Dual heritage, shared future: James Cook, Tupaea and the transit of Venus at Tolaga Bay

Abstract

Uawa Tolaga Bay on the East Coast of the North Island was the place of first positive contact between Māori and European with the visit of HMS Endeavour in October 1769. The renaissance of Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti traditional history and culture has been enriched by re-engagement with a dual heritage beginning with James Cook, Tupaea and those on the Endeavour. Recent educational initiatives, historical research, archaeological investigations and events surrounding the 2004 transit of Venus all contribute to new appreciation of this dual heritage and point towards an exciting shared future.

Keywords:

• Tolaga Bay
• Uawa
• Cooks Cove
• James Cook
• Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti
• Tupaea
• Tupaia
• transit of Venus
• archaeology
• bead

Four large blue glass beads were among grave goods recovered during exhumation of kōiwi tīpuna (ancestral human remains) from the Uawa mission station cemetery at Tolaga Bay in August 2007. All taonga (artefacts) were subsequently reinterred at the nearby public cemetery with the remains of 56 children and adults in accord with protocols with local iwi Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and the hapu Ngāti Kuranui (Donald 2011:202).

Were these beads a tangible encounter with the first positive contact between Māori and Europeans in Aotearoa New Zealand? The journals of James Cook record similar beads traded for badly needed supplies of food, water and firewood at Tolaga Bay (Cook 25, 29 Oct 1769). One bead attributed to Cook's sojourn at Tolaga Bay was photographed at Mahia in the 1930s (Black 1930:388).

This essay traces how Cook and Tupaea1 are remembered at Tolaga Bay, in place name, iwi oral history and Pākehā discourse. Re-engagement of Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and the wider Uawa community with this history, through re-enactment, recent research, and involvement in the 2004 transit of Venus are discussed, and relationships built with national and international organisations outlined as another transit of Venus approaches.

Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti call the district Uawa, from Uawanui-a-Ruamatua, the river which flows into the bay. Cook believed ‘the natives call this place Tolaga’, but after research and speculation spanning two centuries this name has no obvious Māori derivation. The surveyed township was gazetted Uawa in 1880, and later changed to Buckley, but Tolaga (often spelt Tologa, Tolago or Tologo) persists (Cook 29 Oct 1769; Mackay 1949:51; Donald & Donald 2003:3).

As Dumont D'Urville noted in 1827, Cook had ‘little aptitude in acquiring the names of the peoples he visited. The true name of the bay, Tologa, or, at least, of the district which surrounds it, is Houa-Houa [Uawa], and it is that which we have adopted’ (D'Urville 1950:22).

Gable End Foreland is the only other Cook place name to survive. Cook's watering place, Opoutama, is now commonly known as Cooks Cove. Spöring's Island is problematic; both Cook's map and Herman Spöring's sketch indicate Motu-ō;-Rae, the iconic rocky islets off Te Ūpoko o Te Ika, the southern headland of Tolaga Bay, as ‘Spöring's Isles’ (Begg & Begg 1969:27). Leonard Williams, drawing on Polack (1838:136) asserts Cook applied the name solely to Pourewa, the large island south-east of the cove (Williams 1888:394–395). In 1988 a 140 kg rock from Pourewa was taken to Turku, Finland, as a memorial to Spöring in his birthplace (GH 13 Sept 1988).

Figure 1  Pendant including trading bead attributed to Cook, photographed 1930 (photo: Journal of the Polynesian Society).

Subsequent publication of Cook's maps and the journals of those on board the Endeavour placed Tolaga Bay on the world stage. The first in-depth summary of Māori customs and beliefs, recorded via Tupaea's interpretation, and new plants and animals collected at Anaura and Uawa by Banks and Solander added greatly to knowledge of New Zealand (Salmond 2003:127–128).

Figure 2  Professor Dame Anne Salmond speaking at Anaura Bay during the visit of the replica Endeavour, January 1996 (photo: Gisborne Herald).

