Club Types of Nuclear Polynesia

: V***"*^* **V fcjfrta a# Jfaw*. 'S"„« " > •>.. *v- fv*. , <MT 1 *-/< " ' *-%* * # .. OJarncU Uttioerattg ffiihrarg Strata. Kttn foth THE GIFT OF GaT-n-e-qifc l>vsTitu- ticm. •m;. i . \ 2 Library CorneU Un.vers.ty GN498.C6 C56 Overs 'Ml Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029871849 CLUB TYPES OF NUCLEAR POLYNESIA BY WILLIAM CHURCHILL The Carnegie Institution of Washington Washington, 1917 CLUB TYPES OF NUCLEAR POLYNESIA r " i I I i i i I i i i i ; —— i INCHES of Clubs Nuclear Polynesia : Series A. CHURCHILL. " f Clubs of Nuclear Polynesia : Series B. CHURCHILL. 'i i 1 1 [ninn i nni rm -i-nvj ivm "inrjaltHIMftilnriir inrn JJJ— * i f ST* jW rfW^SFT'i} y. y j b c Clubs of Nuclear Polynesia : Series C. CHURCHILL. Clubs of Nuclear Polynesia : Series D. CLUB TYPES OF NUCLEAR POLYNESIA BY WILLIAM CHURCHILL The Carnegie Institution of Washington Washington, 1917 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON Publication No. 255 PRESS OF GIBSON BROTHERS WASHINGTON CONTENTS. PAGE Chapter I. The Arts of the Club i II. Types of the Clubs 17 III. Dimensions and Structural Details 85 IV. Evolution of the Club Types 105 V. Additions and Ornament : 125 VI. Migration Drift and Erratics 157 PLATES. Plates I-IV. Clubs of Nuclear Polynesia . '. Frontispiece V-VI. Metamorphs of Club Heads At 105 VII. Maskoid with Feather Ornament At 157 VIII. Erratic Club Forms At 163 IX-XVII. Designs of Club Ornament At end TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS. Figure i. Serrated Club with Lashings 74 2. Tenon and Socket of Axe-bit Clubs 120 3. Little Bone God 161 v : CHAPTER I. THE ARTS OF THE CLUB. The South Sea ethnica in the Museum of the University of Pennsyl- vania are so numerous in the sum of the pieces as to establish this as one of the great collections of the world. Of even greater moment is the fact, immediately and distinctly recognized in the recent recension of the material, that such careful judgment has been exercised in the acquisition of most of these specimens as to establish the collection in the foremost position for the critical study of a great many types of objects. Very few indeed are the culture sources which are not rep- resented; still fewer are the types of objects pertaining to the by no means simple culture of the islands of the Pacific which are not abund- antly exemplified. In a large number of such types the suite of specimens is sufficiently rich to afford a most remarkable opportunity for the study of the evolution of the object from a primitive form to one more highly conventionalized, and in the ornamentation to enable the student to discover the reason of much that has passed from the serving of an end of strict utility to a system of ornament which without this richness of material would remain quite incomprehensible. In the latter particular it is to note that almost ah this ornament is mere con- vention to the people who employ it and that their explanation is wholly fanciful. In the course of the recension of the collection and the ordering of the various types by theme one group peculiarly came to the front as offering practically a complete suite sufficient for the evolutionary study of dissonant cultures at a point of contamination through intercourse of at least two distinct ethnic groups. The present paper is addressed to the statement of the several problems which arise in the examination of the wooden clubs of Nuclear Polynesia. It becomes necessary, therefore, to present as basic a catalogue raisonne of all the ethnica of this particular subdivision in the museum. Upon this record, regarded as the base of all study, depend certain conclusions which are essentially matters of opinion and interpretation, and as such open to discussion. Nuclear Polynesia is the designation of a subdivision of the Polyne- sian Pacific which upon linguistic and traditional grounds I found it necessary to erect. In "The Polynesian Wanderings" at page 179 I announced this subdivision as follows 1. Nuclear Polynesia (Samoa the nucleus, and Niue, Tonga, Viti describing the perimeter) was under settlement by Polynesians from a date so remote that they had lost all direct memory of an anterior movement thither. They held themselves autochthons, and in the greater groups had creation myths in which land first emerged from the tireless sea, their own the first of lands 2 CLUB TYPES OF NUCLEAR POLYNESIA. the Proto-Samoans. The and they upon it the first of men. These we style them. It is only indirect tradition of a former home told no rearward tale to that we are able by inference and through digestion of many such traditions to read into the consistent belief in the westward home of the spirit a dim record of an earlier abiding place. The dead go home, home to a home that the living have long ceased to remember; blessed are the dead in their direc- tion sense. 