Sea of Glory

for those assigned boat duty. Wet, sunburned, their eyes scorched from staring through the eyepieces of their sextants and other instruments, the officers and men returned that evening wondering if they would ever be allowed to enjoy the fabled delights of the South Seas. “The Captain has pushed us so with work,” Reynolds recorded several nights later, “that we have had scarce time to eat—and there are no signs of a lull as of yet.”
    Not until the survey had been completed did Wilkes determine that it was time to unleash the scientists. But first he and his officers had to make contact with the island’s inhabitants. Soon after departing from Callao he had issued an order insisting that everyone associated with the squadron exhibit “courtesy and kindness towards the natives.” To help them achieve this objective, they had an interpreter, John Sac, a minor chief from New Zealand, who after spending some time in Tahiti had lived for a number of years in the United States, where he had been exhibited as a curiosity. As a crewmember aboard the Sea Gull during her voyage to the South Shetland Islands, Sac had taken such an enthusiastic interest in killing penguins that Lieutenant Johnson had had difficulty persuading him to relent. For the most part, however, Sac had developed a reputation in the squadron for his “disciplined obedience.”
    By the time Wilkes and his officers approached the island in a small flotilla of boats, a group of seventeen natives had assembled on the beach, with an estimated hundred or so lurking in the undergrowth behind them. Wilkes was in the lead, flying a white flag of truce, but the natives, “a fine athletic race, much above the ordinary in size,” were not in a welcoming mood. Armed with long spears and clubs, the islanders made it clear that they did not want Wilkes to land. The natives in this region had a reputation for cannibalism, and Reynolds claimed that their gestures suggested that if the white men should come ashore “they would certainly be made a meal of.”
    Even though he had been born many thousands of miles away in New Zealand, Sac was able to understand the islanders, several of whom were chanting in unison. Sac reported that they were telling them, “Go to your own land; this belongs to us, and we do not want to have anything to do with you.” At that moment the surf was too high to land, so Wilkes ordered his officers to attempt to appease the natives by throwing them some trinkets. But when the trade goods washed up at their feet, the natives scornfully kicked the baubles aside.
    By this point Sac, standing at the boat’s bow with a boat hook in his hand, had struck up a conversation with the group’s leader. It was not going well. “[Sac] soon became provoked at the chief’s obstinacy,” Wilkes wrote, “his eyes shone fiercely, and his whole frame seemed agitated. Half naked as he was, his tattooing conspicuous, he stood in the bow of the boat brandishing his boat-hook like a spear with the dexterity of the savage.” Although none of them knew what he was saying, Wilkes became concerned that Sac was only making matters worse and ordered him to desist in the negotiations. Reynolds’s friend William May and another officer volunteered to swim ashore and attempt to greet the natives personally, but almost as soon as they made it to the beach, they were in full retreat and swimming back to the boats.
    This was not the way Wilkes had wanted to begin his tour as commodore. After the scientist Joseph Couthouy also proved unsuccessful in winning the natives’ trust, Wilkes ordered several of his officers to shoot off some blank cartridges. Once again, the reaction wasn’t what he had hoped. Sac reported that “they hooted at these arms, calling us cowards, and daring us to come on shore.” Quickly forgetting his own orders to treat the natives with compassion, Wilkes took up a gun armed with birdshot and fired at the natives on the beach. “[W]hen the Shot struck them,” Reynolds wrote, “they brushed away at the spot as if a fly had bitten them, manifesting the utmost unconcern & contempt for us & our weapons, & exhibiting more of the cannibal in their faces & gestures than was agreeable to witness.” Wilkes ordered additional officers, including the naturalist Titian Peale, the best shot in the squadron, to fire on the natives. As the birdshot tore into their legs, backsides, and faces, the natives began to retreat into the interior of