June 3, 1769

Joseph Banks (February 24, 1743 to June 19, 1820) was the naturalist with Captain James Cook's ship, HMS Endeavor, when they reached Tahiti in April 1769, with a mission from the Royal Society, to observe there the Transit of Venus, an event occurring on June 3 and June 4, 1769. Banks took two of the Tahitian natives under his protection when the natives agreed to sail back to England on the Endeavor. One of the natives is described as ‘Toobaiah [Tupaia], who is a sort of high-priest", and the other a twelve year boy. It is presumably the latter whom Banks meant when he defended this "'acquisition" in these words:

"I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tigers at a larger expence than he will probably ever put me to."

For reasons which are obscure but all too common, in these cases of non-Europeans brought back to western Europe in the first centuries of the modern era, the pair of Tahitians both sickened and died before reaching England.