2. Upon this Proto-Samoan settlement came a later wave of migration of the same race. This second migration held its footing upon Nuclear Poly- nesia through a period whose duration we are quite without the data to esti- mate. In general the later migrants behaved so harshly to the original inhabitants, albeit of their own race and almost word for word of the same speech, as to provoke reprisals. For these later migrants we have adopted the name by which they are known in Samoan history, the Tongafiti; it being understood that the present names of the archipelagoes of Tonga and Fiji (Viti or Piti) did not supply the name, but are derived therefrom. From skirmish to pitched engagement these reprisals grew as the Proto-Samoans, driven from the seashore to inner recesses of their islands, recovered strength in resistance. At last came the critical battle of Matamatame, somewhere about 1 200 of our era or a little earlier. The Tongafiti were expelled from Samoa and began their eastward wanderings as far as Hawaii and New Zealand, the era of the great voyages. 3. Nowhere in the present data are we able to pick up the track of the Tongafiti prior to their descent upon Nuclear Polynesia. We have made it clear that they did not follow the Melanesian route between Indonesia and Polynesia. It must remain for the students of the Tongafiti collaterals to discover their route; our concern in this study has been to identify the migration that did sweep along the Melanesian chain. The Pacific between the tropics lies spread out in expanses of always pleasant sailing and interrupted, before the monotony of voyaging has begun to cloy, by green and delicious islands which ever invite. If in such geography it be proper to use the adjective compact of that which is essentially sporadic we may describe Nuclear Polynesia as a compact geographical unit widely separated from its neighbors. It lies in the South Pacific quite at the back of our world; it is very nearly contained in the 10-degree square bounded by the tenth and the twentieth paral- lels of south latitude and by the one-hundred-and-seventieth meridian of west longitude and the antimeridian. Its principal points lie in the apices of a triangle—Fiji to the westward, Samoa northeast at a distance of 10 degrees, Tongatabu southeast by 7 degrees, and between Samoa and Tonga a space of 9 degrees. Within the triangle thus out- lined He the islands of Futuna and Uvea; east of Tongatabu we find Niue as an outlier; north of Fiji similarly lies Rotuma. Broad expanses of empty sea lie around this triangle in three directions, and the islets which are scattered over the waters north of Samoa are so tiny and of such little importance that we may neglect them, save for the note that their culture is in general Samoan in source. In the western quadrant the land nearest Fiji is in the New Hebrides at a distance of not less than 10 degrees and the largest land-mass is the the; arts op the; cujb. 3 New Caledonian complex, 13 degrees away to the southwest. In the southern quadrant the nearest inhabited land is New Zealand, 20 degrees remote from Tongatabu. In the eastern quadrant the nearest land is the Cook Islands, 16 degrees southeast of Samoa. Of the utmost simplicity in its geographical statement, widely removed as it is seen to be from contact with its neighbors, Nuclear Polynesia presents to our view a picture of considerable ethnic com- plexity. At least two races and their cultures have there entered into competition and offer for our efforts at disentanglement resultants which vary in each of the datum-points of the area. Furthermore, the superior culture makes its appearance in twofold stages of develop- ment. At the epoch when the arriving Polynesian culture, at a period which there is satisfactory reason to synchronize with the earliest centuries of the Christian era, advanced upon the occupation of this Pacific area we postulate two conditions affecting the region: The far-flung archipelago of Fiji (two major land-masses in Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, hundreds of smaller islands surrounding a central sea) was in occupation of a folk whose immediate affiliations—somatic and racial, and cultural and social—were with some one of those westward- lying peoples whom we class as the Melanesians. The island groups which determine the eastward apices of the triangle were empty of humanity; no trace of somatic admixture is now found which can not be attributed to amalgamation with the Melanesians of Fiji during the period of intercourse for which we have abundant documentation in a large corpus of myth-history handed down in tradition congruent in the memories of diverse members of the race ; the soil, although it is con- stantly revealing its inmost secrets under the downpour of tropical rains, has disclosed not a single artifact which suggests a culture in the least anterior to that of which the present occupants of the soil were possessed at the time of their discovery.

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