Part 1: Behind the Accounts of First Encounter

The earliest accounts of the ‘discovery’ of New Caledonia were published in Europe in 1777 from journals written by members of James Cook's expedition and, later, from the French expedition led by Bruny d'Entrecasteaux. The first European to bear witness to contact with the indigenous peoples, Captain James Cook weighed anchor in Balade in September 1774 and remained in that north-east coast location for eight days. Some nineteen years later, d'Entrecasteaux's ship used Cook's accounts to navigate its way through the break in the reef into the same harbour, where his party was to spend three weeks. Like the English explorers before him, Jacques La Billardière mentions the surprisingly complex system of terraces and irrigation that suggest a certain technological sophistication. Nonetheless, the discrepancy between the relatively positive accounts by members of the first expedition (James Cook, Johann and Georg Forster, Anders Sparrman), who describe terraced yam plantations and friendly natives, reinforced by the representations of William Hodges, Cook's painter, and the more jaundiced texts of the Frenchmen (Bruny d'Entrecasteaux and Jacques La Billardière), which speak of an arid and hungry land of thieves and cannibals apparently affected by recent warfare and food shortages, has given rise to considerable speculation.

The Royal Society had sent Cook back on a second voyage toward Terra Australis Incognita, the fabled Southern Continent, to measure the transit of the planet Venus in order to obtain information on the earth's distance from the sun. In a study of translations of Cook's first encounters with indigenous peoples on the large island he named New Caledonia, Diane Walton (2004) suggests that the European's discovery of this land was apparently something of an afterthought, but that he seems to have achieved his objectives: to reach a safe harbour by finding a pass through the dangerous reef and to replenish his ships’ supplies of food and water. He was able to continue his celestial observations and arrived on land in time to observe the solar eclipse of 6 September 1774.