African war clubs, or cudgels, represent a significant part of the continent's rich history and cultural heritage. These clubs were not only essential weapons of war, but also held deep cultural and symbolic meanings for the various peoples who used them. From the knobkerries of Southern Africa to the Amazonian clubs, these tools played diverse roles in warfare, ceremony, and daily life.
A traditional knobkerrie, showcasing its characteristic knobbed head.
The Knobkerrie: A Southern African Staple
A knobkerrie, also spelled knobkierie, knobkierie, and knopkierie (Afrikaans), is a form of wooden club, used mainly in Southern Africa and Eastern Africa. Typically, they have a large knob at one end and can be used for clubbing an enemy's head. For the various peoples who use them, they often have marked cultural significance.
In Africa, the weapon found particular use among Nguni peoples. Among the Zulu people they are known as iwisa. The iwisa was not typically used in combat - though they were occasionally used as thrown weapons in place of the throwing spear or isijula.
Instead, the Zulu used iwisa as swagger sticks, ceremonial objects, or even as snuff containers.
Read also: Continent's Hottest Nightlife
The Ndebele variant was known as induku and is similar in design to the Zulu iwisa. It was used as a swagger stick or thrown weapon. The induku could also be fashioned into the handle of a fighting axe which, unlike the Zulu, the Ndebele used as weapons of war.
Tsonga clubs were also similar to the Zulu and Ndebele type with spherical heads but variants with more elongated oval heads were also used in what is now Mozambique.
During the Apartheid era in South Africa, they were often carried and used by protesters and sometimes by the police opposing them. Knobkerries are still widely carried, especially in rural areas, while in times of peace it serves as a walking-stick, sometimes ornamental.
Knobkerries commonly feature on national and other symbols in Southern Africa. In South Africa they feature on the South African Coat of Arms, though lying down symbolizing peace.
The Molamu: A Symbol of Authority
Used by the Sotho people and made from the Mohlware tree Olea africana, it is a walking stick and alternatively can be used as a weapon. A molamu symbolizes authority and power, and represents a readiness to separate an enemy from a friend.
Read also: Learn about the East African Community
The molamu is an indicator of one's adult male status along with the Basotho blanket seana marena, and are visual expressions of both practical and esoteric Sesotho ideals. Molamu is a sign of manhood, all male initiates carry it upon their return from lebollo la banna.
The molamu is traditionally passed down from one generation to another as men go through initiation. It is used to declare to Badimo that the young man has returned from his initiation, and garners their support and blessings. The molamu is held up while the initiates sing "ditoko", with the singer's eyes intently focused upon it.
The molamu is also used to bind empowering medicines, or moriana, to the staff, which affects the "seriti" which is the character or spirit of the owner. In contemporary southern Africa, one can also find decorative variations carried by new initiates after returning to their homes.
The South African Coat of Arms, featuring knobkerries symbolizing peace.
Amazonian Clubs: Macanas and More
Amazonia offers the second largest variety of wooden clubs after Oceania. Wooden clubs from Amazonia, called macanas, have been identified and valued by Europeans since the Conquest and quickly became essential additions to Wunderkammern.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
AbstractWooden clubs from Amazonia, called macanas, have been identified and valued by Europeans since the Conquest and quickly became essential additions to Wunderkammern. However, surviving pieces often lack a detailed collection history, as they have been brought to Europe over a period of five hundred years by various kinds of visitors with different goals and sets of mind.
The first section reviews the early reports and descriptions mentioning those pieces, whether in situ (e.g. chronicles of Columbus voyages or later travelers) or in European collections. We present in the second part a non-exhaustive selection of eleven types of clubs from Amazonia that belong to European (mostly public) collections, and we try to connect these types to the abovementioned historical sources.
The two corpuses of pieces cannot be fairly compared as for historical reasons we are not really able to watch those through the same glasses. The Conquest of America happened in a very different set of mind than the discovery of the Pacific in the Age of Enlightenment. Three centuries have passed between those two events bringing additional losses of material and information coming with wars, revolutions, fires etc.
As such it is now difficult if not impossible to imagine how rich was the clubs panoply used by the ancient Amazonians. The author estimates that the percentage of surviving pieces from earlier collection dates is even lower.
