Captain cook full#

Readers can make their own minds up as to whether that’s an overly simplistic paraphrasing of what follows, taken directly from Endeavour’s diaries. When a Maori party approached the Endeavour’s pinnace ashore on the bank of the Turanganui River and ceremonially challenged the crew, a sailor judged their intention to be hostile and shot one man dead.”52 “Poverty Bay Maori paid a price for confronting the unknown visitors. Michael King reckons the first tragic meeting happened like this: They had, after all, spent a lot of time in the Pacific islands, and had on board the Tahitian chief Tupaea as their cultural advisor and translator. Cook may have been new to NZ waters, but he and his officers were not entirely stupid. The usual routine in the more politically-correct New Zealand history books is to imply that Cook shot innocent Maori because he and his crew were unfamiliar with Maori haka and challenges. In this extract from the book to mark the anniversary, it becomes clear that acclaimed historians like Michael King have misled the public about Cook’s first encounter, and its significance in a land where the law of “utu” meant massacres were common:Ĭaptain Cook’s first week in New Zealand was a bloody one, as he and the Maori tested each other’s mettle. However, as IAN WISHART writes in his New Zealand history bestseller The Great Divide, Maori tribes had been slaughtering each other and practising slavery and cannibalism for centuries before the Europeans interfered.

Captain cook full#

This week marks the 250th anniversary of British explorer James Cook and his crew making landfall in New Zealand, and the media have been full of stories demanding Britain “apologise” for colonising the country and “murdering” Maori during that first encounter.