The Australian aboriginal

Spears made by aboriginal Australians serve for four distinct purposes—for fighting, for hunting, for ceremonial, and for recreation, but it would never do to make these the basis of classification.

Technically, however, we recognize two main divisions, into which Australian spears can be made to fall, the one including all spears made out of a single piece of hard wood, the other those constructed of two or more pieces. With very few exceptions, the former are projected by the hand alone, the latter by means of a specially designed spear-thrower.

The simplest type of spear, found everywhere in Australia, consists merely of a long stick, more or less straightened artificially, and roughly pointed at one or both ends. Along the north coast of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland alike, the spear is made of light mangrove wood; in central Australia it is of acacia; and in the south it is, or was, of mallee. Vide Fig. 5, a.

Some of the tribes spend considerable time at straightening these spears. The method in vogue is to place the stick with its curved portion in hot ashes, and, after a while, to bend it over a stone until the right shape is obtained; a little emu fat is often applied to the spot before it is heated.

Others devote much attention to the shaping of the spear by scraping and rasping its surface. Exceptionally straight and smoothed mulga spears were made by the Barcoo natives of the Durham Downs district and by the Dieri (b), whilst on the north coast, the Crocker Islanders’ spears are deserving of the same comments; the latter, in addition, are decorated by a few delicate engravings in the form of circumferential rings and wavy longitudinal bands composed of short parallel transverse lines. The Arunndta groove the spears lengthwise with a stone adze.

An improvement on this type is rendered by the cutting of a pointed blade at one end of the spear (c). Some of the best specimens come from the eastern Arunndta in the Arltunga district. The blade is symmetrically cut, sharply edged, and smooth; the remaining portion of the spear is grooved longitudinally throughout its length.

All the above-mentioned types of spear are thrown by hand.

A straight, single-piece, hard-wood spear is made more effective by splicing a barb on to the point with kangaroo or emu sinew (d). The barb being directed away from the point, the spear cannot be withdrawn without forcibly tearing it through the flesh of the animal or man it has entered. The natives living along the Great Australian Bight, from Port Lincoln to King George Sound in Western Australia, used to make this the principal weapon; the spear was up to twelve feet in length, perfectly straight and smooth, and was thrown with a spear-thrower.

A rare and perhaps unique variety was found at Todmorden on the Alberga River in the possession of an Aluridja. It was a simple, one-piece, bladed spear, like that described of the Arltunga natives, but it had two wooden barbs tied against one and the same side of the blade with kangaroo sinew, one above the other, at distances of three and six inches, respectively, from the point.

The hard-wood spears may have the anterior end carved, on one or two sides, into a number of barbs of different shape and size. The simplest and most rudimentary forms were to be met with among the weapons of the practically extinct tribes of the lower reaches of the River Murray, including Lake Alexandria. The shaft was of mallee and by no means always straight and smooth; its anterior end, for a distance of from twelve to eighteen inches, had from five to six medium-sized, thorn-like barbs or spikes, which were directed backwards and cut out of the wood, on one or two sides. More rarely one would find spears with a three-sided serrature, consisting of something like two dozen small barbs, directed backwards, extending in three longitudinal lines over a distance of about fifteen inches; at the top the serrated lines merged into a single strong point. Vide Fig. 5, e, f, and g.

The most formidable weapons of this kind are those still in daily use as hunting and fighting spears on Melville and Bathurst Islands (h). The head of this type has many barbs carved on one side, and occasionally on two diametrically opposite sides. There are from ten to thirty barbs pointing backwards, behind which from four to eight short serrations project straight outwards, whilst beyond them again occasionally some six or more small barbs point forwards. The spears have a long, sharp, bladed point. The barbs are symmetrically carved, and each has sharp lateral edges which end in a point. The size of the barbs varies in different specimens. Many of the spears are longitudinally grooved or fluted, either for the whole length or at the head end only. Usually these weapons are becomingly decorated with ochre, and may have a collar of human hair-string wound tightly round the shaft at the base of the head.

Some of the heaviest of these spears are up to sixteen feet long, and would be more fitly described as lances.

The most elaborate, and at the same time most perfect, specimens of the single-piece wooden spears of aboriginal manufacture are the ceremonial pieces of the Melville Islanders. These have a carved head measuring occasionally over four feet in length and four inches in width, consisting of from twelve to twenty-five paired, symmetrical, leaf-shaped or quadrilateral barbs, whose sides display a remarkable parallelism. The barbs are surmounted by a long tapering point emanating from the topmost pair; and very frequently one finds an inverted pair of similar barbs beneath the series just mentioned. Occasionally, too, the two pairs opposed to each other at the bottom are fused into one, and a square hole is cut into the bigger area of wood thus gained on either side of the shaft (i).

The structure may be further complicated by cutting away the point at the top, and separating the paired series of barbs by a narrow vertical cleft down the middle (j).

We shall now turn our attention to spears whose head and shaft are composed of separate parts. In the construction of these, two principal objects are aimed at by the aboriginal, the first being to make the missile travel more accurately through space, and in accordance with the aim, the second to make the point more cruel and deadly. Whereas, with one exception, all the single-piece spears, so far discussed, are projected or wielded with the hand only, in every instance of the multi-pieced spears, a specially designed spear-thrower is used for that purpose.

The native has learned by experience that weight in the forepart of the spear will enable him to throw and aim with greater precision. One has only to watch the children and youths during a sham-fight to realize how well it is known that the heavier end of a toy spear must be directed towards the target whilst the lighter end is held in the hand. Green shoots of many tussocks, or their seed-stalks, and the straight stems of reeds or bullrushes, are mostly used. They are cut or pulled at the root in order that a good butt-end may be obtained, and carefully stripped of leaves; the toy weapons are then ready for throwing. One is taken at a time and its thin end held against the inner side of the point of the right index finger; it is kept in that position with the middle finger and thumb. Raising the spear in a horizontal position, the native extends his arm backwards, and, carefully selecting his mark, shies his weapon with full force at it.