The first part of this text evokes briefly the early collections and the context in which those pieces entered in European history following the Conquest, not researching for any missing provenance - this would require discovering new sources - but simply trying to date certain types of pieces.
When the full history of a piece is not known, collection dates only gives a cap in time which leaves open the question of its previous life. A second caveat comes from the fact that types of objects can remain stable over long periods of time.
Finally, studying the early reports provides an intuition of what material is unfortunately missing either because it is only mentioned by a chronicler or represented on an engraving but not recorded physically anymore, or simply when we have nothing but the inescapable conclusion that material has been brought back but later disappeared with its recorded information.
The second part will go through some specific types. It would go beyond the scope of this text to attempt a clubs typology for such a vast subject.
Early Collections and Reports
Columbus landed in Bahamas in 1492 and made four voyages to the Caribbean Islands from 1492 to his death in 1504. He stayed in the region over seven years and cumulated with thousands of men, soldiers, priests, chroniclers, administrators etc.
After Columbus lost the exclusivity for Spain, the Italian Amerigo Vespucci explored the mouth of the Orenoco and Venezuela and realized by around 1500 that this land formed a new continent. At the same time, Cabral started the exploration of the northeast coast of Brazil and claimed it for Portugal by virtue of the Tordesillas treaty.
Those men must have met most of the tribes from the Islands and the coastal regions and seen their weapons. Unfortunately clubs are only mentioned occasionally in their reports. One macana is obtained by ransom by Columbus (Mendoza, 1868:5). According to Las Casas, Taíno chiefs would treasure their macanas and kept some wrapped in yagua leaves (1875 Vol. II: 174).
Those two brief accounts highlight the importance attached on those pieces from both camps perspectives.
Oviedo (1478-1557), who was a major chronicler of the Voyages and the first historian of the West Indies, mentions (Oviedo 1851: 68) that the Hispaniolan macanas were: “… unos palos tan anchos como de tres dedos o algo menos, e tan luengos como la estatura de un hombre con dos filos algo agudos; y en el extremo de la macana tiene una manija, e usaban dellas como de hacha de armas a dos manos: son de madera de palma muy reçia y de otros árboles.”
Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1556) supplies a description of a macana from Cuba during the first voyage of Columbus (Las Casas 1875 Vol. I: 435) “… una espada de tabla de palma, que es durísima y muy pesada, hecha desta forma: no aguda, sino chata, de cerca de dos dedos en gordo de todas partes, con la cual, como es dura y pesada, como hierro, aunque tenga el hombre un capacete en la cabeza, de un golpe le hundirán los cascos hasta los sesos.”
Another account (Las Casas 1875 Vol. II: 57) during the second voyage seems to describe a different type also from Cuba but with flat and not round heads “… como espadas, de forma de una paleta hasta el cabo, y del cabo hasta la empuñadura se viene ensangostando, no aguda de los cabos, sino chata; estas son de palma, porque las palmas no tienen las pencas como las de acá, sino lisas ó rasas, y son tan duras y pesadas, que de hueso y, cuasi de acero, no pueden ser más: llámanlas macanas.”
Columbus displayed to the Spanish King what he had brought back from his voyages: a few small samples of gold, pearls, native birds, gold jewelry from the natives and some Taíno Indians he had kidnapped, flowers, and a hammock. No mention of any weapon.
Of course more information might be found in the future studying the archives but it is hard to believe that the first Conquistadores did not bring back some weapons. People had to prove they had gone to those new and fierce lands. There was also an active market for curiosities from early collectors who were fascinated by those pieces because of their association with cannibalism (see later Hans Staden and Thevet descriptions of the Tupinamba sword).
Since the early XVIth c. European powers started challenging Spain and Portugal and established some presence in the West Indies especially in the Lesser Antilles. These settlements evolved over time into colonies, creating the geopolitical map we know.
Such effort became possible as Spain and Portugal were more focused on the mainland, especially Zacatecas in Mexico and Potosí in Bolivia, from which they were extracting rich metals such as silver and copper.
France started in the first half of the XVIth c. by allowing privateers to flourish from attacking and looting Spanish and Portuguese galleons on their way back to Europe. A significant proportion of the volunteers enrolled in those expeditions were Huguenots coming from Normandy like the famous Corsairs Jean de Fleury, Jacques de Sores, Le Testut and de Clerc.
