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The news today is that Trinity College will return four spears believed to have been taken from Botany Bay by Captain Cook in 1770, but the so-called Gwegal Shield, no less sought after, will remain with the British Museum, at least in the short term. When it too is returned expect a major song and dance. Those who have read Keith Windschuttle’s 2020 column on the myths and legends surrounding the object will be more restrained in their celebrations. — rf
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The year 2020 marks 250 years since James Cook’s discovery and exploration of the east coast of the Australian continent between April and August 1770. The 250th anniversary won’t attract as grand a ceremony as the bicentenary in 1970 when Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Princess Anne all came out to see a re-enactment of Cook’s landing in Botany Bay. There will be another ceremony at the landing place in April this year but the major attraction this time should be the circumnavigation of Australia by a replica of Cook’s bark Endeavour, staged by the Australian National Maritime Museum.
The circumnavigation is not quite historically accurate, since Cook and his men first sighted Australian land near the eastern mouth of Bass Strait, sailed north past Cape York, but then left Australian waters for Batavia, the Dutch colony on Java. The new Endeavour will leave Sydney on February
24 and will berth or anchor at thirty-nine locations around the country between then and May 2021, giving many people the opportunity to see for themselves the actual dimensions of the ship and what a breathtaking feat it must have been to sail around the globe in such an unpretentious vessel.
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However, some likely critical responses to the Australian voyage are already apparent. Before Cook sailed to Australia he circumnavigated New Zealand’s North and South islands, and as part of the global commemorations of his voyage, the replica Endeavour has done the same. The New Zealand government tried hard to involve local Maoris in the voyage, supporting a flotilla of craft to accompany Endeavour, including two double-hulled Polynesian sailing canoes. But the voyage had to be re-directed to steer clear of ports where local Maoris had promised to disrupt proceedings.
This wasn’t enough to stop indigenous activists using the flotilla as a vehicle for the propagation of their own political agenda. When Endeavour berthed at its first port of call at Gisborne on the east coast of the North Island, demonstrators on the shore flew red-and-black Maori flags and burned British flags. They said ceremonies to commemorate Cook were “offensive” and they threatened to put Cook “on trial” for crimes against indigenous people.
Anahera Herbert-Graves, the head of the Ngāti Kahu tribe, said:
He [Cook] was a barbarian. Wherever he went, like most people of the time of imperial expansion, there were murders, there were abductions, there were rapes, and just a lot of bad outcomes for the indigenous people.
Another Maori activist, Tina Ngata, and a group called Kia Mau started an online petition to stop the ship, declaring:
For many communities the return of the Endeavour is anything but healing. It is hurtful, unsafe and unnecessary. It creates contexts for re-entrenching hurtful colonial fictions that underpin racism in Aotearoa.
As a result of this and other unfavourable publicity, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern changed her mind about attending the arrival ceremony at Gisborne. Nonetheless, it was undoubtedly a popular success. Press reports said 10,000 people turned up at the wharves to either welcome the ship or inspect it over subsequent days. In contrast, the Kia Mau petition attracted 3500 signatures from around the country.
In Endeavour’s Australian circumnavigation, the outcome is likely to be much the same. The majority of Australians will support it but a minority of leftists will try to spoil the party. The ship is due to either berth or anchor at a number of Aboriginal locations in Australia’s northern coastline—Yarrabah, Cooktown and Aurukun in Queensland, and Yirrkala in the Northern Territory—but demonstrable political opposition is more likely to come not from there but from our southern shores, especially Melbourne where the police will, as usual, allow leftist protesters to get away with almost anything they please.
At the same time as this schedule has been under way, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies has been running its own project to commemorate Cook’s visit by launching a campaign for the repatriation of all Aboriginal items taken overseas by collectors since 1770. It has had strong support from the Australian’s Weekend Magazine, which in November published a long article by Australian lawyer and television celebrity Geoffrey Robertson, whose new book, Who Owns History? Elgin’s Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure, argues that all countries with artefacts plundered during previous periods of imperialism should return them. A back-up piece in the magazine by the Australian’s columnist Phillip Adams endorsed this appeal.
Robertson says the most notable Australian item held by the British Museum is the Gweagal Shield, which he wants returned to the Aboriginal clan it came from. Robertson’s story, taken from Aboriginal activists who have gone to the British Museum and publicly protested about its retention, is that it lies at the symbolic heart of Aboriginal resistance to British imperialism. The shield came from the very first contact between Cook’s men and the Gweagal clan of the Kurnell peninsula where Cook landed on April 29, 1770.
As Cook’s rowboats approached the shore, two Gweagal men threatened them with spears. Cook fired on them, wounding one, before they ran off, dropping their weapons and a wooden shield they carried. The shield had been shot through its centre with a bullet from Cook’s muskets. If this story is true, then the shield is indeed a powerful symbol of the clash between indigenous inhabitants and British usurpers.