Tolaga Bay proved a welcome port of refuge on Cook's second voyage. Captain Tobias Furneaux spent 10 days at Tolaga Bay for supplies and made repairs to his ship Adventure in November 1773. But the visit did not go well; local Māori were little interested in Mai, Furneaux's lowly ranked Rai'atean interpreter, once aware Tupaea was not on board. Lieutenant Burney recorded a lament composed at Uawa; ‘A koe mate aue Tupaea—you have died, alas, Tupaea’. After Furneaux's men breached tapu, a keg of brandy was stolen. The more hot-headed on board the Adventure wanted to retaliate by seizing hostages, but Burney considered they were drastically outnumbered (Hooper 1975:87).

Figure 3  Tolaga Bay Area School Transit of Venus team at Whitby, June 2004. From left: students Hana Parata-Walker, Dexter Waru, Sara Pethybridge, teacher Eileen Harrison, and Gisborne District mayor Meng Foon (photo: Tolaga Bay Area School).

Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti memory of Cook and Tupaea at Tolaga Bay is fragmentary, mostly recorded as responses to curious questioning from visitors. Given the long period of interaction between Māori and Pākehā, intermarriage between Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and traders, whalers and settlers from the 1830s onwards, oral tradition was reinterpreted and telescoped by subsequent events and access to published materials. A journalist, already warned by one kaumātua she was unlikely to ‘hear anything about Cook you haven't read before; it's all too long ago’, was told by Heni Ngaropi White in 1968, ‘No-one remembers any stories’ (Maddock & Whyte 1969:7).

Polack gives the fullest written account of Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti memory prior to European settlement. Following an enforced visit to Uawa in 1835 to repair his damaged ship, the trader reported a wife of the ariki Te Kani-a-Takirau wearing ‘three light blue beads appended round her throat, with a piece of flax’, and these, with ‘two spike nails originally given by Te Kuki (Cook) to the natives of Turunga [sic], and captured in battle by Kani's father [Rongotūmaomao]’, were the only Cook relics left. ‘The beads underwent an examination all round for the thousandth time, and anecdotes were repeated of that celebrated man and his Tahitian interpreter Tupia’(Polack 1838:127).

Among the recollections, Polack was told a lengthy story about gunpowder given by Cook which was mistaken for turnip seed and duly planted. Rāpata Wahawaha's discredited assertion that Cook had given Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti musket lessons may be derived from similar recollections (Mackay 1949:57–58).

Te Kani-a-Takirau invited Polack to visit Cooks Cove

where we should walk over the same ground, and native paths that existed in the time of Cook. The following morning the chief, the arch priest (tohunganui) [Rangiuia, of the whare wananga, Te Rawheoro] who was his brother-in-law, accompanying us.

I learnt that in this cave the favourite interpreter of Cook slept with the natives: ‘he was often in the habit of doing so during the heats of the day with his native friends,’ said my conductor. ‘Tupia was a great favourite with our fathers … several children who were born in the village during his sojourn among us were named after him.’

The Endeavour journals give no indication that sexual romps enjoyed by the ship's crew and gentlemen in Tahiti took place at Uawa, but these Tupaea namings may be more than symbolic. Given his ariki status, more generous hospitality may have been offered by Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti to their Rai'atean visitor than others on board the Endeavour (Druett 2011:291). Colenso also records ‘several natives with the name Tupaea’ when visiting in 1838 (Mackay 1949:53).

Polack describes within the cave ‘a small hole that was dug in the granite rock, by order of Cook, for receiving from a small spring [‘Te Waikari a Tepaea’], the fluid that unceasingly flows into it’ (Williams 1888:396; Mackay 1949:53–54). Confusingly called ‘Cook's Well’, this was unlikely to have been the source of water for the Endeavour due to the small volume produced.

