Captain Cook, Mrs Taylor and a Mi’kmaw quillwork box: An uncorroborated inscription, an unwarranted assertion and an imagined collection

Abstract

Abstract In 1963 a small box bearing an inscription stating that it had been ‘brought from Otaheite by Captn. Cook and presented by him to Mrs. Taylor Circus Bath’ was donated to the National Maritime Museum in London. That the box is actually an example of Mi’kmaw work from Nova Scotia has led previous scholars to claim that the famous navigator James Cook (1728–1779) made a collection of artefacts while he was on Royal Navy duty in Atlantic Canada in the years 1758 to 1767. An exploration of the evidence leads to two conclusions: that there is nothing to corroborate the inscription’s claim that Cook presented the box to Mrs Taylor; and that the related assertion that Cook made a collection in Atlantic Canada should be set aside.