You've all probably heard that the Tainos thought Columbus was a god, and that the Aztecs supposedly thought Cortes was a god. And this just makes Captain Cook one in a long line of Europeans who were thought to be gods by people who Europeans felt were savages. And making Cook a god also sets up a stark contrast between the enlightened West and primitive Polynesia, because Captain Cook often appears in history books as a model man of the Enlightenment. Sure, he never had much formal schooling, but his voyages were all about increasing knowledge and scientific exploration. And having him die at the hands of a people who were so obviously mistaken in thinking him a god makes an argument for the superiority over the intellectualism of the Enlightenment versus the so-called primitive religion of the colonies. But whenever a story seems to fit really well into such a framework, we need to ask ourselves, who's telling that story? One of the reasons we know so much about Captain Cook and the reason he shows up in so many history textbooks is because we have tons of records about him, but they're almost all European records.