Magazines - Tribal Art Summer 2009

By Winfield Coleman

Introduction
The Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm has a number of early, relatively well-documented pieces from aboriginal North America. Among its remarkable objects is a war club (figs. 2a & b) in the form of a pickaxe with an iron head.1 The artifact’s original collection information is not recorded but by 1686 it is known to have belonged to Swedish King Karl XI (1655–1697). In the nineteenth century it was transferred from the Royal Armory to the National Museum’s ethnographic department, later the Etnografiska Museet (Brunius 2002). The wooden handle of the club has a curved top, rectangular in cross-section, which tapers toward the grip, oval in cross-section. A hole bored transversely through the bottom of the grip is threaded with a long buckskin thong and an animal tail is attached to one end. Pieces of cut shell—wampum, which was used by the Woodland Indians as a vehicle for ritual exchange—originally covered both sides above and below the grip. Only patches remain but these reveal designs rendered in darker shell against a light shell background. The inlaid areas have slightly raised borders. Buckskin thongs threaded through two holes at the top secure the iron head.