Between Documentation and Dispossession: the Language of the Nuu-chah-nulth People in the Journals of James Cook’s Third Voyage


 Through a case study of James Cook's third voyage and his contact with the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Vancouver Island in 1778, this article sheds new light on the epistemological dispossession of indigenous peoples that accompanied European expansion in the eighteenth century. The documentation of the Nuu-chah-nulth language in the official account of the expedition (1784) contributed to the establishment of a monopoly on history, from which indigenous forms of knowledge were excluded. The study of languages contributed to the representation of indigenous peoples as having no history and as being situated in the past of a presumed European ‘modernity’.

of the Southern Wakashan people chose Nuu-chah-nulth ('along the mountain') as an endonym. 4This episode illustrates the practice, common during the centuries of European colonial expansion, of imposing a name on an inhabited place, thus ignoring the presence and cultural agency of the native occupants. 5It exemplifies the capacity of language to convey powerful ideological and intercultural implications.Moreover, it illustrates the potential for misunderstanding in a communicative process informed in part by the practical necessity of carrying out an effective dialogue, and by a genuine proto-ethnographic curiosity on the part of European explorers and traders.
By studying language from a cultural-historical perspective, this article outlines how cross-cultural communication was understood and how the language of the Mowachaht, who belonged to the Nuu-chah-nulth language group encountered by Cook on the west coast of North America in 1778, 6 was described in the official account of the voyage published in 1784. 7The treatment of communication in that account reflects the establishment of a monopoly on historical knowledge, validated entirely by written records and excluding native forms of knowledge, especially when of a performative or aural nature.Furthermore, the ensuing study of languages contributed to the conceptualization of indigenous peoples as having no history and as being situated in the past of a presumed European 'modernity'.
The descriptions of verbal and nonverbal exchanges in the narrative chapters and the compilation of vocabularies of indigenous languages reveal the motivations, attitudes, and cultural background of the European observers, as well as the practical challenges in early intercultural encounters.They may also offer insights into the political and cultural agenda of Cook's third and last enterprise.The contact with the Nuu-chah-nulth people on Vancouver Island and the collection of linguistic material reflect the combination of scientific and commercial interests described in the secret instructions given to Cook by the British Admiralty in 1776. 8Linguistic knowledge became instrumental on many levels in territorial as well as epistemological dispossession, and this account is an excellent example of eighteenth-century cognitive Eurocentrism.While it is not possible to dispossess someone of a word or concept in the same way that they can be deprived of the ownership or use of land or a natural resource, this research supports the hypothesis that linguistic documentation contributed to a cognitive dispossession and to the construction of a narrative functional -in Cook's caseto British colonial expansion in North America.Such linguistic documentation contributed to a European representation of space and time built at the expense of the practices and presence of the indigenous inhabitants on the North American Pacific coast.
This research also permits reflection on methodology which is of interest beyond the specific case study under consideration.Although primarily conducted through a cultural history approach, this study would not have been possible without a close dialogue with both ethno-historical and ethno-linguistic disciplines, as well as critical indigenous studies.Significant shifts have taken place in these fields in recent decades, both with regard to the specific geographical and cultural areas examined here and in broader terms with the historiographical problematization of cross-cultural spaces of social interaction.To overcome the Eurocentric perspective inherent in many written sources documenting the dawn of a global history in Europe, it is necessary to include tools of historical craft from other fields.In the case of Cook's expedition to the Pacific coast of North America, a number of other coeval or near-coeval European sources also provide written documentation of indigenous languages.Furthermore, substantial contributions exist today regarding Nuu-chah-nulth cultures, languages, and histories from indigenous perspectives, allowing us to extend our knowledge beyond what the gaze and voice of British explorers could convey.This study advocates close co-operation between disciplinary fields such as cultural history, linguistics, ethnohistory, and indigenous studies, with the aim of composing a more complex and multifaceted portrait of early-modern transcultural encounters, and allowing us to reassess sources such as the accounts of European navigators and scientists.
This research adopts the investigative vantage point of cultural history and linguistics. 9In so doing, it draws on the hypothesis that, while embracing and perpetuating methodological paradigms that emerged out of the epistemological framework established by the European eighteenth century, it is possible to relativize and, above all, historicize them.Turning to metaphor, we may say that these disciplinary knowledges function like spectacles that we too often forget we have on our noses: we cannot see clearly without them, but must recognize that they entail a distortion to make the world apparent to us, and that everything would appear differently with different lenses.

NUU-CHAH-NULTH LANGUAGE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
EUROPEAN SOURCES The official edition of A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean was edited by John Douglas (Canon of Windsor, and later Bishop of Carlisle) 10 on behalf of the British Admiralty and was published in 1784.Douglas used Cook's journal and drew on writings by other officers, including for the third volume Captain James King (lieutenant and astronomer on the Resolution), as well as sketches by John Webber, 11 and thus furnishes a good example of the often collective nature of travel accounts in the eighteenth century. 12A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean is a well-known primary source, 13 whose significance has been analysed from a number of perspectives.Particular attention has been paid to cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific Islands, to the events leading up to Cook's death in Hawaii in 1779, to the contribution made by the expedition to European knowledge of America's Pacific Northwest coast, 14 and to its achievement in opening up a commercial route to Asia across the Pacific. 15This study takes a hitherto under-explored approach, focusing on the cultural uses of language in the representation of the Nuu-chah-nulth people, as well as the documentation of a broader system of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies.
The linguistic materials and descriptions of verbal and performative-musical forms of communication contained in the official account were, as we shall see, mainly the work of William Anderson, surgeon and botanist on the Resolution, and Cook himself.Today these notes can be compared with those recorded in the diaries of other crew members on the two boats.These accounts include manuscripts by William Bayly (astronomer assigned to the Resolution), James Burney (first lieutenant on the Discovery), Thomas Edgar (master on the Discovery) John Rickman (second lieutenant on the Discovery), Henry Roberts (master's mate on the Resolution), and David Samwell (surgeon on the Discovery).These sources are accessible in different archives and have been made available by partial publications and, in some cases, digitization.They make it possible to locate the official narrative prepared by Douglas in 1784, and the voice of the captain later brought to light by the edition of the journals published by Beaglehole in 1967, within a wider variety of perspectives in proto-ethnographic observation.
Comparisons may be drawn from accounts now available of other roughly contemporaneous European expeditions to the areas visited by Cook.One such is by Alexander Walker, an East India Company ensign who accompanied merchant James Charles Stuart Strange to the North American coast in 1785-6; his writings remained unpublished until the 1980s. 16Another is the account of Jose ´Mariano Moziño (1757-1820), botanist of Mexican birth who took part in the Spanish Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain of 1787-1803.His Noticias de Nutka (1792) described Nuu-chah-nulth costumes, social organization, religious beliefs, as well as natural resources, trade, and episodes of the competition between European powers in the region.The account was known in the Spanish-speaking world from 1793, and has been translated into English. 17he result of a two-year stay at Yuquot between 1803 and 1805, John R. Jewitt's narrative is also rich in cultural and linguistic materials.First published in 1807, the subsequent 1815 edition substantially developed the first version and inserted a short vocabulary. 18Other accounts, such as those of the expedition commanded by two other veterans of Cook's third voyage, Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, 19 provided testimonies of encounters with nations living in contiguous areas.Without claiming an exhaustive examination of the protoethnographic descriptions in these sources, the following paragraphs will use specific elements as points of comparison to assess Cook's recording of linguistic material at Nootka.
Current scholarship in the conjectural history of languages has generally concentrated on vocabularies, grammars, and philosophical histories compiled in the 'old world': the treatment of linguistic material in travel accounts has received only scant attention. 20Looking at how indigenous languages were described in reports based on direct contact makes it possible to explore the interplay between pre-existing notions and empirical validation in the construction of knowledge. 21The linguistic documentation carried out in Nootka has received less attention than other aspects of Cook's voyages.Several studies in recent years have traced the destiny of groups of artifacts collected in Nootka by the expedition, recounting their journeys through private collections and museums. 22his interest in the material evidence of the Nuu-chah-nulth culture brought back to Europe has not been matched by scrutiny of the linguistic samples collected at Nootka Sound in April 1778.The analysis of lists of expressions and words in translation, which were a staple feature of eighteenth-century travel accounts, tends to remain the domain of specialists in ethnolinguistics and historical linguistics.Discipline-specific expertise in these fields must of course help to evaluate the glottological reliability of these sources, but the study of languages and nonverbal communication can also offer a significant contribution to the history of the expedition and of cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific Northwest.In an only apparent paradox, the scholarly field did not benefit from the publication, in 1979, of a volume dedicated specifically to the vocabularies of indigenous languages collected during Cook's travels. 23While it promised to be a carefully edited collection of material from published accounts and of some unpublished manuscript sources, the volume was rendered virtually useless by the editor's tampering with the original material. 24inguistically, Nuu-chah-nulth is one of the southern Wakashan branches of the Wakashan family.Today, the Nuu-chah-nulth language is articulated in different branches or dialects, which are generally grouped into three main varieties. 25A number of mapping projects, 26 studies in grammar, phonetics, pragmatics, comparative linguistics, 27 and ethno-linguistic revitalization initiatives 28 may provide references to some extent, and also help in the examination of eighteenth-century European sources.Given the historical distance that separates what scholars and activists study today from what the late eighteenth-century traveller encountered, an uncritical application of current ethnographical and linguistical knowledge to the past would result in a fallacious retro-projection of the present on to history. 29The belief that indigenous cultures did not change over time went hand in hand with a concept of development rooted in the idea of European 'modernity' and was inherent to European colonial expansion.The assumption between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that American indigenous cultures were static and atemporal, though later corrected by the diachronic sensibility of ethnohistory and archaeology, inherited the presupposition of a colonial monopoly over historical time.The early phases of this monopoly are attested to in the account investigated in this essay.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
Cook's third expedition met several groups of indigenous people near Nootka Sound during March-April 1778.It was the inhabitants' first significant contact with Europeans. 30Attempts at communication were made using nonverbal signs.Sources from the Nuu-chah-nulth oral tradition about the first European encounters with Chief Maquinna recount Cook's arrival from a different perspective and reveal considerable arbitrariness as to how behaviours and gestures were imbued by the Europeans with meaning. 31Members of the expedition suspected possible misunderstandings. 32The risk of misinterpretation remained, despite the relative effectiveness of gestures, especially when embedded in a broader system of nonverbal exchange, associated for example with the use of material props to signify analogies, impermanent mapping, and miming. 33hey were earnest in their inquiries, by signs, on our arrival, if we meant to settle amongst them; and if we came as friends: signifying, at the same time, that they gave the wood and water freely, from friendship. 34is observation which Cook made in Nootka in April 1778 is followed by a series of deductions, all with political implications.For instance when 'natives' asked whether the English intended to settle, the query would not make sense if they were already familiar with Europeans.Their ignorance of firearms pointed in the same direction.It could therefore be argued that the Spanish expedition that landed on the North American coast between 1774 and 1775 did not reach as far as Nootka.This conclusion was evidently intended to counteract potential territorial claims by Spain.The so-called Nootka crisis a few years later, triggered by the Spanish capture of four British ships in 1789, was to be the culmination of the rivalry between the British and Spanish for territorial and commercial control of the western coast of North America.In the 1784 account, the oblique reference to Juan Pere ´z's expedition in the 1770s reveals the undercurrent of discord between the two European powers. 35Throughout this passage Douglas's editorial hand can be discerned.Elements were taken from Cook's original journal, such as the remark about the strong sense of ownership of natural resources felt by the inhabitants of Nootka, noted by the captain on several occasions, and stressing the population's familiarity with ideas of profit and their artful negotiating during trade. 36The description of the communicative exchange and the resulting inference, however, were drafted in this vein by the editor.