The simplest type of a combination made to satisfy the conditions of an artificially weighted spear is one in which the shaft consists of light wood and the head of heavier wood (k). Roughly speaking, the proportion of light to heavy wood is about half of one to half of the other. The old Adelaide tribe used to select the combination of the light pithy flower-stalk of the grass-tree with a straight pointed stick of mallee. The western coastal tribes of the Northern Territory construct small, and those of the Northern Kimberleys large spears composed of a shaft of reed and a head of mangrove; the former being four or at most five feet long, the latter from ten to twelve. The joint between the two pieces is effected by inserting the heavier wood into the lighter and sealing the union with triodia-grass resin or beeswax. The Adelaide tribe used the gum of the grass-tree.

The River Murray tribes used to make the point of the mallee more effective by attaching to it a blade-like mass of resin, into both edges of which they stuck a longitudinal row of quartz flakes.

The Northern Kimberleys natives accomplish the same object by fixing on to the top end of the mangrove stick a globular mass of warm, soft resin, in which they embed a stone spear-head (l). In certain parts of the Northern Territory one occasionally meets with a similar type of spear, but such in all probability is imported from the west.

The popular spear of central Australian tribes consists of a light shaft fashioned out of a shoot of the wild tecoma bush (T. Australis), which carries a long-bladed head of hard mulga wood. The junction is made between the two pieces by cutting them both on a slope, sticking these surfaces together with hot resin, and securely binding them with kangaroo tendon. The bottom end is similarly bound and a small hole made in its base to receive the point of the spear-thrower (m).

As often as not the blade has a single barb of wood bound tightly against it with tendon.

It is often difficult to find a single piece of tecoma long enough to make a suitable shaft, in which case two pieces are taken and neatly joined somewhere within the lower, and thinner, half with tendon. The shoots, when cut, are always stripped of their bark and straightened in the fire, the surfaces being subsequently trimmed by scraping.

A very common type of spear, especially on the Daly River, and practically all along the coast of the Northern Territory, is one with a long reed-shaft, to which is attached, by means of a mass of wax or gum, a stone-head, consisting of either quartzite or slate, or latterly also of glass. The bottom end is strengthened, to receive the point of the thrower, by winding around it some vegetable fibre (n).

The natives of Arnhem Land now and then replace the stone by a short piece of hard wood of lanceolate shape.

If now we consider the only remaining type—a light reed-shaft, to which is affixed a long head of hard wood, with a number of barbs cut on one or more edges—we find a great variety of designs. The difference lies principally in the number and size of the barbs; in most cases they point backwards, but it is by no means rare to find a certain number of them pointing the opposite way or standing out at right angles to the length of the head. These spears belong principally to the northern tribes of the Northern Territory.

The commonest form is a spear having its head carved into a number of barbs along one side only, and all pointing backwards (o). The number ranges from three to over two dozen, the individual barbs being either short and straight or long and curved, with the exception of the lowest, which in many examples sticks out at right angles just above the point of insertion. The point is always long and tapering. These spears are common to the Larrekiya, Wogait, Wulna, and all Daly River tribes.

The same pattern of barbs may be found carved symmetrically on the side diametrically opposite, or, indeed, it may be cut in three planes.

An elegant, but rare, type is found among the weapons of the Ponga Ponga, Mulluk Mulluk, and Wogait tribes on the Daly River. Its hard-wood head is long and uniformly tapering from its point of insertion to its sharp tip. On one side there are very many small barbs, diminishing in size from the shaft upwards; as many as one hundred barbs have been counted; they point either slightly backwards or at right angles to the length (p).

A spear in use on the Alligator River, and in the districts south and west therefrom, has the barbs along the edge of the anterior moiety directed backwards, whereas those of the posterior portion point forwards. And occasionally one finds the barbs arranged asymmetrically on two sides of the spear-head.

Finally, a rather remarkable type will be referred to, which belongs to the Arnhem Land tribes, or rather to the country extending from Port Essington to the Roper River, including Groote Island and smaller groups lying off the coast. It is a neat and comparatively small spear, about eight feet long on an average. The head, instead of possessing a number of barbs, has a series of eye-shaped holes cut along one of its sides, which give the impression of being so many unfinished barbs, or so many barbs with their points joined together (q). The major axes of the holes are parallel and directed backwards; there may be up to thirty holes present. Occasionally there are a few real barbs cut near the shaft end of the head; or a number of incomplete barbs may there be cut with their axes turned towards the front of the spear. The point is always sharp and stands back somewhat from the level of the uncut barbs.

For special purposes, like fishing, two or three of the simple-barbed prongs are frequently affixed to a reed shaft with beeswax or resin, and vegetable fibre. This combination is met with all along the coast of the Northern Territory. The natives know very well that the chances of stabbing a fish with a trident of this description are much greater than with a single prong. As a matter of fact, a barbed spear with less than two prongs is not normally used for fishing purposes, yet a plain, single-pronged spear is often utilized when there is none of the other kind available.

The Australian aboriginals do not poison their spears in the ordinary sense of the word, but the Ponga Ponga and Wogait tribes residing on the Daly River employ the vertebræ of large fish, like the barramundi, which have previously been inserted into decaying flesh, usually the putrid carcase of a kangaroo, with the object of making the weapon more deadly. The bones are tied to the head of a fighting spear. This is not a general practice, however, and the spear never leaves the hands of the owner. The natives maintain that by so doing they can kill their enemy “quick fella.”