Captain Cook at Nootka Sound and Some
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CAPTAIN COOK AT NOOTKA SOUND AND SOME QUESTIONS OF COLONIAL DISCOURSE by NOEL ELIZABETH CURRIE B.A. (Hons.), The University of British Columbia, 1987 M.A., Carleton University, 1988 A THESIS SUBMITFED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming jothe required standar THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September 1994 ØNoel Elizabeth Currie, 1994 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes xna be granted by the head of my department or by his or ‘)her representatives. It is understood that copying or publicatior of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without\iy written permission. (S Department of__________________ The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Il (01 jCO) Date t4 1’’JJ ‘ 11 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the workings of various colonial discourses in the texts of Captain James Cook’s third Pacific voyage. Specifically, it focusses on the month spent at Nootka Sound (on the west coast of Vancouver Island) in 1778. The textual discrepancies between the official 1784 edition by Bishop Douglas, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and J.C. Beaglehole’ s scholarly edition of 1967, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776-1780, reveal that Cook’s Voyages present not an archive of European scientific and historical knowledge about the new world but the deployment of colonial discourses. Examining this relatively specific moment as discourse expands a critical sense of the importance of Cook’s Voyages as cultural documents, for the twentieth century as well as for the eighteenth. Chapters One and Two consider the mutually interdependent discourses of aesthetics and science: based upon assumptions of “objectivity,’ they distance the observing subject from the object observed, in time as well as in space. Chapter Three traces the development of the trope of cannibalism and argues that this trope works in the editions of Cook’s third voyage to further distance the Nootka from Europeans by textually establishing what looked like savagery. Chapter Four examines the historical construction of Cook as imperial culture hero, for eighteenth-century England, Western Europe, and the settler cultures that followed in his wake. Taken separately and together, these colonial discourses are employed in the accounts of Cook’s month at Nootka Sound to justify and rationalise England’s claim to appropriation of the territory. The purpose of these colonial discourses is to fix meaning and to present themselves as natural; the purpose of my dissertation is to disrupt such constructions. I therefore disrupt my own discourse with a series of digressions, signalled by a different typeface. They allow me to pursue lines of thought related tangentially to the main arguments and thus to investigate the wider concerns of the culture that produced Cook’s voyages, They also give me the opportunity to interrogate my own critical methodology and assumptions. Ultimately I aim not to create another, more convincing construction of Cook and his month at Nootka Sound, but to illuminate a cultural process, a way of making meaning that is part of his intellectual legacy. 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 11 Table of contents iii List of Figures iv Acknowledgement vii iNTRODUCTION 1 Chapter One Approaching the Northwest Coast: Art, Exploration, and Cook’s Third Voyage 36 Chapter Two Science and Ethnography: The Field of Vision 88 Chapter Three Cook and the Cannibals: Nootka Sound, 1778 141 Chapter Four and Conclusion The Aftermath 189 Postscript 233 Notes 244 Bibliography 251 iv LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1.1 O,nai, portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reproduced from Bernard Smith, European 45 Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), plate 63, p. 80. 1.2 Tu, red chalk drawing by William Hodges. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision 46 and the South Pac(fic, 63, p. 74. 1.3 Otoo King of 0-Taheite Drawn from Nature by W. Hodges, engraving by 3. Hall. 46 Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pac(fic, plate 60, p. 74. 1.4 Omai, panel by William Hodges. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the 50 South Pacific, plate 12, p. 96. 1.5 Portrait of Tu, by John Webber. Reproduced from Rudiger Joppien and Bernard 51 Smith, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery, 1770-1 780 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987), plate 69, p. 61. 1.6 A few of the natives brandished spears, by Will Robinson. Reproduced from Bernard 53 Smith, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1992), plate 55, p. 62. 