GUEST POST: Peggy Brock and too many Captain Cooks
As part of South Australia's History Festival this year, the David Roche Foundation House Museum displayed a special exhibition: Captain Cook and the Art of Memorabilia. Accompanying the exhibition was a special presentation by various speakers discussing Aboriginal accounts of Captain Cook.
One of the speakers was Wakefield Press author and academic Peggy Brock (Colonialism and its Aftermath (editor), Yura and Udnyu). Peggy has kindly allowed us to reproduce her fascinating talk, 'Too Many Captain Cooks', here on the blog. Read on to delve deeper into this controversial figure's place in the context of historical pandemics.
When I first visited the exhibition of Captain Cook and the Art of Memorabilia at the Roche Museum, I expected something rather different from what was revealed as I moved from room to room.
I expected a celebration of Cook as one of the founding figures of Australia, but what I found was much more interesting. This exhibition is not about James Cook the man, but how a navigator, Captain Cook, is memorialised and remembered, what he symbolises and what meanings are attached to a man who captained a ship which sailed up the east coast of what we know as Australia, and he knew as New Holland, in 1770. Eighteen years later, the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, marking the start of the British expansion across the continent, and the establishment of a series of colonies. Australia Day on the 26th of January each year commemorates the arrival of the Fleet and the raising of the Union Jack the next day by the Governor of the colony of NSW, Arthur Phillip. But as this exhibition makes clear, it is James Cook, the navigator, rather than Phillip, the first governor, who is remembered as the founding father of the country.
As Cook symbolises the establishment of this country, he is feted by some and abhorred by others. As such, he is memorialised in different ways by different individuals and groups in Australia, and this is brought out very clearly in this exhibition.
Some of the memorialising is based on documentary evidence, some is symbolic and some is interpretations of the past and how it has impacted the place and its people. We need to keep this in mind when considering Aboriginal accounts of Captain Cook.
Let’s take an example from Non-Aboriginal Australia.
In Fitzroy Gardens in Melbourne there is a house known as Cook’s cottage. It was (re)constructed in 1755 in Yorkshire by Cook’s parents and brought to Australia in 1934 by Sir Russell Grimwade for the centenary of colonial settlement in Victoria. It is obviously a memorial to Captain Cook (although there is some dispute as to whether he lived there), but it has been located in a part of the continent which Cook never visited, and was brought to Melbourne to commemorate an anniversary that has no direct link to Cook. Cook claimed the east coast of Australia, the section he navigated, in the name of King George III on August 22 1770. He only traversed a small section of the coastline we know as Victoria, just south of what is now the NSW/ Victorian border. And Cook died decades before the first colonisers were established in Victoria, and before the region became a separate colony.
Cook spent a little over four months along the coast. He spent eight days at Botany Bay and made an unplanned stop on the far north Queensland coast after the Endeavour struck a coral outcrop on the Great Barrier Reef. It took from 17 June to 4 August to make the ship seaworthy again: seven weeks. This was the only period in which Cook and his crew had interactions with Aboriginal people, which became acrimonious and violent, with Cook firing at and injuring hostile people, before negotiating some truce. There were several other brief landings along the Queensland coast and Torres Strait as the voyagers went in search of fresh water, food, firewood and botanical specimens.
Anthropologists have been collecting Aboriginal accounts of Captain Cook for many years. In 1988 Kenneth Maddock referred to six stories he knew of – two from the east coast, one from the Gulf country in Queensland, a couple from the Northern Territory and one from the Kimberley region of WA. A few others have been noted since.
One of the most interesting accounts/ myths/ sagas of Captain Cook is that from central Arnhem Land told by Paddy Fordham Wainburranga. It is most apposite to this exhibition as it is told through artistic representation, as well as verbally and through song. In the film, Wainburranga prepares bark for his painting, and then paints his representation of the first Captain Cook while he narrates the Rembarnga saga. The first Captain Cook was a good man, but after his death there were many bad Captain Cooks. This rendering reflects different Aboriginal a
pproaches to explaining and understanding the past and present.
This is a Wainburranga painting of Captain Cook, although not the one he paints in the film. The two paintings differ in detail and style, but tell the same story. The paintings have two parts: Captain Cook and his two wives on the top, and Satan below.
Wainburranga gives two accounts of Captain Cook. The first one is a mythological figure, a figure from the ‘everywhen’ as one anthropologist has described what is commonly known as the Dreaming or Dreamtime.
The Dreaming explains the world and how it came to be, gives it meaning and relevance. It happened a long time ago but is also with us now – hence the ‘everywhen’.