Unfortunately for Robertson and Adams, the story is just another fabrication. As they would have found had they done even a little fact-checking, the “Gweagal” shield held by the British Museum did not come from Botany Bay in 1770. It came from an assortment of unlabelled objects found in the British Museum in 1978 and wrongly identified as being part of Joseph Banks’s Endeavour collection. It is made of red mangrove wood, a tree common to the northern Australian coastline but whose southern limit is the Richmond River in northern New South Wales. It must have belonged to a warrior in the tropics.
The shield picked up by Cook’s men was not made of wood but of bark, probably from a gum tree, like similar Botany Bay artefacts such as canoes and rooves on Aboriginal shelters. Moreover, paintings made of the shield when Banks returned to London depict an object distinctly different in shape and size from the one held by the British Museum.
There is no excuse for Robertson and Adams to be ignorant of this, since the slightest bit of research—reading and following up an article and footnotes on Wikipedia—would have told them that all the above had been made public by the British Museum in 2018. In response to persistent protests by Gweagal activist Rodney Kelly, the museum commissioned a panel of researchers to examine the shield’s provenance and stage a specialist workshop on its history. The outcome was two papers published in Australian Historical Studies (Vol 49, No 1, 2018) by Nicholas Thomas (Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and by Maria Nugent (Australian National University) and Gaye Sculthorpe (British Museum), which provide the evidence I have cited here.
Two other sources that would also have raised questions about the story are the journals of Cook and Banks themselves, both readily available online. When the English first landed at Botany Bay they were certainly threatened with weapons (fishing spears) by two local men who signalled Cook’s rowboats to be gone. But Cook did not fire a bullet at them and no bullet went through any shield. Cook’s muskets were loaded with what he called “small shott” or birdshot, which could puncture a man’s skin but not wound him severely. Cook fired at the pair from forty metres away to warn them off, not to kill or even hurt them. He first fired a warning shot above their heads. When this had no effect, he aimed a second shot at the older man. Banks recorded: “It struck him on the legs but he minded it very little so another was immediately fird at him; on this he ran up to the house about 100 yards distant and soon returnd with a shield.” “Soon after,” Cook wrote, “they both made off.”
Banks examined the shield they left behind, and his own description of it should have told everyone who has written about it since that the bullet-hole theory was wrong. He said it had:
an oblong shape about 3 feet long and 1½ broad made of the bark of a tree; this he left behind when he ran away and we found upon taking it up that it plainly had been piercd through with a single pointed lance near the center.
In other words, the hole was either made by the shield’s owner or by an Aboriginal opponent, not Cook or his crew. As a historical symbol it represents nothing more than a relatively harmless incident between Aborigines and British that was their only hostile exchange during all of Cook’s sojourn at Botany Bay.
Will any of these facts matter during the coming commemorations? The left-wing media can be relied upon to ignore them but I hope the more respectable press will do a better job of fact-checking than their competitors.
Robertson’s arguments were all refuted by contributors in the comments section on The Australian website. None of his arguments were original. They’ve all been demolished many times before. The predictable push to have Aboriginal items on museum collections returned in 2020 is not worth the time of day. In the hands of the descendants – real or imaginary – of the original owners such items would be worthless.
Minister Wyatt’s Ministry has a responsibility to refute all attempts to write false history whether it comes from White people or Aboriginal people. If they fail to do so all credibility of their actions or proposals will be lost.
Unfortunately, john.singer, Ken Wyatt has no credibility left to lose. He appeared on TV a month or two ago supporting the fraud Bruce Pascoe and advocating the teaching of his fictions in schools as history.
He does have some amazing skills though. For example, he can hypnotise the whole country to the point where he can wear a dead possum into Parliament without raising a single criticism. I hereby challenge Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese to give that one a try. Let’s see who the real political geniuses are.
The shield with the Botany Bay story was a centrepiece of the National Museum’s ‘Encounters’ exhibition in 2016. I think they’ve backed off that claim online, but you can see it in the web archive, date of 24 Apr 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160422195923/http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/encounters/mapping/botany_bay . I think it’s also in the printed catalogue, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6932484 , but I don’t have that handy.
Surely those who now claim to be aboriginal would have plenty of specimens of shields such as Cook saw. Unless those who made them were unable to store and protect them for their descendants. The truth is nearly all early aboriginal artifacts have vanished except for those collected by early explorers and settlers, if it wasn’t for them there would be nothing to be claimed.
@sfr
[The truth is nearly all early aboriginal artifacts have vanished except for those collected by early explorers and settlers, if it wasn’t for them there would be nothing to be claimed.]
Absolutely there would be none left.
Now languages recorded – and so much else.
On our farm there were several “shield trees” where a shield shaped object had been carved from the bark. On and around a natural but non-perennial water course that bisected our property, over many years we found several stone artefacts, mainly grindstones for grinding seeds. I still have one or two. No doubt there are still plenty to be found. If it were ever a “sacred site”, it’s long since been forgotten.
