Culture contact in the Palau Islands, 1783

Journal of Pacific History

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 89-97

  Clark, Geoffrey ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61249706468     PISSN: 00223344     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00223340701286867     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. George Keate, An Account of the Pelew Islands Situated in the Western Part of the Pacific Ocean. Composed from the Journals and Communications of Captain Henry Wilson, and some of his Officers, who, in August 1783, were there Shipwrecked, in the Antelope, a Packet belonging to the Honourable East India Company. The Third Edition (London 1789).
2. Reference to earlier visits by European and Indo-Pacific people is mentioned by Keate, Pelew Islands, ix-xi;
3. Karen L. Nero, 'A cherechar a lokelii: beads of history of Koror, Palau, 1783-1983', PhD thesis, University of California (Berkeley 1987), 207-10;
4. Richard J. Parmentier, The Sacred Remains: myth, history and polity in Belan (Chicago and London 1987).
5. The Antelope was wrecked on the west barrier reef of Palau on the night of 9-10 August, and the crew departed Ulong Island on 12 November. Keate, Pelew Islands, xii. The names of 34 of the crew (one died while quitting the Antelope) are given by Keate, who says there were also 16 Chinese men, none of whom is ever named in Pelew Islands.
6. In the late-18th century there was a complicated interplay between views of European explorers as aggressors and the 'savage' behaviour of Pacific Islanders. For example, The Gentleman's Magazine of 1775 catalogued instances of unprovoked shooting of 'Indians' by Europeans, but such events contrasted with the killing of 10 men at Grass Cove in New Zealand in 1773 and the death of James Cook in Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii in 1779. The Gentleman's Magazine, 45 (1775), 132;
7. James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery, vol. 2, ed. J.C. Beaglehole (Cambridge 1961), 743-4;
8. E.H. McCormick, Omai, Pacific Envoy (Auckland and Oxford 1977), 308.
9. The massacre of French sailors on Tutuila during the visit of La Pérouse in 1787 illustrates the interplay. La Pérouse suggests the deaths could have been avoided had the officers not been afraid of 'starting the hostilities and possibly being accused in Europe of barbarous behaviour . . .'. J-F.G. la Pérouse, The Journal of Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse I785-1788, vol. 2, tr. and ed. John Dunmore (London 1995), 399.
10. See also, McCormick, Omai, 303.
11. Nero, 'Beads of history', 200;
12. Dirk A. Ballendorf, 'A permanent upsetting of tradition: the 1783 British Palatum alliance for the subjugation of Artingall', Asian Culture, 23 (1995), 11-14;
13. Daniel J. Peacock, Lee Boo of Belan: a prince in London (Honolulu 1987).
14. Max Quanchi and Ron Adams (eds), Culture contact in the Pacific: essays on contact, encounter and response (New York 1993), 48;
15. Karen L. Nero, 'Keate's account of the Pelew Islands: a view from Koror and Palau', in George Keate, An Account of the Pelew Islands, ed. Karen. L. Nero, Nicholas Thomas and Jennifer Newell (London and New York 2002), 2;
16. Parmentier, The Sacred Remains, 43.
17. Keate says that he transcribed the journals of Captain Henry Wilson and his officers and, in the text, he records using the journal of John Cummins (Third Mate), In spite of the number of different textual sources used by Keate, neither the original documents nor the copies made of them have yet been located.
18. Geoffrey Clark, 'Rediscovery of Captain Wilson's 1783 camp on Ulong Island, Republic of Palau', Report to the Bolau National Museum (Palau 2005).
19. Nicholas Thomas. 'George Keate: benevolence on the beach', in J. Lamb. V. Smith and N. Thomas (eds), Exploration and Exchange: a South Seas anthology, 1680-1900 (Chicago 2000), 112-16.
20. The document in The Gentleman's Magazine of 1784 has not been published previously or analysed in relation to Keate's account. The only reference I have found to the document in the secondary literature is Peacock, Lee Boo, 236, who comments: 'important in that it tends to confirm much of what Keate later wrote', and Ballendorf, 'A permanent upsetting of tradition', who uses material from the letter, but does not comment on the disparity between it and Keate's account. The document is not referenced in recent versions of Pelew Islands edited by Nero, Thomas and Newell (2002). and Lévasque (2000). See full references of these editions in fn. 7 and 30.
21. Kathryn G. Dapp, 'George Keate Esq., eighteenth century gentleman", PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia 1939), 91.
22. Dapp, "George Keate Esq.', 91.
23. Keate was also a friend of William Bligh, and the German edition of Pelew Islands was translated by George Forster. The will of George Keate, Public Record Office, The National Archives, Online Catalogue Reference PROB 11/1512. Available online at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/search/(accessed 14 Feb. 2007).
24. Dapp, 'George Keate Esq.', 139, 151.
25. Catalogue of the elegant and valuable collection of books of George Keate, Esq. Leite of Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, (Deceased) (London 1800), 16-17. Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Douce CC 393(8).
26. Omai, for instance, was painted by Joshua Reynolds (c. 1776), appeared in William Cowper's poem The Task (1785) and his life was dramatised in plays, notably, OMAI: or, a trip round the world, performed at the Theatre Royal Covenant Garden (1785-86).
27. McCormick, Omai, 281, 310, 314.
28. Alexander Pope's poem Essay on Man, composed c. 1733 34, 'The proper study of mankind is man'.