Around the surface of the cavern are many native delineations executed with charcoal, of ships, canoes sailing, men and women, dogs and pigs, and some obscenities drawn with tolerable accuracy. Above our reach, and evidently faded by time, was the representation of a ship and some boats, which were unanimously pointed out to me, by all present, as the productions of the faithful Tahitian follower of Cook. (Polack 1838:127–137)

Charles Baker, Anglican lay catechist at Uawa CMS mission station 1843–51, records nothing concerning Cook or Tupaea in his journals. Baker's eldest son, William, New Zealand born and a native Māori speaker, was more inquisitive. He wrote down recollections, mō;teatea and oral traditions; his conversation with an old woman at Turanganui was the likely source of a later newspaper article concerning Cook's arrival at Poverty Bay (Baker 13th Feb 1851; OW 28 Aug 1861).

Given Cook's primacy in the hierarchy of ‘explorers’, and positive accounts of his sojourn at Uawa, most nineteenth-century visitors to Tolaga Bay made Cooks Cove a priority. During Te Kani's lifetime, access by land to Opoutama was at the ariki's behest, located as it was within a wāhi tapu. James West Stack later recalled a visit in 1844 to that ‘spot of profound interest to all Englishmen’. Nine years old at the time, Stack described a tree near Tupaea's cave on which the date of Cook's visit was carved; he considered they had ‘been to some sacred shrine’ as pilgrims (Stack & Reid 1990:104–105).

Public access to Opoutama by a bridle path was at the sufferance of later leaseholders. Hauiti Incorporation, who resumed farming their own land in 1948, subsequently bulldozed a new track. The present Department of Conservation walkway gives public access to the Cove, subject to seasonal farming operations.

Local traders and farmers calling for improvements to river port facilities often suggested Cooks Cove as an alternative, despite difficult land access, shallow draught, openness to easterly weather and potentially high cost (PBH 27 Sept 1880). A campaign to have land set aside as a scenic reserve at the Cove mounted during discussion of a memorial at the Cook landing site in Poverty Bay was unsuccessful (PBH 3 July, 11 Sept 1903).

James Cook mythology is writ large in the Gisborne–East Coast area and Pākehā have made much of the Endeavour's two short sojourns in 1769. Cook County (1878) was the first effective territorial authority; subsequently the hospital, a number of street names and a series of statues and monuments perpetuated this memory. When Tolaga Bay township was surveyed in 1880, every street was named for Cook, his officers and scientists on the Endeavour, and the four ships of Cook's three New Zealand visits.

Reverential tones are evident in lectures given to the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Society by William Colenso, Leonard Williams and Samuel Locke, and in numerous ‘footsteps of Cook’ articles published in newspapers and the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute. These draw on a range of sources including published journals of Cook, Banks and others, recollections of Polack, brief missionary visits, but rarely used local oral recollections.

The re-enactment of Cook's 1769 landing at Anaura, as part of the unveiling of a plaque on 24 June 1958, began a process of re-engagement of Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti with Cook, Tupaea and the transit of Venus. Rev. Boydie Kirikiri, who grew up at Anaura, says, ‘We didn't talk about Cook much before then’ (pers. comm. 30 Aug 2011). Pupils from Tolaga Bay District High and Anaura Māori Schools, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti kaumātua and wider Uawa community, hosted out-of-district dignitaries, academics including Dr John Beaglehole, and members of the Historic Places Trust. Beaglehole visited Cooks Cove on the same trip, and again in 1965 and 1969, but recall of these visits, and the unveiling of a plaque overlooking the Cove in 1966, is scant at Tolaga Bay (GPN 5, 24 July 1958; GH 27 Nov 1965; GPN 5 Nov 1969).

Jingoistic celebration of the 1969 bicentennial was focused almost entirely on Gisborne, with only passing mention of Cook's positive involvement further up the East Coast (e.g. ‘It all started in Poverty Bay’). This contrasts with the often negative memories of Turanganui Māori, subject to redaction and telescoping of the tragic events of 9–11 October 1769 (Salmond 2003:116; GH 16 Jan 1996). The visit of the replica Endeavour in January 1996 provoked a strong response from the Gisborne tribes, initially wary of involvement. A series of newspaper articles, drawing on Salmond's work, and a warm welcome given to those on board at Anaura created much public discussion around Cook's 1769 visit (GH 16, 18, 20 Jan 1996). The following year, wording on the Anaura plaque was renewed, this time with text in both Māori and English (GH 7 Oct 1997).