The same passage had further ideological implications.In the village opposite the north end of Bligh Island, Cook's journal related that the local populace had invited the British to 'pay' for the grass, wood and water they continued to take during the prolonged repairs to the ships.Cook noted the term 'makook', translating it as 'to pay'.The term conveys an invitation to exchange, roughly equivalent to the expression 'let's trade', or 'exchange'. 37Here, the linguistic and conceptual rendering of a given idea of exchange saw, through the textual stages of Cook's work, a significant ideological domestication.Not included in the corresponding passage in Douglas's edited version, the term was listed in the Nootka vocabulary published in the appendices (discussed further below), and translated as 'to barter'. 38It was also recorded by Burney as meaning 'to Exchange', 39 by Samwell as 'to trade', 40 by the later explorer Alexander Walker in the mid 1780s as 'trading', 41 and by John Jewitt in the early 1800s as 'to sell'. 42The Europeans took the word with them when they moved the centre of their trade to Chinook territory at the mouth of the Columbia River in the early nineteenth century.It became part of a trade jargon or contact language, that is, a language variety which originates in a cross-cultural contact situation, with mixed vocabulary and minimal grammar. 43As Chinook jargon, 44 it was first recorded in 1805 in the account of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-6). 45In his original journal, Cook went on to explain: . . .they at first wanted us to pay for [the wood and water we took], and we had certainly done it, had I been upon the spot when the demands were made; but as I never happened to be there the workmen took but little notice of their importunities and at last they ceased applying.But made a Merit of necessity and frequently afterwards told us they had given us Wood and Water out of friendship. 46 the above-mentioned rewriting by Douglas, the Nuu-chah-nulth's sense of agency in controlling the exploitation of natural resources was significantly modified to portray a peaceful and voluntary cession in favour of the English visitors.Recent legal battles over land rights have raised questions about the differences between the two versions of the account -the one edited by Douglas and the one in Cook's original journals (as made available in the critical edition prepared by J. C. Beaglehole in the 1960s) -which were considered alongside other evidence in determining the existence of rights based on ancestral practices. 47The description of these transactions projected onto indigenous interlocutors a sense of ownership similar to that of Europeans, preparing to legitimize appropriation by the English.In this sense, the case of Cook at Vancouver Island exemplifies the 'recursive dispossession' theorized by Robert Nichols: a concept of indigenous ownership was created implicitly and retrospectively through thievery. 48ook recurrently described thefts perpetrated by Nuu-chah-nulth individuals. 49Accounts written in the years that followed, mentions in indigenous oral histories of tuupati (rights or privileges to select and use resources), 50 and the contribution of ethno-historical research, suggest that what Cook called 'thefts' may have been matching behaviours engendered by the unilateral appropriations of resources by the Europeans, outside the Nuu-chah-nulth protocols of exchange and privileges. 51It has been hypothesized that these appropriations may have been the work of individuals whose low position in the Nuu-chah-nulth social system precluded other access to European goods.More likely, however, the taking of European objects by the Nuu-chah-nulth was simply a reciprocation, dictated by social protocols as a response to the exploitation of resources by the visitors. 52E AURAL DIMENSION The Europeans' difficulty in deciphering communications was most evident with forms in which music, oratorical performance, and the aural dimension were central.Passages in the official account describe songs, dances, and musical and oratory practices that were performed at times of particular symbolic or ritual importance.This was the case, for example, when canoes first approached the English ships, or repeatedly in the encounters which preceded the beginning of trade along the west coast of Vancouver Island, and in the first visit to a village opposite the north end of Bligh Island. 53Here the inhabitants, wrote Cook, 'were not so polite', and the chief would not let the captain enter their houses.'Some of the young women, better pleased with us than was their inhospitable Chief, dressed themselves expeditiously in their best apparel, and, assembling in a body, welcomed us to their village, by joining in a song, which was far from harsh or disagreeable.' 54This narrative contrasts the women's reaction with that of the chief without offering evidence.For all Cook and the reader knew, the singing might have been intended to chase away the presence of the unwanted visitor.Cultural misunderstandings of this sort have been documented in other cases, through native sources and the contributions of historical and comparative ethnology. 55t was assumed that some musical practices marked particular social moments, and they were sometimes perceived as 'agreeable' and 'pleasing' on a harmonic and melodic level.However, the failure to understand that an inherently aural code may convey complex cultural content, for example in transmitting knowledge of the past and in terms of diplomacy, exemplifies the epistemological ethnocentrism that this account shares with other coeval testimonies.Songs and music were sometimes described by Cook as enjoyable or intended to entertain the European guests. 