29. Brook Watson is listed in Robert Rashleigh's will as an executor of his estate. The will of Robert Rashleigh, Public Record Office, The National Archives, Online Catalogue Reference PROB 11/1158. Available online at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/search/(accessed 14 Feb. 2007).
30. L.F.S. Upton, 'Watson, Sir Brook', Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, 1801-1820, vol. 5. Available online at http://www.biographi.ca/ (accessed 14 Feb. 2007);
31. A. Farrington, 'Wilson, Henry Sen. (c. 1741-)', A Biographical Index of East India Company Maritime Service Officers 1600-1834 (London 1999), 881.
32. The Monthly Review, 79 (1788), 109-21 and 193-203.
33. The Analytical Review, 1 (1788), 394-400.
34. George Robertson, Memoir of a chart of the China Sea: including the Philippine, Mollucca, and Banda Islands with part of the coast of New Holland and New Guinea (London 1795).
35. The surviving log of the Antelope (The British Library, London (IOR:L/MAR/B/570A)) has its final entry on 4 June 1783 when the ship reached Macao. It shows that Captain Henry Wilson kept detailed nautical records, and that the omission of these by Keate in Pelew Islands is another example of information loss from editing.
36. The Gentleman's Magazine, 58 (1788), 629-31.
37. The Gentleman's Magazine, 74 (1804), 329-32.
38. The Gentleman's Magazine, 54 (1784). 980-1. There are few clues to the identity of the writer except that the letter contains a possible eyewitness account of the killing of prisoners, including a death not recorded in Pelew Islands, during the second attack of the Ibedul's forces against Melekcok in which 10-11 of the crew took part. The participants were Philip Benger, William Harvey, Thomas Dulton, William Roberts, James Duncan, Matthias Wilson, Nicholas Tyacke, Thomas Wilson, William Stewart and Madan Blanchard. The translator Thomas Rose may also have attended. Of these only Madan Blanchard and Thomas Rose can reasonably be eliminated as authors.
39. Captain Wilson wrote a letter to the President of the Supra Cargoes of Canton after arriving at Macao from Palau on 30 November 1783, that does not mention events after the shipwreck (The British Library, London, (IOR: G/12/77)).
40. An account published in 1788 claiming to have been written by an officer from the Antelope is a plagiarised abridgment of Pelew Islands. The title is: The Shipwreck of the Antelope East-India Packet, H. Wilson, Esq. Commander, on the Pelew Islands, situate in the West Part of the Pacific Ocean; In August 1783. By One of the Unfortunate Officers (London 1788).
41. Amasa Delano, 'A narrative of voyages and travels, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: comprising three voyages round the world; together with a voyage of survey and discovery in the Pacific and Oriental islands', ed. Rodrigue Lévasque, History of Micronesia: a collection of source documents. volume 13 - mostly Palau, 1783-1793 (Quebec 2000), 65.
42. Nero, 'Beads of history', 220.
43. It is possible that the tactic may have been explained later to Captain Wilson. The tactics employed by the Ibedul in his first meeting with Captain Wilson were similar to those used in 1791, when the Ibedul's canoes arrayed in three lines approached Artingall (Melekeok) and demanded submission from its chiefs. After a display of paddle flourishing and the promise of negotiation the Koror and Artingall groups mingled, which the Ibedul encouraged because it furthered his aims by removing animosity. Delano. 'A narrative of voyages', 663.
44. Peacock, Lee Boo, 20.
45. Nicholas Thomas suggests that Pelew Islands was, after Cook's voyages, the most popular Pacific voyage text in the Iate-18th century. Thomas, 'The "Pelew Islands" in British culture', in Keate, An Account of the Pelew Islands, ed. Nero, Thomas and Newell, 27.
46. See Dapp, 'George Keate', 169-70 for a list of editions.
47. There is a notable gap in Keate's account of the relations between the crew and Palauan women. In Palauan warfare, women from a defeated village could he given to the victors. See Parmentier, Sacred remains, 95-6;
48. In Captain Wilson's letter of 1783 (see fn. 29) he uses 'Pelow' and 'Palaos' rather than 'Pelew' John Wedgehorough was a Midshipmen on the Antelope and returned to Palau in 1791 as Lieutenant on the Panther. In a letter to a relative he records that 'Palou' was the correct spelling lor the archipelago. John Wedgeborourgh, letter, in Wedgeborough, Journal, 1792-1794, National Library of Australia, Canberra, MS4088.
49. This incident is not mentioned by Keate, but Delano, 'A narrative of voyages', 655, records a similar instance where a prisoner from Artingall had his leg cut off and was then beaten around the head with the amputated limb. Matthias Wilson, brother of Captain Wilson, supplied the account of the second attack on Artingall given in Pelew Islands, and the details of the Rupak's death agree with those in the 1784 letter reproduced here.
50. The want of provisions for the crew during their stay on Ulong Island is also mentioned by Keate, Pelew Islands, 145, 276.
51. The hardship experienced by the crew is somewhat diminished elsewhere. E.g., John P. Hockin, A supplement to the account of the Pelew Islands; Compiled from the journals of the Panther and Endeavour, two vessels sent by the Honourable East India Company to those islands in the Year 1790; and from the oral communications of Captain H. Wilson (London 1804), 48: 'A distressed and shipwrecked people are cast away upon a distant and unknown coast; they are there succoured and cherished by the natives, with a liberality, if not unknown, yet not surpassed in any civilised country, nay, in some instances, far exceeding anything before experienced; for in relieving the wants of these strangers, they frequently gave up their own usual and accustomed portion of food.'