Clubs as popular weapons

Clubs are among the most popular weapons in Melanesia; like the spears, they find their greatest development in the eastward islands, particularly in Fiji and the Solomons. Certain parts of New Guinea, as Maclure Gulf, possess no clubs.

These weapons serve for striking or for guarding arrows and javelins, and in general they form the accompaniment of every expedition. Hence their double position as insignia of rank and weapons. They are often so heavy and shapeless, and yet wrought with such an expenditure of labour, patience, and ingenuity, that they must be intended for some purposes other than fighting only.

The clubs of celebrated warriors in Fiji used to have names of honour or pet names; in their shapes some seem to be connected with the four-edged Tongan type, others with the paddle-shaped weapons of Tonga and Samoa. A peculiar form is the imitation of a flint musket, lock and all; another is a point projecting from a prickly fruit. In New Caledonia the most frequent form of club is the simplest, namely a bludgeon merely taken from a knotty branch.

New Caledonian clubs, and a painted dance club (a) from the New Hebrides. (Vienna Museum.)
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The first stage towards finishing lies in the making of a sharp edge round the knob, the next in childish striped ornaments; or a favourite plan is to jag the end in a star shape. A peculiar club is one in the shape of a bird's head, which here replaces that used in Mota to open bread-fruit. But in all an easily recognisable difference from those of Fiji and Tonga is formed by the grip which thickens abruptly at the handle end. Together with this goes the splicing of the handle with string, ribbon, palm fibres, even dry fern.

Sword-club: New Britain
Club: Solomon Islands(right)

In the case of the richest or most distinguished persons the throwing-cords are fitted with reddish brown knots. This ultimately led to the reddish brown shaggy ornament as found also on spears. In recent times it has been imitated by means of imported red wool, even by miserable shreds of cotton, a melancholy symbol of the decay of the old glory of the Kanakas.

The clubs in the Solomon Islands depart very little from the paddle form; they have a projecting middle line resembling the rib of a leaf, and a handle with a shoulder. Further decorations, such as ears at the sides of the paddle blade, or a sharper shoulder where this passes into the shaft, are of a modest character. Another type has arisen through the bending of the blade whereby either the middle rib is thrown into strong prominence, or an opportunity is given for more delicate ornamentation by means of zig-zag lines or a spike-like angle juts out from the vertex of the curve. The handles are decorated with ornaments of every kind, carvings of squatting idols, pretty woven work of coloured bast in tasteful patterns; while in the flat straight clubs the blade is polished smooth and sharpened at both edges, and the handle bound. Clubs from the New Hebrides have a plaited sling, so that they can be carried over the shoulder; while in New Britain we find rings of fibre or plaiting which are said to be mementos of slain enemies.

Stone clubs

In New Guinea and New Britain we meet with a weapon like a "morning star," half club, half axe; upon a sharpened staff, a yard long, a disk-shaped stone is fitted near the upper end, and above this a bunch of red and yellow feathers. This reminds us of the star-shaped stones with a hole through them found in Peru; besides these, clubs occur without a stone; others have a three-cornered sharp-cut head. There are also round ones of black heavy polished wood, with engraved ornamentation about the head; and flat ones made of an equally heavy browner wood cut into the shape of a spoon handle.

Axes

Jade axe: New Caledonia

The Melanesian axes are not perforated, and remind us also in their shape of the Polynesian stone blades. They are often beautifully ground. They are often fastened upon or into the helve by regular crossed layers of rush or string, but sometimes, especially in West Melanesia, the helve itself is perforated, and so a new form arises with the blade as a rule narrower and rounder. Besides stone, shell also occurs in a similar shape as a material for the blade in Santa Cruz and New Guinea, in the Torres and Banks Islands. Iron was no doubt occasionally imported before the European epoch; and in western New Guinea intercourse with the Malays has made it common. How quickly it takes hold we may learn from the fact that from New Guinea to Fiji, up to the present day, no article of trade is in such demand. It is interesting also to notice that even the natives who have only been for a few years in frequent contact with Europeans, imitate the iron axe in wood, even to the trade mark, while their stone axes have lost the handle, and have been degraded to the rank of pestles.

Jade battle-axes and jade hatchet, insignia of chiefs, from New Caledonia.
(Christy Collection.)
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In a similar way must have arisen the musket shape for clubs and the like. In some axes the blade is set at an angle with a view to more convenient working when hewing out the interior of the canoes. Fijian axes are in the Polynesian style, but not so large. In the New Hebrides and the Solomons we have smaller wedge-shaped rounded stone hatchets, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, tending in one place to the oval, in another to the triangular shape. In Isabel and San Christoval the blades are from 2½ to 8 inches long, of a greenish gray colour, triangular or tongue-shaped, with a ground edge. The tongue and oval shapes appear in an extreme form in New Caledonia. For the broad and, quite circular hatchets jade afforded the material. Artistically pretty patterns are either stitched or woven into the binding of the handles. New Ireland has ceremonial axes with beautifully carved helves.