Encounters with The Other

Beginning in the 1500s, Europeans began to travel the Pacific and to write about and illustrate what they experienced. These encounters recorded examples of music, movement, and costume as seen from the outside. Though sketchy, early eyewitness accounts are invaluable sources when used alongside reports from missionaries, traders, whalers, tourists, beachcombers, anthropologists, and indigenous peoples (figure 1). Numerous historic accounts made by outsiders are revealing about the outsiders themselves...