JOAN DRUETT

This painting of a Maori and a European man exchanging a lobster for a piece of cloth was carried to England on Captain James Cook's Endeavour in 1771, and is now held at the British Library. For over 200 years, the name of the artist was unknown. He was simply known as "The Artist of the Chief Mourner," because of his most compelling painting, which was of a Tahitian in mourning costume.

Then the mystery was solved. Professor Harold Carter, the biographer of the rich, young botanist with the expedition, Joseph Banks, found a letter in the Banks collection, dated December 1812, which read, in part:

" ... Tupia the Indian who came with me from Otaheite Learnd to draw in a way not Quite unintelligible The genius for Caricature which all wild people Posses Led him to Caricture me and he drew me with a nail in my hand delivering it to an Indian who sold me a Lobster but with my other hand I had a firm fist on the Lobster determind not to Quit the nail till I had Livery and Seizin of the article purchasd."

After all that time, Banks' memory misled him into believing that the piece of cloth he traded for the lobster had been a nail. However, the mystery was solved: "The Artist of the Chief Mourner" was the great Polynesian navigator who sailed with Captain Cook and Joseph Banks from Tahiti on the Endeavour, and piloted the ship about the south Pacific.

His name was Tupaia.

Tupaia, a gifted linguist, a brilliant orator, and a most devious politician, could aptly be called the Machiavelli of Tahiti. Born in Ra'iatea, the most sacred island in the Pacific, and the cradle of Polynesian civilization, about 1760 he had been forced to flee to Tahiti after a disastrous war with neighboring Borabora. Within a handful of years he had risen from the humble status of a refugee to become one of the most powerful men in the land. The political advisor of Amo, one of the highest chiefs, he was also the lover and advisor of Amo's wife, Purea, a high chief in her own right. Tupaia converted the whole island to the worship of Oro, the god of war, and designed and supervised the construction of Mahiatea, which was one of the most massive marae (temple-compounds) in Polynesia. Then, when European ships arrived, he became Tahiti's most important diplomat.

An extremely intelligent man, Tupaia was intrigued with European science, technology, and military might. In April 1769, after the Endeavour dropped anchor in Matavai Bay, for that reason as well as pressing personal ones, Tupaia joined the ship's contingent of scientists. In July, when the ship sailed, he sailed with them.

Captain Cook was extraordinarily lucky. Not only was Tupaia highly skilled in astronomy, navigation, and meteorology, but he was an expert in the geography of the Pacific, able to name directional stars and predict landfalls and weather. At any stage in the convoluted course of the voyage, including in the East Indies, he was able without hesitation to point unerringly to the position of distant Tahiti. He even drew a chart of the Pacific, which encompassed every major group in Polynesia and extended more than 2,500 miles from the Marquesas to Rotuma and Fiji. In normal times such privileged knowledge of currents, weather patterns, geography, and astronomy would never have been revealed to anyone outside Tupaia's select group. But, as an exile . . . and a man who had boarded the British ship to evade capture and sacrifice by his enemies . . . the navigator-priest was willing to share this secret lore.
Tupaia was also the ship's translator, able to communicate with all the Polynesian people they met, including New Zealand Maori. As a noble member of the arioi sect, which was going through its greatest flowering at the time, and was famous for its gifted orators, artists, actors, dancers, and lovers, Tupaia commanded awe and respect wherever he went.

Unhappily, Tupaia died before the ship arrived home, and since then has been almost forgotten, his name familiar only to a handful of Pacific historians, geographers, and anthropologists. And so, to set the record straight, I am currently researching and writing the story of this remarkable man, who was aptly called "an extraordinary genius."