56Burney was also fascinated by the Mowachaht custom, observed in Nootka, of taking leave after the exchanges by sailing away singing a rallying cry in unison: In the Evening, several of the larger Canoes Saluted us by making a Circuit round the ships and giving 3 Halloos at their departure.[. ..]The Halloo is a single note in which they all join, Swelling it out in the middle and letting the Sound die away.In a Calm with the hills around us it had an effect, infinitely superior to what might be imagined from any thing so simple. 57en two different groups approached the English ships at the same time during the first few days at Nootka, a parley averted what appeared to be a risk of conflict.The peaceful resolution was then sealed by the singing of a song by each group.This was not described by the captain (who was ashore at the time, directing the supply of timber and water), but was noted by Burney. 58The melodic and harmonic aspects struck him as strange.He nevertheless perceived that a solemn function was attributed to the musical performance, and chose an eloquent analogy to a familiar experience in a religious context, rendering the scene comprehensible to the friends and acquaintances for whom his journal was intended.
Their Song was composed of a variety of Strange Placed Notes, in a Solemn Stile: all in Unison and well in tune.The first Words were given out by one man, as a Parish Priest gives out the first Line of a Psalm. 59mes Burney began his career in the Royal Navy in 1760 as a captain's servant at the age of ten, but his father was Charles Burney, composer and music historian, 60 and a musical childhood presumably explains why the lieutenant took more interest in musical forms than his colleagues.Revealing of Burney's musical sensitivity is the comparative notation that follows the one quoted above by a few hours.On the afternoon of the same day, 5 April, the officer noted: This Afternoon a Canoe alongside, treated us with a Song of a different kind, which was very laughable.Three people Sung, beating Time with their Paddles, whilst one with a Deer Head Mask on, made Motions resembling that Animal. 61nry Roberts made a brief mention of just one of these episodes in his journal. 62John Rickman used the expression 'war-song' consistently in his account, even when the context suggested ritual moments of greeting preceding commercial or diplomatic exchange. 63David Samwell, surgeon on board the Discovery, in his journal described in some detail the performance of visitors who came in canoes around the British ships on 31 March.He noted distinct roles and voices, and the use of instruments such as rattles and of particular masks, giving the impression of vocal and actantial complexity (the existence of different roles or functions in a narrative). 64Nonetheless, he went on to conclude that 'Upon the whole it was a wild & uncouth Performance as any we had ever seen and what strongly marked the barbarous & uncultivated State of the People'. 65ascination with aural and musical forms of expression -and difficulties in recording them -was also evidenced a few years later in the accounts of the Dixon and Portlock expedition.This mission followed Cook's footsteps to America's Pacific Northwest coast and then on to Asia, in 1785-8. 66William Beresford, a supercargo aboard the Queen Charlotte, wrote most of the correspondence that makes up the main body of the account published under Captain George Dixon's name.He transcribed the song usually performed at the opening of trade by the inhabitants of Norfolk Sound (about 720 miles further north of Vancouver Island, now Sitka Sound in Alaska). 67While later ethnomusicology criticizes the Western musical notation system as inadequate for recording various features of the music of these areas, including the Nuuchah-nulth songs, 68 already in the eighteeenth century sensitive listeners such as Beresford were regretting the unsatisfactory result obtained when capturing Pacific Coast languages on the page by 'forcing' them into the Latin alphabet system. 69TTING NUU-CHAH-NULTH DOWN ON PAPER 'In drawing up the preceding account of the people of this Sound, I have occasionally blended Mr. Anderson's observations with my own; but I owe every thing to him that relates to their language; and the following remarks are in his own words'. 70Thus introducing some notes on the sounds, words, and grammar rules of Nuu-chah-nulth (what today would be called the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language) and the compilation of a short vocabulary, Cook's official account acknowledged his debt to the work of William Anderson, surgeon on the Resolution.Cook copied Anderson's materials into his journal, and Douglas integrated them into the official edition within the chapters on the inhabitants of Nootka, moving the vocabulary to the final appendices. 71It was after the insertion of this linguistic evidence that Cook, in the conclusion of the chapter on Nootka, proposed 'Wakashan' as a name for its inhabitants, based on 'Wakash', meaning 'An expression of approbation, or friendship'. 72he 268 words reported by Anderson played a role in the creation of Nootka trade jargon as well as Chinook jargon in the subsequent years, and they were widely used as a source by a number of later compilations. 73Without going into a detailed analysis of the entire vocabulary, a few examples may convey a sense of what strategies were at work in Anderson's process of obtaining language data from his interlocutors (what today linguists would call 'elicitation'), how far he was able to transcribe reliable evidence in spite of spelling issues, and what kind of misunderstandings he might have encountered.The criteria for collection made it clear that the circumstances of cultural encounters -and hence of the activity of linguistic study -were primarily moments of commercial exchange.There was a corresponding objective of practical utility, intended for the use of travellers who were to follow in the future.Semantic spheres relating to the description of the physical world and natural resources as well as objects and activities of everyday life prevail, with a marked degree of detail regarding items typically traded, such as different kinds of furs and skins.A number of expressions referring to trade would today be designated by linguists as 'linguistic acts' -intentional acts performed with one or more expressions, such as to ask for the meaning of a word, or to ask to inspect an object -and as 'communicative moves'communicative behaviours recognizable at the intersubjective level, such as expressing approval. 74This is the case, to give but one example, with 'Kaa, or kaa chelle, Give it to me, let me look at it, or examine it'. 75n the original journals edited by Beaglehole the words are arranged in alphabetical order.However, in the 1784 edition the entries were not arranged by their initial letter, nor was there any clear grouping according to thematic or typological fields; rather the order seems to arise from association, at times by loose semantic clusters.The first entries include, for example, some terms relating to the natural world -such as 'Opulfzthl, The sun', 'Onulfzthl, The moon', 'Nas, or eenaeehl nas, The sky' -followed by 'Tanass, or tanas, A man', 'Oonook, A song', and a few everyday objects such as 'Mahtai, A house' and 'Neit, or neet, A candle, or lamplight', and expressions relating to communication and negotiation -'Ai, and aio, Yes', 'Wook, or Wik, No', 'Wik ait, None, not any', 'Macook, To barter', 'Kaeeemai, or kyomai, Give me some more for it'. 76European listeners transcribed a language unknown to them with the graphemes -i.e. the smallest meaningful contrastive unit in a writing system -of their own language that most closely resembled the sounds they heard. 77One can therefore understand how the same term occurs in contemporary accounts with many spelling variations.Compare for example Anderson's 'Opulfzthl' with Jewitt's 'Oophelth, Sun or Moon' or with Moziño, 'Upel'.This corresponds to the current form hupa¸and may refer to either 'sun' or 'moon' or 'month'.The last sound -a fricative not found in English but occurring in a number of other languages of the Americas and Welsh -is often represented in earlier works as -thl. 78'Mahtai' seems identifiable with the term referred to by Jewitt as 'Muk-ka-tee' and currently indicated by Stonham under the entry 'mah : t'ii' of his Dictionary. 79The range of variations encountered for the terms translating 'yes' and 'no' is wider: Anderson's transcriptions seem still comparable to Jewitt's 'Wik, No / He-ho, Yes', as well as with Moziño's 'E-o' for yes and 'Huic' for no, while Stonham gives the current standards as 'wik' 'no, not' and 'haa?a' 'yes'. 80t may be useful at this point to note that the Nuu-chah-nulth language has a rich system of sounds, which includes thirty-nine consonants, three vowelsadditionally differentiated by their length -and two, more rare, mid vowels.A number of these sounds, especially of consonant phonemes, are not found in English. 81It therefore speaks highly of Anderson's listening and comprehension abilities that many of the terms he reported are still identifiable today, notwithstanding the difficulty in comparing his transcriptions with the widely different practices in linguistics today.The latter adopt the international phonetic alphabet and other transcription systems and non-standard symbols common in the field of Wakashan studies, while Anderson used English spelling to replicate the sounds he heard to the best of his ability. 82ome misunderstandings affected the meaning.The translation of 'sky' for 'eenaeehl nas', for example, seems to merge the Nuu-chah-nulth terms for 'sky' ('hinaayi¸') and 'day' ('naas'), which may also apply to 'sky' in some cases and was recorded as such also by Moziño, 'El Cielo -Nas, naz'.Thus Anderson may have conflated two words of similar meaning.Or perhaps he had assimilated the verb 'to see', 'to look at' (' na c') into the word, interpreting what was an invitation to look at the sky, or a description of the act of looking at the sky, as a single noun 'sky'. 83The quite different voice recorded by Jewitt, 'Sie-yah, Sky', resembles today's term for 'I, me' -'siya', which seems to reflect a misunderstanding. 84hat Anderson heard when he noted 'Neit, or neet' and translated it as 'candle or lamplight' was possibly a word meaning 'light' ('ne?ik '), attributing it to the object instead of what was in fact its effect or function. 85The word translated by Anderson as 'man' was perhaps an erroneous registration of a term equivalent rather to 'child' (today listed in Stonham's Dictionary as as 't 'a na', 'child').Others interpreted it in the same way -such as Jewitt, who noted 'Check-up, Man' -or with variations according to a similar reasoning -such as Moziño, who listed 'Cha-cups' as 'man', but 'Ta-na' as 'son'. 86ther terms which prove hard to identify today might result from difficulties in listening to and transcribing Nuu-chah-nulth sounds.The word for 'moon' in Nuu-chah-nulth is the same as the word for 'sun', so the form 'onulfzthl', written by Anderson and not found in other contemporary sources, may have been the result of Anderson's desire to adhere to the English usage of two different forms.'Oonook' is perhaps a mishearing of 'nuuk', meaning 'song', or possibly of the reduplicated form nunuuk 'singing'.
The considerable differences in the spelling of the same terms, as recorded in Anderson's vocabulary and in the smaller list of twenty-five entries by Burney in his journal, lay bare the problem of transcription carried out with no set of shared rules. 87A number of words in the vocabulary are also consistent with the Mowachaht terms collected by Walker in 1785-6.Walker gathered a more extensive list in Nootka Sound, no doubt with Anderson's list handy as a reference, and explicitly discussed some of Cook's assumptions in his travel narrative. 88Many among Anderson's entries also bear a remarkable similarity to the terms recorded by Moziño during the Spanish expedition to Nootka in 1792. 89Moziño's vocabulary suggests the many ways in which the observer's mother tongue can influence the recording, creating interference in comprehension and transcription, and resulting in cases of hybridization, or pidginization. 90There is a greater distance between Anderson's compilation and the eighty-seven entries transcribed by John Jewitt.Jewitt's short 'list of Words in the Nootkian Language the most in use', published in 1815 at the beginning of his Narrative, presents considerable differences from Anderson's. 91Jewitt's vocabulary was absent in the first edition of his journal, published in 1807, which may indicate that in the preparation of the 1815 edition -which substantially developed the first version -the editor favoured the inclusion of the vocabulary, perhaps as an element deemed of interest to potential readers.
The noticeable absence, in Anderson's vocabulary, of semantic spheres relating to more abstract and complex domains -such as government, religion, kinship systems, conceptualization and communication of past and future timepoints to linguistic elicitation occurring during commercial exchanges and bound by time constraints.At the same time, the lack of these fields contributed to the relegation of the Nuu-chah-nulth people to the long-standing trope of the savage as a people incapable of abstraction, whose linguistic deficiencies were the epiphenomena of their estrangement from the arts and letters.Burney noted that 'Their Language though not in general guttural, is harsh, and when they are in a passion, or very earnest in discourse, seems insufficient to express their feelings'. 92Samwell's description adopted similar adjectives, such as 'harsh' and 'guttural'. 93Douglas's introduction did not fail to emphasize this idea, placing the indigenous peoples at the beginning of a process of civilization, with Europe in the lead, according to a stadial pattern by then well established in European historical thought. 94

OBJECTS AND LAYERS OF LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION
A number of Anderson's entries are dedicated to culturally connoted artifacts for which there is no equivalent in English, and so descriptive periphrases were provided.The vocabulary in these cases functions as a linguistic counterpart to the description of these objects in the narrative chapters, with additional layers of documentation provided by Webber's illustrations and by the acquisition of items that went to enrich ethnographic collections in Europe. 95Such is the case with the entry 'Taaweesh, or Tsuskeeah', defined in the vocabulary as 'A stone weapon, or tomahawk, with a wooden handle'. 96The definition testifies to the interesting occurrence of the linguistic borrowing of 'tomahawk', which entered English from an Algonquian language spoken in the area of Virginia where British settlement dated back to the previous century.The spelling is still uncertain: Samwell wrote for example 'Tomehawk' in his account. 97The text provided a more detailed illustration of the carved handle shaped like a human head and decorated with hair. 98A number of tomahawks and ceremonial clubs were collected and are today at the British Museum in London and the Natural History Museum in Florence. 99nother case of particular interest is the entry 'Klumma', explained as 'large wooden images placed at one end of their houses'.This is 'k ama', (house-)post.The first sound, not found in English, is frequently represented by 'kl'. 100 These objects are the carved house posts portrayed by John Webber in the well-known illustration 'The Inside of a House, in Nootka Sound' (Fig. 1). 101In this image five cloaked figures are seated on a platform to the right; in the centre, four sit around an open fire with smoke rising to the roof; to the left are four more seated.Fish hang from the ceiling, and there are numerous suspended drying racks.In the rear are two large carved images, which are remarked upon in Cook's account: 'Most probably these were idols; but as they mentioned the word acweek, when they spoke of them, we may, perhaps, be authorized to suppose that they are the images of some of their ancestors, whom they venerate as divinities.But all this is mere conjecture; for we saw no act of religious homage paid to them'. 102This hypothesis was discussed and corrected a few years later by Walker. 103Jewitt considered them mere 'ornaments'. 104Anthropologist and archaeologist Philip Drucker later remarked that 'The ridge pole supports were ordinarily about 10 to 12 feet high and usually carved into rather rudely done human figures, which were not idols in the usual sense, but were special "privileges" said to have been bestowed on a lineage ancestor by supernatural beings for use by him and his direct descendants'. 105asks and carved heads of wood often decorated with hair had a distinctive place in the rituals of many North-western cultures, and captured the attention of the Europeans in Nootka. 106In the 1784 account, Nuu-chah-nulth artifacts of this kind are described in detail, corresponding to three vocabulary entries: 'Oukkooma, Large carved wooden faces', 'Hokooma, A wooden mask of the human face', and 'Tahooquossim, A carved human head of wood, decorated with hair'. 107Burney too devoted detailed notes to masks and their uses. 108hese were accompanied by specimens including masks, solid carved human heads, and 'face carvings' -transitional forms between masks and solid heads. 109asks, headdresses, and frontlets with animal features were also described, their uses speculated on in the narrative, and portrayed by Webber together with a birdshaped rattle and a Pacific Inuit seal-head decoy (Fig. 2). 110A number of animal masks and frontlets were brought back to Europe, but there are no dedicated entries in the vocabulary -a gap that Walker attempted to fill in his compilation a few years later, 111 while Jewitt's descriptions of masks and their uses did not include any indication as to their names. 112Cook's narrative often associated these artifacts with the semantic field of the deformed and monstrous. 113ouglas's original contribution is particularly emphatic in suggesting these connotations. 114he linguistic material was thus part of the proto-ethnographic documentation of human otherness, in which the travel account houses a multitude of descriptive strategies.The collections of words and expressions, of visual records, and of material objects were contextualized in the narrative, serving the scholars of the 'old world' by cataloguing human variety across the globe.Douglas's introduction, framing the journal and providing a conceptual map at the threshold of the text, explicitly pegged the inhabitants of remote places on the North American and Pacific continents as a source for the study of humans in their pristine natural state. 115The scholar was invited to consider these samples of humanity as living matter to be drawn upon to trace 'the gradations from barbarism to civility', 'from rudeness to elegance', 116 filling in the gaps left by the evidence from the past.
