Beware Of Those Early Figures!

An article on the difficulty of obtaining an accurate idea of the number of people living on various Polynesian islands in the early days of European contact is a feature of the latest (March) issue of the Journal of the Polynesian Society.

The article is by Robert C. Schmitt, of Hawaii’s Department of Planning and Economic Development, who says that the early population estimates, which were frequently of dubious accuracy in the first place, have been widely mistranslated, misquoted, misinterpreted and otherwise garbled by later writers.

He points out, for example, that the French translator of Captain Cook’s Voyages in 1778 mistranslated Cook as saying that, in 1774, the island of Tahiti had a population of at least 240,000, whereas Cook’s estimate was 204,000.

This error, Schmitt says, has been copied by a large number of authorities since then, while others have “even misquoted the mis translation” and have given Cook’s figure as 140,000, 130,000, 100,000 and 30,000.

Other writers, again, have quoted Cook as making a second population estimate in 1777, whereas a careful reading of the original English account of his voyage reveals no such estimate.

“The confusion over Cook’s 1774 Tahiti estimate is almost equalled by the mix-up regarding his non-existent estimate for the Marquesas in the same year,” Schmitt says. “A surprisingly large number of . . . writers have ascribed the Forsters’ estimate to Cook, often showing confusion over the actual number, geographic coverage or date of the figure.”