Hawaiian feather helmet
A History of the World in 100 Objects
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Cook's Feathers
Cook seems to have read Hawaiian society as essentially like his own. But he could not grasp their very different sense of the sacred. When Cook first arrived at Hawaii, it was during a festival devoted to the god Lono. The local people were much less welcoming and incidents broke out between them and Cook's crew. In the ensuing melee, Cook was killed. What happened? Did the Hawaiians first think that Cook was a god, as some suggest, who was then later unmasked as being only a human? We don't know - but the circumstances of Cook's death have become a textbook study in anthropological misunderstandings.
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