Rigorous research over the last 40 years, including archaeological mapping by Kevin Jones, theses by Victor Walker and Wayne Ngata of Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti on key nineteenth-century tīpuna Te Kani-a-Takirau and Rangiuia, and Dr Anne Salmond's publications, laid important foundations for Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and the wider Uawa community engagement with their heritage. Restoration of the 660 metre concrete wharf adds extra impetus and helps focus on the rich maritime history of Tolaga Bay.

Key to recent re-engagement at Uawa is the role planned by Tolaga Bay Area School. Nori Parata, since becoming principal in 1998, has worked to instil a strong sense of Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti identity among the 300 primary and secondary students. Making a video for a national school's competition run by the Royal Society of New Zealand and sponsored by Freemasons New Zealand in 2004 brought together Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and Cook history within the context of Cook's observation of the 1769 transit of Venus in Tahiti.

Entitled ‘Te Ara Tapu o Ngā Tipuna—the Footsteps of the Ancestors’, the video was one of three competition winners. Three year-10 students and a senior teacher travelled to England in May 2004, visiting key sites and institutions connected with Cook and his scientists, including privileged access to Banks's botanical collection at the Museum of Natural History. The team observed the transit at Cook's home port of Whitby on 8 June. Two students made a parallel visit to Tahiti with the assistance of UNESCO.

A homecoming celebration held at the Tolaga Bay Area School and Te Rawheoro marae on 29 July 2004 brought together the teams from Tolaga Bay Area School, Nelson College and Pakuranga College who had travelled to England, along with some sponsors and supporters of the transit of Venus Expedition (RSNZ press release 26 July 2004).

The resurgence of traditional art forms, such as tā moko (tattooing) and raranga (flax weaving), initiatives by Toi Hauiti in organising Te Pou o Te Kani (2003–4) and Ūawanui (2006) exhibitions and workshops, and the Rū Ūawa music festivals, have strengthened Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti pride in a rich cultural heritage that goes back to Hingangaroa and his foundation of Te Rawheoro in the sixteenth century. Visits by Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti groups to repositories of local taonga in Britain and Europe, including the pou from Pourewa associated with Hinematioro taken by Cook's expedition in 1769, and now housed in Tübingen, Germany (Salmond 2009:230), and involvement in the Pasifika Styles project at University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 2008 have been important developments.

The chance discovery of the 1840s mission station urupā in August 2007 in the Tolaga Bay Area School grounds, and resulting emergency excavation and exhumations, not only revealed taonga with possible links to Cook. Subsequent analysis and historical research uncovered forgotten history important to the dual heritage of the people at Tolaga Bay. Many who worked on the site reflected this in their descent from key Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti tīpuna and Pākehā who arrived around the missionary period. The excavation at Opoutama Cooks Cove in November that year dug much deeper into history, revealing a site dating from the thirteenth century, and has resulted in a reinterpretation of Polynesian occupation and adaptation in this part of the North Island (Walter et al. 2011:22).

As Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and the Uawa community prepare to host the observation of the next transit in June 2012, links built with groups and institutions in 2004 have expanded to include the MacDiarmid Institute, Allan Wilson Centre, Victoria University of Wellington and other partners. Echoing first contacts at Uawa in October 1769, relationships with the Royal Society and the Royal Navy, in their New Zealand incarnations, and re-forged Tahitian connections, working with the Tolaga Bay steering group representing Uawa's rich dual heritage, are all key to the success of the day and beyond. In the words of Nori Parata:

The transit of Venus provides rich educational opportunities, utilising science, technology and the arts. Involvement will enhance a sense of wider world citizenship among our students, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti and the wider Uawa community we've been developing since the HMS Endeavour visited this coast in 1769. (pers. comm. 18 Aug 2011)

Notes

¹The spelling Tupaea is used in accordance with custom among Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti.