A JOURNAL OF CAPTAIN COOK’S LAST VOYAGE

BY JOHN LEDYARD

John Ledyard (1751-89) was an American adventurer who joined the last voyage of the celebrated English explorer Captain James Cook. This included stays in Hawaii in 1778-79, which were the first documented visits to the island by non-Polynesians. Ledyard wrote about this in his A Journal  of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage, published by G. Nicol and J. Walter in London in 1783. 

Presented here is the only passage of Greek love interest in Ledyard’s book, taken from The Last Voyage of Captain Cook: The Collected Writings of John Ledyard edited by James Zug and published by National Geographic  in Washington, D.C. in 2005.

Here Ledyard has been describing the events in Hawaii of February 1779 leading to Cook’s death and is digressing into describing Hawaiian customs:

They have marriages among them, but whether they are civil or religiously appointments we cannot tell, but the custom does not seem to be respectable, at least among the chiefs, and we were told that a man could discard his wife at pleasure, and keep all her effects, though I believe this very seldom happens. It is however very manifest among the chiefs that not only marriage, but a commerce with the women in any other respect is in very indifferent estimation, and it is a disagreeable circumstance to the historian that truth obliges him to inform the world of a custom among them contrary to nature, and odious to a delicate mind, yet as such a remarkable incident in the history of a new discovered, a remote and a numerous people, will tend to illucidate the enquiries of the ingenious in such subjects as may transpire from the various accounts of men and manners here or elsewhere given, it would be to omit the most material and useful part of historical narration to omit it; the custom alluded to is that of sodomy, which is very prevalent if not universal among the chiefs, and we believe peculiar to them, as we never saw any appearance of it among the commonalty. As this was the first instance we had ever seen of it in our travels, we were cautious how we credited the first indications of it, and waited untill opportunity gave full proof of the circumstance. The cohabitation is between the chiefs and the most beautiful males they can procure about 17 years old, these they call Kikuana, which in their language signifies a relation. These youths follow them wherever they go, and are as narrowly looked after as the women in those countries where jealousy is so predominant a passion; they are extremely fond of them, and by a shocking inversion of the laws of nature, they bestow all those affections upon them that were intended for the other sex. We did not fully discover this circumstance until near our departure, and indeed lamented we ever had, for though we had no right to attack or ever to disapprove of customs in general that differed from our own, yet this one so apparently infringed and insulted the first and strongest dictate of nature, and we had from education and a diffusive observation of the world, so strong a prejudice against it, that the first instance we saw of it we condemned a man fully reprobated. Our officers indeed did not insult the chiefs by any means, but our soldiers and tars to vindicate their own wonderful modesty, and at the same time oblige the insulted women, and recommend themselves to their favors became severe arbitrators, and the most valourous defenders and supporters of their own tenets. [pp. 89-90]