Scholars working on the Pacific have long sought to understand the indigenous techniques of star-based navigation and wayfinding first described by Captain Cook and Joseph Banks in their voyage with Tupaia, a religious leader, from Tahiti to New Zealand. Recent work has shed light both on the charts authored by Tupaia, and the systems of navigation and wayfinding used by Pacific peoples to accurately navigate out of sight of land. By comparing how contemporary anthropologists seek to understand Polynesian navigation techniques with 18th century accounts of Tupaia's wayfinding skills, this paper demonstrates the productive encounters between European and Polynesian methods of ordering space.