England came later to the game (after 1560) but became then the biggest counter power in the region, thanks notably to the individual talents of the “Sea Dogs” (Sir John Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Martin Frobisher and Sir Walter Raleigh) and to the speed of their vessels. Those people also grew wealthy by getting actively involved in the slave trade.
Netherlands and to a lesser extent Sweden and Denmark followed suit. Those expeditions were generally (but not always) against official treaties, hence against law, which makes chronicles and documents such as the Drake Manuscript (see later) very rare. Some weapons must have been brought back to Europe during this period.
After Jacques Cartier brought back some weapons from Canada one of the first collector of American clubs in Europe is André Thevet (1516-1590) who said he owned the Tupinamba sword of the Indian King Quonambec.
Thevet stayed ten weeks in Fort Coligny in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro in 1555 accompanying Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon in a failed attempt to colonize the region. Thevet was cosmographer of four French kings (from Henri II to Henri III) and wrote several ethnographical books.
He gave some pieces to the Royal Cabinet of France but the information is lost to properly identify those pieces. Thevet mentioned he brought back some pieces from his trip.
More importantly he had an extended network of suppliers of “rarities” to feed the collections of his cabinet de curiosités including Americana. Far from being isolated, those early collectors were also corresponding with each other and swapping pieces. The market for Americana and especially clubs was very active at since the early XVIth and continued into the XVIIth centuries.
Amateurs were visiting harbors such as La Rochelle, Rouen, Bordeaux to collect specimens. Towards the end of the XVIth c. a European network of Princes, scholars and enthusiasts started building Kunst and Wunderkammern.
This paper can only recall some notable figures. After Thevet, Jean Mocquet (1575-ca 1617), a French adventurous traveler and antiquity dealer who had the ear of Henri IV, travelled to the mouth of the Oyapok in 1604 and brought back material. He later became “garde” of the “cabinet des singularitez du roy” in the Tuilleries Palace. He must have provided clubs between other curiosities to the Royal Cabinet.
The French writer Montaigne (1533-1592) had a collection of Brazilian artifacts displayed on a wall in a room called the Brasiliana in his castle of Saint-Michel in Southern France (Montaigne 1962: 206). Unfortunately there is no detailed description of this collection.
Paul Contant (1562-1629) an apothecary from Poitiers also had Brazilian weapons represented on a set of engravings, Album des habitans du Nouveau Monde by Antoine Jacquard where one can see a Tupinamba sword, a boutou and a Gê clubs with representations of cannibals (Hamy 1907 a: 236 and Lestringant 1991: p. 224 n. 23).
The great polymath and patron of the arts Fabri de Pereisc (1580-1637) in Aix-en-Provence had an important and eclectic collection including two paintings from Caravaggio whom he was one of the first supporters. His exotica pieces became the core of the collection of the Cabinet du Molinet now in Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris (which has now five weapons from Amazonia).
In the UK, Tradescant father and son in Oxford (1570-1638 et 1608-1662) were botanists, gardeners for King Charles I and George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. They were collectors who build the first public museum known: the Musaeum Tradescantianum in Lambeth, London. They had five long macanas, four of which are now in the Ashmolean museum in Oxford and one in the British Museum. Many other collectors were also active in this period in the UK and probably had Americana if not clubs.
In Italy the Medici in Florence collected Americana since Cosimo I (1519-1574) but many other important Italian collectors also had weapons like Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), Ferdinando Cospi (1606- 1686) in Bologna and probably few others.
The German Knorr von Rosenroth gives a detailed description in 1633 of a collection he saw in Amsterdam with a club “used by the Americans before they discovered iron”. A plate from the Haarlem collection of Levinus Vincent (1658-1727) shows some weapons on the wall.
Bernard Paludanus (1550-1633) in Enkhuizen, Netherlands had a Brazilian club now in the ethnographic collections of the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen (Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980: 20-36). The Danish physician and professor Ole Worm (1588-1654) also in Copenhagen had some pieces he gave to the Royal Kunstkammer.
Royal Cabinets in France, Danemark, Spain, Portugal (not in UK surprisingly), the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras near Innsbruck (the most ancient museum in the world), the Green Vault of the rulers of the Electorate of Saxony in Dresden, Habsburg’s collection in the Schwarzes Cabinet in the Stallburg, Vienna had Amazonian clubs between other exotica coming from the New World.
