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The Sword of Wood.

The ‘Age of Wood’ began early, lasted long, and ended late. As the practice of savages shows, the spear was originally a pointed stick hardened in the fire; and arrows, the diminutives of the spear, as daggers are of the Sword, were tipped with splinters of bamboo, whose Tabáshir or silicious bark acted like stone. The Peruvians, even after they could beat out plates of gold and silver, fought with pikes having no iron tips, but with the points hardened in the fire.[102] The same was the case with the Australians,[103] who, according to Mr. Howard Spensley,[104] also fashioned Swords of very hard wood: the Arabs of the Tihámat or Lowlands of Hazramaut (the Biblical Hazramaveth) are still compelled by poverty to use spears without metal. I pass over the general use of this world-wide material to the epoch when it afforded a true Sword.

The wooden Sword, as we see from its wide dispersion, must have arisen spontaneously among the peoples who had reached that stage of civilisation where it became necessary.[105] These weapons were found in the hands of the Indians of Virginia by the well-known Captain John Smith. Writing in 1606, Oldfield describes swords of heavy black wood in the Sandwich Islands, and Captain Owen Stansley in New Guinea. Mr. Consul Hutchinson notes the wooden swords used by the South American Itonanamas, a sub-tribe of the Maxos. Those preserved in Ireland and others brought from the Samoa Islands will be noticed in a future page. They may mostly be characterised as flat clubs sharpened at the edge, and used like our steel blades.

Fig. 33.—Lisán in Egypt and Abyssinia.

The shape of the wooden sword greatly varies, and so does its origin. Mr. Tylor fell into the mistake, so common in these classifying, generalising, and simplifying days, of deriving the sabre, because it is a cutting tool, from the axe, and the tuck or rapier from the spear because it thrusts. Wooden sword-blades alone have three prototypes, viz.:—

1 The club.

2 The throw-stick.

3 The paddle.

Fig. 34.—Lisán or Tongue.

I. The Bulak Museum (Cairo)[106] shows two good specimens of the ancient ‘Lisán’ (‘tongue’-weapon) club or curved stick. The first battles, says Pliny (vii. 57), were fought by the Africans against the Egyptians with clubs which they called phalangæ. The shorter club-sword (1 ft. 11 in.) has a handle ribbed with eighteen fine raised rings. The longer or falchion-shaped weapon (2 ft. 5 in.) is hatched at the grip with a cross pattern. Both are of hard wood blackened by age, and both have the distinct cutting edge. The ancient war-club was tipped with metal and whipped with thongs round the handle for firmer grasp, like the Roman fasces. The modern Lisán-club, made of tough mimosa-wood and about 2½ ft. long, is still used in close combat by the Negroid tribes of the Upper Nile. To the Bishárins and Amri the Lisán supplies, at dances and on festal occasions, the place of the sword. In Abyssinia there is a lighter variety (1 ft. 6 in.) banded alternately with red, blue, and green cloth, and protected by a network of brass wire. The Ababdeh (modern Æthiopians), content with this, the spear, and its pendant the shield, fear not to encounter tribes whose arms are the matchlock and a ‘formidable looking, but really inoffensive sword with a wondrous huge straight blade.’ These pastoral Nomads are of a peculiar and interesting type. The short stature and the well-curved and delicate limbs, whose action is quick, lithe, and graceful as the leopard’s, connect them with the Bedawin of Arabia; while the knotted and spiral locks standing on end, and resembling when tallowed a huge cauliflower, affiliate them to the African Somal. Their arms are more extensive than their dress, a mere waist cloth, the primitive attire of tropical man; and they live by hiring their camels to caravans.

The Dublin Museum[107] also shows the transitional forms between the club and the Sword. The weapon (a) numbered 143 is some twenty-five inches long: the second (b) is labelled ‘No. 144, wooden club-shaped implement, twenty-seven inches long.’

The club of the Savage developed itself in other directions to the shepherd’s staff, the bishop’s crozier, and the king’s sceptre; hence, too, the useless bâton of the field-marshal, and the maces of Mr. Speaker and My Lord Mayor. Here we may answer the question why the field-marshal should carry a stick instead of a Sword. The unwarlike little instrument is simply the symbol of high authority:[108] it is the rod, not of the Lictor, but of the Centurion, whose badge of office was a vine-sapling wherewith to enforce authority. Hence Lucan (vi. 146) says of gallant Captain Cassius Scæva who, after many wounds, beat off two swordsmen:—

Sanguine multo

Promotus Latiam longo gerit ordine vitem.

This use was continued by the drill-sergeant of Europe from England to Russia. The club again survives in the constable’s staff and the policeman’s truncheon.

THE BOOMERANG.

The form of throwing-stick, which we have taught ourselves to call by an Australian name ‘boomerang,’[109] thereby unduly localising an almost universal weapon from Eskimo-land to Australia, was evidently a precursor of the wooden Sword. It was well known to the ancient Egyptians. Wilkinson shows (vol. i. chap. 4) that it was of heavy wood, cut flat, and thus offering the least resistance, measuring 1 ft. 3 in. to 2 ft. long by 1½ in. broad. The shape, however, is not the usual segment of a circle, but a shallow S-curve inverted (Ƨ), more bent at the upper end, and straighter in the handle. One weapon (p. 236) seems to bear the familiar asp-head.[110] The British Museum contains a boomerang brought from Thebes by the Rev. Greville Chester, and a facsimile was exhibited by General Pitt-Rivers.[111] The end is much curved; the blade has four parallel grooves, and it bears the cartouche of Ramses the Great. In no instance have we found the round shape and the returning flight of its Australian congener. Three illustrations[112] show a large sportsman (the master) bringing down birds which rise from a papyrus-swamp, while a smaller figure (the slave) in the same canoe holds another weapon at arm’s length.

