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Nautical Cartography and Traditional Navigation in Oceania

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Nautical Cartography and Traditional Navigation in Oceania 13 · Nautical Cartography and Traditional Navigation in Oceania BEN FINNEY MENTAL CARTOGRAPHY formal images and their own sense perceptions to guide their canoes over the ocean. The navigational practices of Oceanians present some­ The idea of physically portraying their mental images what of a puzzle to the student of the history of carto­ was not alien to these specialists, however. Early Western graphy. Here were superb navigators who sailed their ca­ explorers and missionaries recorded instances of how in­ noes from island to island, spending days or sometimes digenous navigators, when questioned about the islands many weeks out of sight of land, and who found their surrounding their own, readily produced maps by tracing way without consulting any instruments or charts at sea. lines in the sand or arranging pieces of coral. Some of Instead, they carried in their head images of the spread of these early visitors drew up charts based on such ephem­ islands over the ocean and envisioned in the mind's eye eral maps or from information their informants supplied the bearings from one to the other in terms of a con­ by word and gesture on the bearing and distance to the ceptual compass whose points were typically delineated islands they knew. according to the rising and setting of key stars and con­ Furthermore, on some islands master navigators taught stellations or the directions from which named winds their pupils a conceptual "star compass" by laying out blow. Within this mental framework of islands and bear­ coral fragments to signify the rising and setting points of ings, to guide their canoes to destinations lying over the key stars and constellations. Once their pupils had mas­ horizon these navigators applied vital information ob­ tered the star compass, they were required to imagine a tained by watching with the naked eye the stars, ocean series of "island charts" by mentally placing successive is­ swells, steady winds, island-influenced cloud formations, lands at the center of the compass and then reciting the land-nesting birds fishing out at sea, and other cues pro­ islands, reefs, and other navigationally important features vided by nature. to be found by sailing along each star bearing. In the Among the few places in the Pacific where traditional Marshall Islands, and only there, navigators skilled at navigation is still practiced are several tiny atolls in the reading the way islands disrupt the patterning of the deep Caroline Islands of Micronesia. In his study of traditional ocean swells made "stick charts" depicting islands and Carolinian navigation, anthropologist Thomas Gladwin their effect on the swells. These charts were used to teach captured the essence of how at sea a master navigator re­ students and as mnemonic aids to be consulted before a lies solely on his senses and a mental image of the islands voyage. Yet when these navigators set sail, they did not around him. "Everything that really matters in the whole take with them any such physical representations of is­ process goes on in his head or through his senses. All he lands, star positions, or swell patterns to aid them in their can actually see or feel is the travel of the canoe through task. A wealth of ethnographic evidence, which began ac­ the water, the direction of the wind, and the direction of cumulating with the observations of Captain James Cook the stars. Everything else depends upon a cognitive map, and other early explorers, in conjunction with contem- a map which is both literally geographical and also logi­ cal." 1 A number of geographers, psychologists, and other 1. Thomas Gladwin, East Is a Big Bird: Navigation and Logic on Pu­ scholars have written about how people form "cognitive luwat Atoll (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 195. 2 2. For example, Peter Gould and Rodney White, Mental Maps, 2d ed. maps" or "mental maps" of the world around them. But (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986); Benjamin Kuipers, "The 'Map in the whereas most of these studies have focused primarily on Head' Metaphor," Environment and Behavior 14 (1982): 202-20; the general processes by which children and ordinary William Bunge, Theoretical Geography, 2d ed. (Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, adults form and utilize images of their surroundings, this 1966), 39-52; Dedre Gentner and Albert L. Stevens, eds., Mental Mod­ chapter explores the highly structured ways professional els (Hillsdale, N.].: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1983); Gary L. Allen et aI., "De­ velopmental Issues in Cognitive Mapping: The Selection and Utilization navigators from the Pacific Islands mentally charted the of Environmental Landmarks," Child Development 50 (1979): 1062­ environment of sea, islands, swells, winds, stars, and 70; and David S. Olton, "Mazes, Maps, and Memory," American Psy­ other features vital to their art, and then employed these chologist 34 (1979): 583-96. 