the sailors were slightly wounded. Although a “few Indians returned with the captured oars” (Sparrman 1953, 142), it was
considered expedient to teach them to realise the power of our jus canonicum, of which they had only heard explosions; therefore a four-pound ball was loosed off at them which, though it fell short of the beach, frightened them so much that not one was seen again. We saw the oars standing against a bush, but with the good breeze that sprang up we preferred to make sail and find some better place (Sparrman 1953, 142).
Finally I want to return again to a violent incident on Tanna that I have discussed earlier (Jolly 1992), especially in relation to the reflexive character of the voyage narrative by Georg Forster (2000 [1777], 1968). In general the stay on Tanna was far more pacific. Cook developed strong relationships with the leader Paowang,[50] and the procurement of wood, shale ballast and water and the collection of natural specimens, vocabularies and cultural knowledge proceeded in a less inhibited way than on Malakula or Erromango.[51] But a violent incident marred their last days on Tanna. I have earlier observed (Jolly 1992) how Georg Forster’s construction of this incident in his narrative reinforced a sense of irony and self-criticism, and I here repeat some of that earlier analysis. It occurred while he and Sparrman were abroad in the interior, on their habitual naturalistic treks, although this time on separate tracks. While strolling through the Tannese countryside observing the varied landscape of field and forest and enjoying the calm of human cultivation Forster is led to reflect on how the Tannese had gradually come to trust them: “Our cool deliberate conduct, our moderation and the constant uniformity in all our proceedings, had conquered their jealous fears” (Forster 2000 [1777], 2: 549. Rather than viewing the Europeans as a base and treacherous enemy, the Tannese now saw them as fellow creatures. Forster then enters into a rapturous reverie about the intimacy they had been accorded:
They permitted us to visit them in their shady recesses, and we sat down in their domestic circles with that harmony which befits the members of one great family. In a few days they began to feel a pleasure in our conversation, and a new disinterested sentiment, of more than earthly mould, even friendship, filled their heart. This retrospect was honourable to human nature, as it made us the benefactors of a numerous race (Forster 2000 [1777], 2: 549).
But coming from the interior on that day they met a woman trembling with fear and then some men, who motioned for them to return to the beach. There they saw two Tannese men holding another who was dead – a musket ball had penetrated his arm and his ribs. This had been fired by a sentry who was guarding the sailors while they were felling wood. A Tannese man had deliberately crossed the boundary line which, as usual, had been drawn to prevent local people coming too close. This man disregarded several warnings, crossed and recrossed and then took aim with a bow and arrow at the sentry who returned the lethal shot (Forster 2000 [1777], 2: 550). Cook attempted to appease the Tannese by putting the culprit in irons (although this act was later undone by Edgecombe, the lieutenant of Marines; cf. Adams 1984, 29–30).
In his description of this violent incident Forster’s sympathy for the dead man is clear. He was trespassing across the boundary “perhaps with no other motive at present than that of asserting his liberty of walking where he pleased” (Forster 2000 [1777], 2: 550). Forster thought the Tannese would be justified in thinking of them as a “cruel and treacherous people who had polluted their island” (550) and was amazed that they took no retribution for the death of this man. He and Sparrman were
struck with the moderation of the people, who had suffered us to pass by them unmolested, when they might easily have taken a severe revenge for the murder of their countryman (Forster 2000 [1777], 2: 550).[52]
Forster concluded blackly that “one dark and detestable action effaced all the hopes with which I had flattered myself” (Forster 2000 [1777], 2: 551). He then generalised this incident on Tanna to an overall appraisal of the voyage, lamenting the “many rash acts which we had perpetrated at almost every island in our course” (551). Although eager to collect knowledge about all these islands, he thought that this should never be pursued if violence was a likely result. Thus, on Tanna they had to give up all hopes of approaching the summit of the volcano, where “new observations” would have been possible “if the jealousy of the natives had not continually prevented our examining it” (552). Tannese resistance he construed as possessiveness or mistrust, rather than malevolence. Similarly on Erromango, he was not persuaded that people had had hostile intentions in detaining their boat, but thought rather that by levelling a musket at their chief, they had provoked the attack (505).While generally adhering to the opinion that contact with Europeans should be beneficial and improving he concluded that “it is much to be lamented that the voyages of Europeans cannot be performed without being fatal to the nations whom they visit” (505). He was not alone in his critique of the violence on Tanna. “It was most deplorable that, after fourteen days’ sojourn here, on the day arranged for our departure we were compelled to stain the hospitable shore with the blood of a native” (Sparrman 1953, 150–1).
[48] Salmond says that according to the descendants of these “armed warriors”, they “also took Cook and his men to be ancestor spirits” (2003, 267). Her ethnographic authority for this is oral histories told to the twentieth-century naturalist Evelyn Cheesman and recorded in Camping Adventures on Cannibal Islands (1949); (see Salmond 2003, 474, n. 9). Curiously she does not refer to any works on Vanuatu by anthropologists, foreign or indigenous, published in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But her use of this singular source poses the crucial question of the relation between eighteenth-century perceptions of Cook and the constructions of later generations of ni-Vanuatu.
[49] Although Sparrman claims that two of them were not killed and crept out of the way among the bushes. He also elaborates that one sailor was wounded by a blunt pointed spear that pierced through the upper lip, while the second, Master Gilbert, was hit by an arrow in his chest, which “scarcely penetrated the skin” (Sparrman 1953, 142).
[50] As Lindstrom notes in a recent paper, many of the names for men recorded by Cook and the Forsters are still current, though differently transcribed: Paowang (Paw-yangom), Georgy or Yogai (Iokai) and Yatta (Iata). He also notes that some of the names suggest men came in from Futuna, e.g. Fannokko (Fanoko) and the White Sands area. The word lists collected by the Forsters are from three different languages: Kwamera from around Port Resolution, White Sands language and Futunese (Lindstrom 2009 forthcoming).
[51] They had more difficulty in obtaining food, since, as Lindstrom notes, in August people would have been busy clearing and burning fields to plant new yams and their previous yam harvest would have been almost exhausted, except for seed yams. Cook did receive a small pig (Lindstrom 2009 forthcoming), and several sources suggest plantains and some yams were received.
[52] Lindstrom has raised the question as to whether such moderation might be explained by the fact that this man was perhaps a visitor from the White Sands area or from Futuna, and therefore not seen as their “countrymen” (Lindstrom, pers. comm. by email, 10 March 2006). Still, as the sources suggest, two Tannese men did cradle the dead man.