1886.1.1147

Collection type

Object

Description

Hand-weapon of whalebone.

Long description

Hand-weapon, patou paraoa, of whalebone, with a perforation in the handle for a strap. [JU 17/12/2013]

Geographical reference

New Zealand

Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand

Cultural groups

Māori

Person

Field collector Johann Reinhold Forster

Field collector Georg Forster

PRM source Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Date / Period

Date made: Before 10/11/1774

Date collected

1773 or 1774 (between 26 March and 11 May 1773, or between 18 May and 7 June 1773, or between 3 November and 25 December 1773; or between 16 October and 10 November 1774)

Acquisition information

Transferred: 19/04/1886

Materials and processes

Material Whale Bone Animal, Process Carved, Process Perforated

Dimensions

Length x Width 385 x 135 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1886.1.1147 Other numbers: Forster 114 Other numbers: Duncan 152, 153, or 154 ? Other numbers: [Ashmolean] AM1147

Research and responses

In 1978, David Simmons recorded the holdings of Māori material in a number of museums in Europe and North America including, in May 1978, the Pitt Rivers Museum. (For copies of his notes and related correspondence, see RDF: Researchers: Simmons.) In 1996, Simmons put together the ‘draft catalogues’ he had prepared, depositing copies in, at least, the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and the British Museum. The ‘draft catalogue’ of the Māori material in the PRM, which includes photocopies of some of the relevant catalogue index cards and annotations supplied by PRM assistant curator Lynne Williamson in 1982, was included in ‘Draft Catalogues of Maori Material in English Museums II. Prepared by David Simmons from records made in 1978… Compiled in Auckland in 1996’. It is now widely accepted that Simmons’s assertions about the provenance and history of individual Māori objects are not to be trusted without further evidence and/or documentation. Nevertheless, as the entries in this document have been referred in the literature, in July 2016 I obtained from the British Museum scans of the pages devoted to the PRM’s collections (numbered by hand as pages 43 to 62), printing out a copy for the RDF. For the entry for this object, see page 45 (page 2 on Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]

Associated publications

Listed as number 152, 153, or 154 on page 184 of A Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum Descriptive of the Zoological Specimens, Antiquities, Coins, and Miscellaneous Curiosities (Oxford, 1836): 'South Sea Islands, &c.... 152-154. War clubs or potamatoos of jade, basalt, bone, and wood. (Capt. Reinhold Forster, Esq. R.N.' [JC 7 7 2005] Listed according to the 'Forster list' numbering system in 'From the Islands of the South Seas 1773–4': An Exhibition of a Collection Made on Capn. Cook’s Second Voyage of Discovery by J. R. Forster—A Short Guide, by Peter Gathercole (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, no date [1970]): 'a ditto [pattou-pattou] of bone. Length: 38.5 cm.' [NMM, undated; JC 28 6 2002] Referred to on page 315 of ‘The Cambridge University Collection of Maori Artefacts, Made on Captain Cook’s First Voyage’, by Wilfred Shawcross, in Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. LXXIX, no. 3 (September), pp. 305–48. Shawcross cites PRM 1886.1.1147 as a comparable piece to a first-voyage Maori cleaver in the Cambridge collections (CUMAA D1914.57). Also cited on page 315 as a comparable piece to another Cook-voyage Maori cleaver in the Cambridge collections. Shawcross gives the number of this as '26.372', but I assume it is that which is given as '1925.372' on page 33 of From Pacific Shores: Eighteenth-Century Collections at Cambridge—The Voyages of Cook, Vancouver and the First Fleet, by Julia Tanner (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1999). [JC 28 6 2002] Listed as number 5 under ‘New Zealand...Patu Paraoa’ on page 190 of 'Artificial Curiosities': Being an Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James Cook, R.N. at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, January 18, 1978 - August 31, 1978 on the Occasion of the Bicentennial of the European Discovery of the Hawaiian Islands by Captain Cook - January 18, 1778 (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 65), by Adrienne L. Kaeppler (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1978): 'Patu paraoa, Oxford (114). Length 38.5 cm. Evidence: Forster collection. Second voyage. Literature: Gathercole, n.d. (1970) [see above]'. [JP 22/7/2002; JC 7 7 2005] Published as part of the Forster Collection on a dedicated website at www.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster (from February 2001). [JC 7 7 2005] Listed as number 87 and illustrated in colour on page 140 of Pacific Encounters: Art & Divinity in Polynesia, 1760-1860, by Steven Hooper (London: British Museum Press / Wellington, New Zealand: Te Papa Press, 2006); caption (same page) reads: '87 Club | New Zealand/Aotearoa | Eighteenth century | Whalebone | L. 38.5 cm | Oxford, PRM: 1886.1.1147 | Acquired 1886; ex. Ashmolean Museum; donated 1776 by Johann Reinhold and George Forster to Oxford University; collected 1773-4 by the Forsters during Cook's second voyage.... A short club of whalebone (patu paraoa), this simple elegant form has ridges carved across the butt and a hole for a wrist cord. It is made from the spatulate section of a whale's jaw. In combat such weapons were for thrusting with the distal end, rather than cutting sideways.' Also listed and illustrated, with the same number on the same page and with the same details, in the French edition of the catalogue: Polynésie: Arts et Divinités, 1760-1860, by Steven Hooper (Paris: Musée de quai Branly and Réunion des musées nationaux, 2008). [JC 22 12 2006, 10 7 2008] Foran account of the history of the collection of which this is part, see 'The Cook-Voyage Collections at Oxford, 1772–1775', by Jeremy Coote, in Jeremy Coote (ed.), Cook-Voyage Collections of 'Artificial Curiosities' in Britain and Ireland, 1771–2015 (MEG Occasional Paper No. 5), Oxford: Museum Ethnographers Group (2015), pp. 74–122. (Copy in RDF: Researchers: Jeremy Coote (Cook-Voyage Collections).) [JC 9 6 2016]

Search terms: Weapon, Club