443 444 Traditional Cartography in the Pacific Basin porary research carried out at sea with the few surviving among these change throughout a voyage to elegantly traditional navigators and with islanders who are now chart the progress of a canoe toward its destination. The learning this ancient art, indicates how these seafarers second, from the Marshall Islands, focuses on the sea mentally charted their oceanic world. rather than the sky. The navigators there took a general Not surprisingly, standard histories of cartography fo­ Oceanic technique-detecting the presence of an island cused on physical map artifacts have largely ignored the before it can be seen by the way it disrupts the regular way Oceanic navigators mentally charted the islands, ocean swells-and developed it into a highly sophisticated stars, and swells. To be sure, the fascinating stick charts method for finding their way among the atolls of their showing how islands disrupt ocean swells have been men­ archipelago. It was they who made the famous stick tioned in such works.3 But these devices were used by nav­ charts to represent and teach the way swells are reflected, igators from only one archipelago and, like other physi­ refracted, and diffracted by islands in their path. cal representations made by Pacific navigators, were not employed at sea. How these navigators conceptualized THE EUROPEAN PENETRATION the location of islands, set their course toward them, dead OF REMOTE OCEANIA reckoned along the way, and then made landfall-all with­ out consulting any physical charts while at sea-has, how­ When Magellan made the first known crossing in 1520, ever, been extensively discussed in the historical and an­ he was not just exploring the ocean he christened the thropological literature dealing with the colonization of Pacific. His goal was to find a new route to the spices the islands, canoe voyaging, and techniques of naviga­ grown on the islands scattered off the southeastern tip of tion.4 In addition, an effort I initiated in the 1960s to re­ Asia. For more than two centuries thereafter, it was pri­ construct ancient voyaging canoes, relearn traditional marily the desire to gain access to the riches of Asia that ways of navigating, and then test these over the long sea drove Europeans to cross this widest of the world's routes of Polynesia has further focused interest on this oceans-not any passion for exploration per see Even the subject.5 This chapter draws on what we have learned establishment by the Spanish of annual trading voyages from historical, anthropological, and experimental inves­ between their possessions in the Philippines and those of tigations of Pacific Island navigation to bring this fasci­ the New World added little to the outside world's know- nating Oceanic tradition into the discussion of the general development of cartography on our planet. 3. For example, Leo Bagrow, History ofCartography, 2d ed., rev. and After introductory remarks on the early European ex­ enl. R. A. Skelton (Chicago: Precedent, 1985), 27-28; Norman J. W. ploration of the region, I examine the first bits of carto­ Thrower, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society graphic evidence of indigenous geographical knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4-7; Gordon R. Lewth­ waite, "Geographical Knowledge of the Pacific Peoples," in The Pacific of Pacific Islanders to be brought to the attention of the Basin: A History of Its Geographical Exploration, ed. Herman Ralph Western world. These came in the form of four charts­ Friis (New York: American Geographical Society, 1967), 57-86, one from Polynesia and three from Micronesia-drawn by esp. 73-74; and Michael Blakemore, "From Way-Finding to Map­ early Western explorers and missionaries based on geo­ Making: The Spatial Information Fields of Aboriginal Peoples," graphical information supplied by island navigators. Progress in Human Geography 5 (1981): 1-24, esp. 19-20. These charts alerted the outside world that these Stone 4. For example, Jack Golson, ed., Polynesian Navigation: A Sympo­ sium on Andrew Sharp's Theory of Accidental Voyages, rev. ed. Age navigators could locate considerable numbers of is­ (Wellington: Polynesian Society, 1963); David Lewis, We, the Naviga­ lands within a wide radius of their own. But they did not tors: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, 2d ed., ed. Derek provide any insights into the way the navigators them­ Oulton (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994); Gladwin, East Is selves mapped the islands, ocean swells, star paths, and a Big Bird (note 1); Ward Hunt Goodenough, Native Astronomy in the all the other features of their oceanic environment vital to Central Carolines (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1953); Andrew Sharp, Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific the practice of their craft. To inquire into indigenous nau­ (Wellington: Polynesian Society, 1956); and the many entries listed in tical cartography, we must first appreciate the general Nicholas J.
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