Great number and variety of weapons

Men are seldom seen in Melanesia without weapons. Every group of islands has its own patterns, though the actual weapons - spear, bow, and club - are everywhere the same. They are, however, unequally distributed, or else other weapons of more limited distribution occur. The weapons of Melanesia unquestionably are some of the choicest productions of dexterity and taste found among the lower races, as our plate of Melanesian and Micronesian weapons and utensils shows below. Their neatness, variety of form, and actual number are wonderful. It is an unexplained departure from the rule that, on the single island of Api or Tasika in the New Hebrides, no weapons are carried.

Weapons and Utensils from Melanesia and Micronesia.
(Original print by the Bibliographisches Institut. Leipzig)
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Spears

Spears and Javelins (shorter items)
with obsidian heads
from the Admiralty Islands
Spears approx. 1900mm long.
(Christy Collection.)
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In Melanesia, again, the most esteemed and most generally-used weapon is the spear, the forms of which, as Strauch says when speaking of the Admiralty Islands, are as various as the faces of the inhabitants. Plain but carefully-worked javelins, as found in New Caledonia, may be regarded as the simplest representatives of this weapon; thongs of plaited tapa are used in the manipulation of them. But the most finished productions of the New Caledonian armourers belong equally to the spear-class. Curiously enough it is not the "business end" of the weapon, but the shaft, to which the greatest attention is devoted. The fundamental type remains a staff, reaching sometimes a length of 10 feet, and pointed at both ends. The modifications consist merely in the addition of a carved human head, repeated as often as four times, below the point; or in wrapping the shaft in the same region with whitish tapa or bat's hair; a stick wound with string, and with a long string attached to it, is bound into this; while, in addition to the wooden point, a ray's spine is let in to form a secondary point. In New Britain they wind simple bast round it, and attach a tassel of vegetable fibre, ornamented with feathers. The butt is sometimes provided with a hexagonal knob, or terminated with the bone of a cassowary or a man. Of these spears there are two of larger size intended for throwing. In New Ireland the brown polished carved kind are more frequent than in New Hanover, and near Port Sulphur we meet with spears decked with feathers and human bones like those of New Britain. As a rule the spears are slim and pliant; but a broadening of the head, accompanied with perforation, occurs, especially in Fiji, under various patterns. On the whole, however, where the spear is ornamented the head remains simple. Here, again, the Solomon Islands show the most advanced development.

Spearheads
from the Admiralty Islands
Top right approx. 470mm long.
(Christy Collection.)
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Besides spears ornamented with pieces of mother-of-pearl fixed in mastic, the islanders have their spear-heads artistically carved from human arm-bones or the lower jaw of the toucan. New Guinea possesses both spears pointed with cassowary bone and simple sharpened shafts. The former are heavy war-weapons, for thrusting, 10 feet long or more; the latter light, and intended chiefly for fishing. Unornamented spears with points toothed like saws, either two or four-edged, represent hunting or fishing implements rather than warlike weapons, and form the transition to the fish-spears with four or five barbs, attached to a heavy, roughly-worked shaft by means of plaited palm-fibres. Spears with opposite rows of barbs occur only in Fiji and the New Hebrides. There the heads are perforated, forked, jagged, wavy, laminated - in a word, wrought into every sort of shape. Frequently they consist from end to end of fine wood, which exactly in the heaviest places is carved into a piece barely attached. Spears of this kind are intended more as ornamental weapons, to gratify the bearer's pride, than for the foe.

In the Admiralty Islands the abundance of obsidian and bitumen affords the means for a development in the manufacture of stone weapons, which in one direction supplements the general level at which the inhabitants of New Guinea and the neighbouring islands stand in respect of this art. Here, too, spears have reached an extraordinary perfection. The head consists always of the choicest pieces of a granular striped basalt, and is attached to the shaft by means of a copious layer of bitumen and string wound close with great care. The bitumen bed which gradually thins off towards the handle is either decorated in simple geometrical lines with the spaces coloured black, red, and white, and set with little shells, or perforated with a diamond-shaped opening. The shaft is always rough, just as it grew on the tree, and frequently weak also. From New Caledonia to the New Hebrides, the Fiji Islands, and from New Guinea, we get missile spears with long points of hard wood or bone. On the shaft we may often notice appendages which may be of use in hurling it. In some parts of New Guinea, as Venus Point, Hatzfeld Harbour, and up the Empress Augusta river, we find throwing-sticks. The throwing-thong of New Caledonia arises from the same idea.