1.7 The Harbour of Annamooka, by John Webber. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 25, 60 p. 28. 1.8 The Resolution and Discovery in Ship Cove, by John Webber. Reproduced from 60 Maria Tippett and Douglas Cole, From Desolation to Splendour: Changing Perceptions of the British Columbia Landscape (Toronto and Vancouver: Clerke, Irwin, & Co., 1977), p. 19. 1.9 A Night Dance by Men, in Happaee and A Night Dance by Women, in Happaee, 61 engraving after Webber by W. Sharp. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, plates 16 and 17, p. 128. 1.10 The Marquis of Granby Relieving a Sick Soldier, by Edward Penny. Reproduced 64 from Solkin, “Portraiture in Motion” (Huntington Library Quarterly 14.1 [Winter 19861), fig. 1, p. 4. 1.11 The Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West. Reproduced from Helmut von Erffa 66 and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 58. 1.12 Butcher Bird caught at sea, and other drawings, by William Ellis. Reproduced from 69 Joppien, plate 204, p. 209. 1.13 The Fan Palm, in the Island of Cracatoa, coloured aqautint by John Webber. 70 Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, plate 74, p. 111. V FIGURE 1.14 A View of Ship Cove in King George’s Sound on the N. W. Coast of America, by 71 William Ellis. Reproduced from Tippett, p. 19. 1.15 A View up the Valley. from Matavai-Bay, by William Ellis. Reproduced from 79 Joppien, plate 71, p. 62. 1.16 A View of Christmas Harbour, by John Webber. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 2, 85 p.4. 2.1 The classes of Linnaeus’ sexual system of classification, as illustrated in Ehret’s 101 original plate, 1736 (much reduced). Reproduced from W.T. Steam, Species Planatarum: A Facsimile of the First Edition, 2 vols. (London: Ray Society, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 28-9. 2.2 Tableau des découvertes du Capne Cook et de Ia Perouse, hand-coloured etching by 103 St.-Sauveur. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, colour - plate 17, pp. 157-7. 2.3 The Method of Charles Linnaeus, the Swede.... Reproduced from Steam, Species 109 Planatarum, vol. 2., pp. 75-80. 2.4 Mercator Projection, showing distortion of areas away from the Equator. Reproduced 113 from Porter W. McDonnell, Jr., Introduction to Map Projections, (New York and Basel: Marcel Dekker, 1979), fig. 6-2, p. 70. 2.5 America, engraving by Jan van der Straet (Stradanus) (c. 1600). Reproduced from 123 Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1 797 (New York: Methuen, 1986), fig. 1, p. xii. 129 2.6 A Man of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, c. 1781-3. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 114, p. 96. 130 2.7 A Woman of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, c. 178 1-3. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 112, p. 94. 132 2.8 A Naiive prepared for Hunting, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien, plate Ill, p. 93. 133 2.9 A Woman ofNootka Sound, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 113, p. 95. 134 2.10 A Man of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 115, p. 97. 144 3.1 Captain Cook in Ship Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound, by John Webber. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 17, p. 17. 185 3.2 America, engraving by Cornelius Visscher. Reproduced from Smith, Imagining the PacUlc, plate 81, p. 80. vi FIGURE 33 Columbus’ fleet attacked by Cannibals. Reproduced from Hulme, fig. 7, p. 44. 185 3.4 A Human Sacrifice at Otaheite, pen, wash, and watercolour by John Webber, c. 1777. 186 Reproduced from Smith, Imagining the Pacific, plate 174, p. 191. 3.5 The human butcher shop. Reproduced from Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and 186 Africans,” ‘Race,’ Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986), fig. 7, p. 204. 3.6 Amerindians pouring gold into the mouths of Spaniards to satisfy the visitors’ greed. 186 Reproduced from Olive Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginning of French Colonialism in the Americas (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1984), p. 136. 4.1 An Inside View of the Natives’ Habitations, by John Webber. Reproduced from 212 Joppien, plate 103, p. 86. 4.2 Captain James Cook, portrait by Nathaniel Dance, 1776. Reproduced from J.C. 219 Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (London: Hakluyt, 1974), frontspiece. 4.3 Captain Cook Travel, advertisement, BC Tel Yellow Pages. 222 4.4 Lets Have a Drink and Celebrate, poster by Stephen Nothling. Black Banana 222 Posters, Brisbane, Australia, est. 1986; Right here right now portfolio, 1987.