This is the good Captain Cook who came from Mosquito Island, which is off the northeast coast of PNG, to Sydney Harbour. This was a time before anybody was born before the grandfather’s grandfather’s time (in many parts of Aboriginal Australia people don’t keep track of the chronological past beyond three or four generations). Captain Cook is identified in the kinship system of the Rembarnga; he is part of their law and culture. In Aboriginal myths, Dreaming figures account for the known world. Captain Cook brought the first boat paddles, steel axes and knives (which can be seen in the paintings) i.e. white man’s things which enhance Rembarnga lives. He didn’t kill people, take their land, or disrupt their lives.
Satan, or the devil (or as he is known in Rembarnga: ngayang) lived on the other side of Sydney Harbour. We then have the story of how he wanted to kill Captain Cook and take his two wives for himself. When Cook won the fight with Satan he threw him down a hole (illustrated in the paintings) where the Cahill expressway is by Circular Quay. But when Captain Cook went back to Mosquito Island he was mortally wounded by his own people and came back to Sydney Harbour where he died. He is buried under Garden Island in Sydney Harbour, now a major navy base.
Later many new Captain Cooks came but they shot people, went after Aboriginal women, took land, and then they made ‘welfare’, which now dominates Aboriginal lives.
The first Captain Cook was a good law man. He introduced valuable things to the Rembarnga like steel and clothing. He was integrated into Rembarnga life. The later Captain Cooks represent the destructive side of colonialism.
When Chips Mackinolty, who has publicised Wainurranga’s account, told him the Non-Aboriginal story of Captain Cook, Wainburranga and his people laughed – how did white people know about Captain Cook? They only knew about him through unreliable books, the Rembarnga know about him through songs that made up their knowledge of the world.
Other clans in Arnhem Land have a Dreaming being known as Birrinydji who is a king, a boat captain and blacksmith, also known as Captain Cook. He is of the land itself, and Rembarnga are born in his image and ceremonially enact his will.
Captain Cook is also known in the West Kimberley, but here he is not a mythic being, but rather a code for issues associated with colonialism. He represents the loss of Aboriginal autonomy and control over their lives. Captain Cook is acknowledged as a recent addition to their traditional modes of understanding the world. Cook is the man who came to Australia and shot people, setting a precedent of what was to follow. He did not recognise their ownership of the land from time immemorial and the traditions which embed that right. Europeans rely on the recent law of Captain Cook.
The Cook story explains the poverty and deprivation experienced by Aboriginal communities. Anthropologist Erich Kolig suggests that this story of Cook is based on traditional myth models – a group of beings and their leader wander about, reach a foreign country where on coming ashore they encounter other beings. But unlike traditional Dreamtime beings, Cook and his entourage are ‘outsiders’, not part of the land. Kimberley law thus has precedence as the ancient law of the land.
Among the Gurindji of the Northern Territory, the first European to come to Australia was not the good Captain Cook but Ned Kelly, who was later followed by the bad Captain Cook:
‘First there was water here and then it went back so that there was the Northern Territory. Then a thousand million Aborigines were here and lived on the land a long time. The first cudeba (white man) who came was Ned Kelly and he brought with him the first horses, a stallion and a mare, which bred here, and the first bullock ... Ned Kelly was a friend and he helped the Aborigines. The second cudeba who came was Captain Cook. He looked at the land and saw that it was very good and wanted it for himself. He decided to clear the Aborigines off the land. So he shot many of them and he shot Ned Kelly too and he stole the land.’
A little to the north a Yarralin man, Big Mick, has a slightly different account:
‘This world been salt water before… Two men came down from the sky. Ned Kelly and Angelo [angels]. Come down, get a boat, travel around. … They been makem river, and salt water been go right back. That’s for Ned Kelly and Angelo. Dry now, every way. Two fellow just walking now. Some bush blackkfellow been go longa business [ie ceremonial business]. They come down. … The blackfellows understand English. Two fellow travelling now, longa dry land. Walking. Go longa Wyndham….
'Wyndham people [Europeans] look [at] those two whitefellows: ‘Oh really different men. Different to we. We’ll have to get em policemen.’ Four policemen been come. Had a bit of a row longa two fellow. Two fellow get a gun and shoot four policemen la Wyndham. And travel back, go back this way.
'Captain Cook then came to Darwin from England they been come. And on to Sydney Harbour ... He brought horse and cattle to this country. Captain Cook got revolver which is represented in rock art in the region. (there all around Daguragu)
'He bred up bullock and horse, that’s where the Ned Kelly going back to England. Ned Kelly by himself now, he lost his mate. Ned Kelly got his throat cut. They bury him. Leave him.’
In this saga, Ned Kelly is similar to the first benign Captain Cook of the Rembarnga. He was there at the beginning. But when Captain Cook appeared, he ushered in a new era of death and dispossession, characterised here as the Wyndham people. Ned Kelly belongs to Australia because he helped create it.