This is all much to do about nothing. The Catholic church abandoned the idea of preaching the gospel to the aboriginal people and went down the path of Land Rights and other worldly pursuits. Aboriginal culture today is largely based on a victim mentality. Many are left to the mercy of their fellow victims and the false gods of welfare, drugs and alcohol. A piece of bark with a bullet hole in it does not contribute much to the spiritual welfare of this ancient people. We the People, all of us, would do well to turn back to God and nourish our authentic spiritual lives, no matter how ancient or recent , with a spirit of love and service.
Two observations. The evidentiary standards in the International Criminal Court must be pretty slack. And there must be a risk that repatriated cultural items would then be sold off to private owners by corrupt custodians.
“When Endeavour berthed at its first port of call at Gisborne on the east coast of the North Island, demonstrators on the shore flew red-and-black Maori flags and burned British flags. They said ceremonies to commemorate Cook were “offensive” and they threatened to put Cook “on trial” for crimes against indigenous people.
Anahera Herbert-Graves, the head of the Ngāti Kahu tribe, said:
He [Cook] was a barbarian. Wherever he went, like most people of the time of imperial expansion, there were murders, there were abductions, there were rapes, and just a lot of bad outcomes for the indigenous people.”
So says a, presumably proud, descendant of cannibals.
I can pretty well guarantee that no Maori were eaten by Whites after they were killed in battle etc.
I think we are adopting the wrong approach. These ‘aboriginal’ ‘activists’ want land rights? Give them land, a spear and a shield, rip up every hated road, building and development and set them free – and let Bruce be their guide on how to recreate the aboriginal Camelot.
Another important contribution about the distortions of Aboriginal history. I hope that Keith will continue his important writings on this topic.
I have had enough of the aborigines making demands. They need to be told they lost. They are welcome to be part of this marvellous country and they will be helped to adjust from their ancient and backward culture to the 21st century where many already thrive. Their constant whining about racism and what happened 200 plus years ago is wearing thin. Those whites who continue to fan the flames of discontent among some aboriginals are using them for their own purposes not for the betterment of native people.
That ‘bullet hole’ looks like something made by a modern small-bore weapon, not the muskets Cook would have had; they fired large lead balls. And how convenient that it is right in the middle of the shield; the shooter must have either been a good shot or, more likely, just plain lucky. Perhaps it was a peep-hole for use by the warrior as he snuck up on his adversary 🙂
More likely, Biggles, is that it was drilled to accommodate twine so the shield could be slung over its owner’s shoulder.
To Biggles and Roger Franklin, I like both of your suggestions. The fact the hole is dead centre leaves it open to many interpretations. A creative approach would be rewriting history based on this hole. The Aboriginal peoples certainly knew how to fight, as they confronted Cook with all their weapons. This also links up with a comment made by Tricone under the article ‘Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Family Secret’, that Buckley left his Aboriginal tribe, not because of white settler invasion, but ‘because he was tired of the internal and constant intra-racial violence’. Tricone states they have read widely on Buckley.
The constant refrain nowadays is, Who owns history?…we all do.
“He [Cook] was a barbarian. Wherever he went, like most people of the time of imperial expansion, there were murders, there were abductions, there were rapes, and just a lot of bad outcomes for the indigenous people.” This from people who at the time apparently raided other tribes, raped and took the women, and it is alleged, ATE some of the men. Not barbarians though.
I heard Geoffrey Robertson on Phillip Adam’s LNL saying something like: “Cook arrived from New Zealand, where he had killed 9 Maori, and the first thing he did in Australia was fire at two Aboriginals, one of which died later from his wounds.” Robertson makes it sound like Cook committed the world’s first “drive-by shooting”! There were Maori killed, but those deaths occurred in self defence. Cook encountered a mixed bag of receptions on the coasts of NZ; some people were friendly, some were definitely not!
Regarding the encounter at Kernell, some claim it was evidence of warriors defending their sovereign land, but the two men on shore were more likely on their way to go spear fishing, which was the main occupation of men, because they had their fish spears with them, and were not carrying shields. That they reacted as they did is not surprising, and they responded with the classic “fight or flight” behaviour; their first response was “fight”, but as that soon proved to be unsuccessful, “flight” was the only option. Clearly, it was fear of the unknown that initiated the behaviour of those two men.
Above, please read “Kernell” as “Kurnell”.
Geoffrey Robertson who did so much research in trying to rehabilitate the memory of Arthur Phillip seems to have done much less into James Cook and that is a shame.
The use of birdshot in shotguns was a traditional way of warning off people without hurting them too much. My father told of an occasion when, as a 10 year old in Sydney, he and some of his mates were raiding a suburban fruit orchard when the owner came out with a shotgun to chase them away he copped some birdshot on one of his buttocks. When he got home and his parents found out, he got into more trouble for what he had done. He never did it again. Imagine that happening today. The litigation funders would have a field day.