Chief's War Club, Marquesas Islands

Chief's War Club, Marquesas Islands
u'u
Ironwood (Casuarina equisetifolia)
Length 50 1/2in (107cm)

Provenance
Niagara Falls Museum, Ontario
Mark A. Blackburn, Honolulu, Hawaii
California Private Collection

As noted by Steven Hooper, the u'u bifacial club "appears to have been the standard weapon and staff of warriors. The form was recorded during Cook's second-voyage visit. Both sides of the clubhead are carved similarly, with minor differences, showing a series of faces of different kinds looking in all directions. [Alfred] Gell (Art and Agency, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 191) argues that these designs, on human bodies as tattoos, or on objects, represent atua (gods) in a tutelary and watchful guardian mode. The club is made from tough and heavy ironwood (Casuarina equisetifolia), called toa, also the name for the warrior." (Pacific Encounters: Art & Diversity in Polynesia 1760-1860, British Museum Press, 2006, p. 163.

This fine and complete example is exceptionally carved, most likely without the use of metal tools, with the arched head carved with a mask at the apex on both sides above a double arched, bifurcated concave panel with two small tiki heads doubling as eyes within radiant halos above a transverse process with projecting flanges, centered by a third tiki head, the finely incised lower collar decorated in three sections with classical Marquesas motifs, tapering to a cylindrical shaft with flared butt; fine dark brown patina with wear indicative of indigenous use.