The Hypertext Triomnibus

The Log Breaks Off at the Morai

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tagstriad, difficulty/3, kind/conflict, kind/same-subject, kind/genealogy-influence, kind/oblique-structural

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Triad 14 of 32 · 2026-10-07 · Difficulty 3 · Conflict, Same subject, Genealogy/influence, Oblique/structural

The thread

Three books on one archive, and on where in it the two anthropologists stand. Cook’s own journal (Penguin selection, ed. Edwards, from Beaglehole) ends 17 Jan 1779 mid-scene: ‘Touahah took me by the hand and conducted me to a large Morai, the other gentlemen with Parea and four or five more of the Natives followed.’ Lono/Orono/Erono occurs 0 times in his journal text in this edition, and 11 times in Edwards’s Postscript, which has to reconstruct the Hikiau rite, the return and the death from King, Samwell, Burney et al. Sahlins, Islands of History (1985), fills the silence with structure: ‘Cook indeed became the image of Lono’ (p. 105), and his death has ‘the properties of a ritual transformation’ (p. 106). Obeyesekere, Cannibal Talk (2005), extending Apotheosis (1992): the Lono myth ‘was not constructed in Hawai‘i but in London’ (p. 18); his test case is a scene Cook did write, the quarterdeck at Queen Charlotte Sound, 23 Nov 1773, where Cook had flesh broiled ‘being desireous of being an eye wittness to a fact which many people had their doubts about.’ Sahlins settles where Cook stops writing, Obeyesekere where Cook stages proof. Both name the conflict: Sahlins’s ch. 4 epigraph (Home’s log), the accounts ‘so Exceedingly perplexed … that it was a hard matter to Colect Certainty’ (p. 104); Obeyesekere, ‘what I read adds to my confusion as surely as it adds to Sahlins’s clarity’ (p. 168). Neither book is the famous exchange itself (1992/1995); one comes before it, one after, with the journal as shared ground. Edwards’s Postscript gives a third, practical answer: ‘He brought them iron, and they used it to kill him.‘

The three books

Notebook

  1. Write the entry Cook didn’t: continue from ‘the other gentlemen with Parea and four or five more of the Natives followed’ in his idiom (ship’s time, weather first); then twice more, as Sahlins (‘Permit me thus an anthropological reading of the historical texts’, p. 106) and as Obeyesekere’s officer in a ‘white coat’ (p. 25). Which version has to say Lono?
  2. Proof on the quarterdeck: Cook’s ‘eye wittness to a fact which many people had their doubts about’ (23 Nov 1773) vs Obeyesekere’s ‘admission, like eyewitnessing, is an indicator of truth’ (p. 55). Describe a demonstration from your own work as a gesture done in front of an audience. Who was the ‘whole ships Company’? Who wept and scolded, as Oediddee did?
  3. A ledger of confusion and clarity: columns headed by Home’s ‘a hard matter to Colect Certainty’ (Sahlins p. 104) and Obeyesekere’s ‘adds to my confusion as surely as it adds to Sahlins’s clarity’ (p. 168); sort one archival document into them, then write the paragraph headed by ‘every such reference is also a difference’ (Sahlins p. 153).

Rabbit holes

Links as checked on the day of the reading.

To carry

“Every actual use of cultural ideas is some reproduction of them, but every such reference is also a difference.” — Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History, ch. 5, ‘Structure and History’, p. 153

Themes

apotheosis · archive silence · cannibalism vs anthropophagy · Captain Cook · confusion vs clarity · editor’s postscript · experiment · eyewitness · Fiji · Hawai‘i · Hikiau · Kealakekua · Lono · Makahiki · Maori · myth and history · projection · Royal Society · Sahlins–Obeyesekere debate · ship’s log · staged proof · structure of the conjuncture

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