Cook noted how the inhabitants of Nootka Sound proved to be recalcitrant objects of observation.Not only was the stay of the English too short to offer adequate opportunities for investigation, but the presence of the Europeans changed the behaviour of the natives.The captain remarked that on occasions such as being visited by the English, everyday activities 'would cease upon our arrival, and an interruption be given even to the usual manner of appearing in their houses'. 117Despite the increasing standardization of the intellectual tools used in this documentation (promoted by institutions such as the Royal Society), and in spite of the witness's self-representation being marked by a rhetoric of objective detachment, the traveller cannot help but describe a system already modified by his own presence and on which the travellers who preceded him have left a cultural imprint of categories and stereotypes to be confirmed or disproved.

WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE 'OTHERS', WRITING THE 'OTHERS'
INTO HISTORY In many respects, noted Cook, civilization seemed to have made little progress in these 'rude nations', 118 to whom writing seemed unknown.Perhaps, Cook speculated, other forms of art, such as the decoration of textiles and skins, and sculpture and carving, communicated a memory of the past; or perhaps they were mere decorations without any symbolic meaning. 119In at least one case, then, this insufficiency of linguistic and conceptual common ground was admitted, and it was assumed that complex and abstract domains of indigenous culture such as religion, social hierarchy, and political organization remained inaccessible to the European observers due to inadequate means of description and understanding. 120he presence of certain objects was interpreted as an indication of exchanges that had taken place in the past.From metal artefacts the British inferred that the inhabitants of Nootka had had contact with other European visitors, or were part of trade networks with other indigenous peoples in contact with Europeans. 121hese observations were consistent with the cognitive framework established by the secret instructions given to Cook by the British Admiralty.Here, the territorial sovereignty attributable (but not attributed) to indigenous peoples was markedly distinct from that of 'any other European Power', 122 and the cultivation of friendship and civil behaviour did not invalidate plans for territorial expropriation.The study of the populations encountered complemented that of the natural world. 123The key categories that were to inform proto-ethnographic description -'Genius, Temper, Disposition, and Number' -focused exclusively on the present.Material objects were left as future evidence of British presence and priority, as signs for the benefit of travellers to come. 124anguage became a source for trying to reconstruct the past of indigenous peoples, otherwise documented in forms excluded from the knowledge systems of European observers.The comparative tables of languages provided in the appendices to the 1784 edition embody the idea of the official account as a collective artifact as well as an effort to present human otherness framed within a comparative and synoptic system (Fig. 3).Inserted by Douglas, the tables were credited in the introduction to a 'Mr.Bryant', 'who, in his study, has followed Captain Cook, and, indeed, every traveller and historian, of every age, into every part of the globe'. 125Not mentioned in other editions of the journal, nor in later studies dealing with the text, Mr Bryant may be identified with the antiquarian and scholar Jacob Bryant, already dedicatee of William Coxe's Russian Discoveries. 126The Account of the Russian Discoveries published in London by Coxe in 1780 had quickly become an important source in the Englishspeaking world for knowledge of the Eurasian territories north of the fiftieth parallel. 127Enriched with a supplement in 1787 and reaching its fourth edition in 1803, it included the translation of a German account and unpublished Russian sources that the author had obtained during a trip to St Petersburg. 128As evidence of a network of cultural and textual relations that included Bryant, Coxe's work was praised by Douglas in the introduction to the official account of Cook's third voyage. 129The fact that Bryant was acquainted with George III, and his friendship and correspondence with Douglas, also seem to support his identification as author of the linguistic tables. 130he tables collated information recorded in the field by Cook and Anderson with insights from other European sources. 131These included the observations of other travellers, such as in Johann Reinhold Forster's Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World (London, 1778), Thomas Herbert's Some Years Travels into Divers Parts of Africa, and Asia the Great (London, 1677), and William Marsden's History of Sumatra (London, 1783).Douglas's introduction offered the tables as evidence of historical connections between different populations, such as the common origins of the Esquimaux (Inuit) and Greenlanders, a topic which aroused the ethnographical interest of Joseph Banks. 132Genealogical relationships and ancient exchanges between distant populations could be established by studying the 'affinity of language', along with that of customs and institutions. 133There were similarities, for example, 'between the languages spoken at Oonalashka and Norton Sound, and those of the Greenlanders and Esquimaux'. 134 Voyage to the Pacific Ocean exemplifies how, in eighteenth-century European culture, proto-ethnographic interests and the attempt to collect knowledge about the peoples of the globe represented a scientific endeavour which also served the historical hierarchization of human diversity.Languages provided evidence of the conceptualization of 'others' as living representatives of an earlier moment in the process of civilization.Theorizations of progress saw in the different peoples of the world the different stages in the history of humanity.The difficulties encountered in documenting and assessing indigenous forms of communication and of recording the past that were aural in nature lay bare the epistemological ethnocentrism with which travellers approached the observation of humans categorized as 'other' than themselves.
