A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [218]
The drum is a record of many dialogues. The next object is a record of no dialogue, just misunderstanding. It is from the other side of the world, and it was collected by Captain James Cook. It makes no sound, but it too is eloquent testimony to the clash of cultures.
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Hawaiian Feather Helmet
Feather helmet, from Hawaii, USA
AD 1700–1800
In 1778 the explorer Captain James Cook was in the Pacific, on board HMS Resolution, looking for the North-West Passage, hoping to find a sea route north of Canada that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He didn’t find the North-West Passage, but he did redraw the map of the Pacific. He was charting coastlines and islands, collecting specimens of plants and animals. At the end of 1778 he and his crew landed in Hawaii, returning again in early 1779. It is impossible to imagine what the islanders made of these European sailors, the first outsiders to visit Hawaii for more than 500 years. Whoever or whatever the Hawaiians thought Cook was, their king presented him with magnificent gifts, among them chieftains’ helmets – rare and precious objects made of yellow and red feathers. Cook recognized these as an acknowledgement by one ruler of another, a clear sign of honour. But a few weeks later, Cook was dead, killed by the same people who gave him the helmets. Something had gone drastically wrong.
This is one of the feathered helmets given to Cook and his crew, and it stands now as a vivid emblem of the kind of fatal misunderstandings that have run through European contacts with people across the globe. I began this history of the world by saying that objects connect us in our common humanity more often than they separate us, but looking at some of the objects I’m not quite so sure. Can we ever really grasp how a very different society imagines the world and orders itself? And can we find words for concepts that we have never known?
In the eighteenth century European explorers, Cook above all, set about accurately mapping and charting the oceans – especially the huge and unknown Pacific. Before the great Egyptian collections arrived at the British Museum (see Chapter 1), it was the objects from Cook’s voyages in the South Sea that everybody wanted to see – glimpses of a new and other world. The Hawaiian feathered helmet, so delicate that the red, yellow and black feathers which cover it could come off at the slightest movement, was one of the prize exhibits. Like an ancient Greek helmet, it fits close to the head but has a thick, high crest running over the top from front to back – like a Mohican haircut. The top of the crest has alternating rows of yellow and red, the sides and body of the helmet are scarlet, and the front edge has a thin black and yellow edging. The colouring is vivid and radiant, and the wearer would instantly have stood out from the crowd. The red feathers are from the i’iwi bird, a species of honeycreeper, the yellow ones from a honeyeater, which has mostly black plumage but also a few yellow feathers. These tiny birds were first caught, then plucked and finally released, or killed. The feathers were then painstakingly attached to fibre netting moulded to a wickerwork frame. Feathers were the most valuable raw material at the Hawaiians’ disposal; their equivalent of turquoise in Mexico, jade in China or gold in Europe.
This is a helmet in every way worthy of a king, and it probably belonged to the overall chief of Hawaii Island, by far the largest of the Hawaiian archipelago, which lies around 3,600