Club tewhatewha

Humphrey No. 294: ‘a singularly shaped Battle axe made of a hard kind of wood from New Zealand.’

Club made of hard, reddish-brown wood; the shaft above the grip end is decorated with ornaments.

Comparable items in the collections from Cook’s voyages may be found in Cambridge (Shawcross 1970: 318) and Stockholm (Rydén 1965: 86) (cf. also Kaeppler 1978a: 193f.). One such club is depicted in one of the famous early illustrations of a Maori (see Ellis 1978: 20). Markus Schindlbeck

Sources

Ellis, EM and Ellis, DG, Early Prints of New Zealand 1642-1875, Christchurch, 1978.

Kaeppler, Adrienne L, ‘Artificial Curiosities’ Being An Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James Cook RN [Exhibition catalogue], Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu, 1978a.

Rydén, Stig, The Banks Collection: An Episode in 18th Century Anglo-Swedish Relations, The Ethnographical Museum of Sweden Stockholm Monograph Series, no. 8, Goteborg, 1965.

Shawcross, Wilfred, ‘The Cambridge University collection of Maori artifacts, made on Captain Cook’s “first voyage”‘, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1970, vol. 79, no. 3, pp. 305-348.