The Australian aboriginal

by Herbert Basedow

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.