Welcomes

I'm paging through the book "Cook - The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook", by Nicholas Thomas (Walker & Co., New York, 2003), checking on how the Australian Aborigines welcomed the 'discoverer' of Australia, Captain James Cook:

Cook and his men had experienced a variety of tense and pleasurable encounters in Tahiti and around New Zealand and were ready to resisted or greeted, but not all prepared to be ignored. They were bewildered by the indifference of people who ought to have been awed and astonished by the unprecedented spectacle of a British ship.

... Cook saw another indigenous group, who fled. He landed at places people had just left. He, Solander, and Tupaia tried to follow others, but they kept walking away. Still others were sighted 'who made off as soon as they saw us'. One officer met with a couple of old people and two children. He tried to give them a bird that he had shot, which they refused. On returning to the shelters that they had first visited, the mariners found, moreover, that the ribbons and trinkets left on or by the bark hut had not been touched.