"On October 6, 1769, a sailor on Captain James Cook's research vessel, the , serendipitously earned himself a gallon of rum. He had just spotted the east coast of New Zealand, and his captain-a British explorer whowould later become the first recorded European to visit the Hawaiian Islands -had been seeking land for weeks. The rum was the crew member's reward."
"For the English naturalist Joseph Banks, who was also on board, the coastline would have been a particularly welcome sight. Banks had joined Cook's ship in hopes of finding new species of plants, and he had sunk £10,000 of his own money-a small fortune today-paying a team of expert botanists, artists and plant collectors to accompany him on the voyage."
"These documents represent the first written records of plants in New Zealand. They also bear witness to the detailed exchange of information that took place between European and Māori botanists over the course of those six months. Yet for more than 250 years, the evidence of this exchange was overlooked by scholars and unknown to people living in the Pacific. Now, a new initiative has digitized the documents, which have been stored in the archives of the Natural History Museum in London since 1881."
On 6 October 1769 Captain James Cook sighted New Zealand's coast as botanist Joseph Banks and his team collected hundreds of plant specimens. Banks funded a team of expert botanists, artists and collectors and invested £10,000 to support the voyage. Over six months Cook charted the North and South Islands while Banks' team developed a complex filing system to document species and interactions. The documents constitute the first written records of New Zealand plants and record detailed exchanges between European and Māori botanists. The records were held in the Natural History Museum archives since 1881 and have now been digitized to reveal and promote that early knowledge exchange.
Read at Smithsonian Magazine
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