Observations about -and records of -language in the account of Cook's third and final mission reveal the complexity and multiplicity of levels involved in cross-cultural encounters on the Pacific coast.In addition to providing evidence about the actual circumstances of exchanges, language was employed in the conceptualization of indigenous peoples as being less civilized than Europeans.This was consistent with the long-held stereotype that associated verbal communication with abstract reasoning ability, but also with a dichotomization and hierarchization of media -oral and written -that took particular forms in eighteenth-century European culture.Finally, given the presumed absence of indigenous systems of construction and communication of history, language was mined for evidence of the past that the speakers themselves would not have been aware of.This could then be used to trace the origin of a people and their genealogical links with others.
The case of the contact between Nuu-chah-nulth and Cook's third voyage can thus illustrate how the representation of language and communication contributed to a process of dispossession that affected the dimension of time no less than that of space.The appropriation of land and natural resources, studied by Nichols and others as part of the logic of settler colonization, 135 had a counterpart at the diachronic level in the monopolizing of knowledge about the past.This is not meant to suggest that British visitors could actually deprive the Nuu-chah-nulth people of knowledge about their history.However, the commentary on language and the hierarchization of media contributed to the configuration of elements of culture, law, property and ethnicity that led, as a result of longer historical processes, to the exclusion of indigenous peoples from a number of rights.
This case study can be located as part of a process that, while shaping European cultural identity, involved exclusion of cultural forms that Europeans encountered.This process certainly began well before the eighteenth century and has in many ways survived to the present day.The efforts still needed to overcome this Eurocentric legacy have been effectively highlighted by scholars advocating the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the epistemological foundations, methods, and sources of historical disciplines. 136Luckily today contributions from critical indigenous studies, ethnohistory, and historical linguistics may help us correct what would otherwise be a unilateral and solipsistic view of the history of cross-cultural encounters.
Giulia Ianuzzi has worked on the history of publishing and translation processes and on the history of speculative imagination in a comparative perspective.Her current research interests lie in early modern futuristic imagination, in the conceptualization of human diversity in European culture, and in the cultural history of time.She has published in journals such as History: The Journal of The Historical Association, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice.Her books include: Futuristic Fiction, Utopia, and Satire in the Age of the Enlightenment: Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) (Turnhout, Brepols, forthcoming), and Geografie del tempo.Viaggiatori europei tra i popoli nativi nel Nord America del Settecento ('Geographies of Time.European Travellers among Indigenous Peoples in Eighteenth-Century North America') (Rome: Viella, 2022).

NOTES AND REFERENCES
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to John T. Stonham for clarifying a number of entries recorded in Anderson's vocabulary ('eenaeehl nas', 'neit, or neet', 'onulfzthl', 'oonook', 'k ama', the sounds kand ¸) and Jewitt's vocabulary ('sie-yah').I share with him any merit in the remarks on these points in the present essay, while the responsibility for any mistake or inaccuracy remains mine alone.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.'The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound', engraving after John Webber, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 2 nd edition, London, 1785, vol.2, folded plate after p. 316.Credit: Smithsonian Libraries, public domain.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. 'Various Articles, at Nootka Sound', engraving by James Record after John Webber, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 2nd edition, London, 1785, vol.2, plate after p. 306.A bird rattle, a wooden model of bird with stone inside (numbered 1) and three masks or head decoys (numbered 2, 3, 4), one (2) a seal's face, possibly used when hunting.Credit: Wellcome Collection, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. 'A comparative table of numerals, exhibiting the affinity and extent of language, which is found to prevail in all the islands of the Eastern Sea, and derived from that spoken on the continent of Asia, in the Country of the Malayes', in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, London 1785, vol.3, after p. 528.Credit: Wellcome Collection, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
For stimulating discussions of my work in progress I thank the organizers of and the participants in the 2021 Birkbeck Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology lunchtime seminar series; the Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop Imperial and World History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London; and the 2021 conference of the Canadian Society for 18th Century Studies & the Midwestern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies: 'Translation and Appropriation in the long eighteenth century', University of Winnipeg. 1 John T. Walbran, British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: Their Origin and History (1909), Vancouver, 1971, pp.359-60.