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Description

A slave killing club. The handle is in the form of a human head with teeth, driven in scalp locks from which protrudes a large ground blade forming the tongue of the head. Good.Stone tongue and club detached and separate when loaned in 2009

Context

The original European tribal names and, where possible, current tribal names have both been given in separate GLT fields. The club had an old number when it was a deposit, D 1912.15.; Clubs of this type have become known as slave killing clubs but the accuracy of this assertion is debatable. The only certain reference to their use comes from Jewitt' s description of this time with Maquinna when the Tomahawks were used in war against A-y-charts (quoted in J.C.H.King' s Artificial Curiosities 1981 page 65). The clubs were undoubtably both for ceremonial and practical use, but ceased to be used after contact with Europeans.; Exhibited: New anthropological displays at CUMAA, Artificial Curiosities Case, 1990 .; Collected by: Cook.Captain in 1778. [J.Tanner, April 1998: Added Nootka Sound to origin field, as in Accession Register and D 1912.15 to cumaa numbers field].
Literature: See 'Artificial Curiosities' (1978), A. Kaeppler, p.256 and figures 555, p.255. Evidence: Pennant collection from various sources. 3rd voyage. Also see the 'Catalogue of the Northwest Coast Collection: Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology' (1996), Dr Gillian Crowther. (J.Tanner, May 1998). See 'From Pacific Shores: Eighteenth-century Ethnographic Collections at Cambridge - The Voyages of Cook, Vancouver and the First Fleet' (J. Tanner, 1999:70). See 'Artificial Curiosities from the Northwest Coast of America (J.C.H. King, 1981: cf. Colour Plate 8; 57-8 and Monochrome Plate 43; 57-58. For engraving of item see Monochrome Plate 6 bottom right).
Cook Collection: Captain James Cook undertook three world voyages around the globe from 1768 - 1779. The stated purpose of the first voyage (1768-1771) on the HMS Endeavour was to send a Royal Society team to observe the transit of the planet Venus from the vantage point of newly discovered Tahiti. However, the primary governmental motivation behind the first expedition was to establish the existence of ' Terra Australis Incognita' or the ' Great Southern Continent' , which was believed to exist in order to balance the great northern land mass. Cook set sail from Plymouth on Friday 26th August 1768 and headed to South America, round Cape Horn and westwards to carry out the experiment in Tahiti, and then went on to circumnavigate the globe in pursuit of the presumed continent. The purpose of the second voyage (1772-1775) on the HMS Resolution and the HMS Adventure was to extend the search for the ' southern continent' . They sailed from Plymouth on 27 June 1772 and headed directly south past Cape Town and then set out on an eastward course of circumnavigation, crossing the Antartic Circle several times en route in an effort to seek the imagined continent. The third voyage (1776-1780) on the HMS Resolution and the HMS Discovery, was concerned with the search for a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They sailed from Plymouth on 13th July 1772, heading first for the Society Islands from whence they set course to search for the Northwest Passage. However, Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779 and his command was taken up by Charles Clerke.
More than 2000 extant pieces can be traced from Cook' s voyages (Kaeppler:1978), of which UCMAA has 215 identified objects. The majority of the material at UCMAA was collected from the Pacific, but also includes objects from the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America, the Northeast Coast of Asia and Tierra del Fuego in South America. Furthermore, all the three voyages are represented by objects in UCMAA' s collection.
(J. Tanner, 1999).Conserved by Barbara Wills in anticipation of the loan to Anchorage, July 2013. Babara suggests that the stone 'tongue' is not original to the club, as it is too heavy to remain fixed to the body of the club, which would not have been a functional tool.'Exhibited: On display in Maudslay Gallery from 1990 in the Cook/ Curiosities case until 2009 and removed for Cook loan to Bonn' Exhbited: On loan to 'Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage', at the Anchorage Museum, Alaska, 27 March- 7 September 2015; and the Washington State Historical Museum Tacoma/Seattle 16 October- 10 January 2016