The Ned Kelly and good Captain Cook sagas suggest that Europeans coming to this continent did not have to result in bad things happening. Things could have worked out differently.
In these sagas, Aboriginal people have adopted historical characters who have been
idolised by Non-Aboriginal people. Both Ned Kelly and Cook have reputations which have greatly expanded on their actual accomplishments. Cook is celebrated by mainstream Australia as the symbol for European settlement of the continent and the establishment of the Australian nation. Ned Kelly is a hero for many, the outlaw who took from the rich and privileged, and stood up for the rights of those born into poverty. Aboriginal people have taken these two figures who stand large in settler history and incorporated them into their own law/ lore. Ned Kelly is on the side of the dispossessed and stands up against colonial authority shooting the four policemen, while Cook, the harbinger and epitome of colonial power, is a thief and a murderer.
These myths and sagas might not be historically accurate but reflect historical developments which have led to the parlous state Aboriginal people and communities find themselves in today.
The accounts of Captain Cook, epitomised in Wainburranga’s Too Many Captain Cooks, are told in different narrative styles. The first captain Cook, and also Ned Kelly, are part of a Dreaming myth. Dreaming mythology is conceptualised as both past and a concurrent present, the ‘everywhen’. During the Dreamtime moral principles were developed and actions were judged on these principles. The many Captain Cooks and other Cook sagas are part of the present or as anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose puts it, ‘ordinary time’. The Dreaming endures, but the ‘ordinary time’ does not.
I would like to end this talk by discussing Chips MackInolty’s The first pandemic. Here’s a commemorative stamp, again symbolic of the destructiveness of colonialism, rather than strictly factual:
I haven’t been able to find any evidence that Cook and the Endeavour crew were responsible for introducing any diseases to the Aboriginal people they encountered, although it is always possible that it could have occurred. But as with the other symbolism relating to Cook, it is most certainly the case that the colonisers of the continent introduced many deadly pandemics to Aboriginal communities. I will give you some examples from central Australia from my own research on the western Arrernte and Hermannsburg Lutheran mission west of Alice Springs.
There is evidence that smallpox had reached the area in the later 1860s/ early 1870s before direct contact between Arrernte and Europeans. A few years later there was a measles epidemic which spread from Beltana in the Flinders Ranges and up the Finke River, killing many Aboriginal people in northern South Australia and southern Northern Territory. Once settlers were in direct contact with the Arrernte, we have records of many other pandemics killing people in the region. In the late 1880s and 1890s there were typhoid, flu, and measles epidemics. In 1900, whooping cough killed at least six children at Hermannsburg.
We don’t have records of disease in the early twentieth century, but the Arrernte at Hermannsburg were spared the devastation of the flu epidemic of 1918–21 which killed so many around the world. Fifty-three people died in Alice Springs, and it is estimated that half the Aboriginal population of northern South Australia and southern Northern Territory died of the flu in 1921. Flu reappeared in the region in 1924 when seven people at Hermannsburg died, and again in 1926 and 1928 with whooping cough, which carried off many of the young and the old.
Tuberculosis was introduced to central Australia in the twentieth century when infected settlers from the south came to recuperate in the hot, dry climate. TB was first diagnosed at Hermannsburg in 1934.
People were made particularly susceptible to these introduced diseases because they had no inherited immunity, but also because of poor diet and living conditions. A drought in the late 1920s caused many people to get sick and die of scurvy, making them more vulnerable to infectious diseases.
To give you an idea of the diet many Aboriginal people depended on through the latter part of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, the standard government food rations given out to the sick and unemployed Aboriginal people per week per adult were 7 lb (3.1kg) of flour, 1 lb (1/2 kg) sugar, and 2 oz of tea. Rations were sometimes supplemented with other things such as tobacco and baking powder, but no meat, vegetables or fruit. There are very high rates of diabetes and kidney failure among Aboriginal people today, much of which can be blamed on the diet so many were subjected to over several generations.
Another disease which was rife in central Australia, although not at Hermannsburg, where women were better protected from predatory men, was venereal disease, which devastated many Aboriginal communities.
So when you consider Mackinolty’s painting, although none of these pandemics is evident, this is what the artist may have had in mind. Again Captain Cook is not directly, or perhaps even indirectly, responsible for the spread of diseases which had ravaged Europe and Asia. But the Aboriginal population had remained largely isolated from regions where these infectious diseases were rife. Australia’s ability to contain the current pandemic illustrates how the people of this continent were protected from many diseases until it was colonised and its borders breached. Captain Cook’s surveying of the east coast of Australia and proclamation in 1770 has had devastating repercussion for the original inhabitants of the land.