Fig. 35.—Transition from the Boomerang to the Hatchet (Australia).

Fig. 36.—Australian Picks.

1, 2. Pick of New Caledonia; 3. Malga or Leowel Pick.

Strabo[113] describes the (Belgian) Gauls as hunting with a piece of wood resembling a pilum, which is hand-thrown, and which flies to a distance farther than an arrow. He calls it the Γροσφὸς, which is also described as a pilum, dart, or javelin by Polybius;[114] but evidently this Grosphus means the throw-stick, usually termed by the Greeks ἀγκύλη (Ancyle). Silius Italicus arms in the ‘Punica’ one of the Libyan tribes which accompanied Hannibal with a bent or crossed cateia: the latter is identified with the throw-stick by Doctor (now Sir) Samuel Ferguson, poet and antiquary.[115] The encyclopædia of Bishop Isidore (a.d. 600–636) explicitly defines the cateia to be ‘a species of bat which, when thrown, flies not far by reason of its weight; but where it strikes it breaks through with extreme impetus, and if it be thrown with a skilful hand it returns to him who threw it:—rursum redit ad eum qui misit.’ Virgil also notices it:—

Et quos maliferæ despectant mœnia Abellæ

Teutonico ritu soliti torquere cateias. (Æn. vii. 740).

Jähn (p. 410)[116] remembers the Miölner, or hammer of Thor, which flew back to the hand.

Fig. 37.—Indian Boomerangs.

1. War Hatchet, Jibba Negros; 2. Steel Chakra, or Sikh Quoit; 3. Steel Collery; 4, 5. Collery of Madras, with knobbed handle.

Fig. 38.—Boomerang and Kite.

It has been noted that this peculiarity of reversion or back-flight is not generic, even in the true boomerang, but appertains only to specific forms. Doubtless it was produced by accident, and, when found useful for bringing down birds over rivers or marshes, it was retained by choosing branches with a suitable bend. The shapes greatly differ in weight and thickness, in curvature and section. Some are of the same breadth throughout; others bulge in the centre; while others are flat on one side and convex on the other. In most specimens the fore part of the lath is slightly ‘dished’: hence the bias causes it to rise in the air on the principle of a screw-propeller. The thin edge of the weapon is always opposed to the wind, meeting the least resistance. The axis of rotation, when parallel to itself, makes the missile ascend as long as the forward movement lasts, by the action of the atmosphere on the lower side. When the impulse ceases it falls by the line of least resistance, that is, in the direction of the edge which lies obliquely towards the thrower. In fact, it acts like a kite with a suddenly broken string, dropping for a short distance. But as long as the boomerang gyrates, which it does after the forward movement ends, it continues to revolve on the same inclined plane by which it ascended until it returns to whence it came. This action would also depend upon weight; the heavy weapons could not rise high in the air, and must drop by mere gravity before coming back to the thrower.

Fig. 39.—African Boomerangs.

1, 2. Hunga-munga; 3. African Weapon; 4. Kordofan Weapon; 5. The same developed; 6. Faulchion of Mundo Tribe; 7. The same developed; 8. Jibba Negros; 9. Knob-stick; 10. Ancient Egyptians (Rosellini); 11. Old Egyptian; 12–15. Tomahawks of Nyam-Nyams; 16. Fan (Mpangwe) Tomahawk; 17. Dor Battle-axe; 18. Dinka and Shilluk Weapon.

From Egypt the weapon spread into the heart of Africa. The Abyssinian ‘Trombash’ is of hard wood, acute-edged, and about two feet long; the end turns sharply at an angle of 30°, but the weapon does not whirl back.[117] The boomerang of the Nyam-Nyams is called kulbeda. Direct derivation is also shown by the curved iron projectile of the Mundo tribe on the Upper Nile, a weapon of the same form being represented on the old Egyptian monuments. The ‘hunga-munga’ of the negros south of Lake Chad, and the adjoining peoples, shows a further development of spikes or teeth disposed at different angles, enabling the missile to cut on both sides. The varieties of this form, with a profusion of quaint ornaments, including lateral blades which answer the purpose of wings, and which deal a severer wound, are infinite. Denham and Clapperton give an illustration of a Central African weapon forming the head and neck of a stork. So the Mpangwe negros[118] of the Gaboon River, West Africa, shape their missiles in the form of a bird’s head, the triangular aperture (fig. 40, No. 5) representing the eye.

Fig. 40.—Transition from the Malga, Leowel or Pick to the Boomerang (Australia).

The throwing-stick has been found in Assyrian monuments: Nemrúd strangling the lion holds a boomerang in his right hand. Thence the weapon travelled East; and the Sanskrit Ástara, or Scatterer, was extensively used by the pre-Aryan tribes of India. The Kolis, oldest known inhabitants of Gujarát, call it ‘Katuriyeh,’ a term probably derived from ‘Cateia’; the Dravidians of the Madras Presidency know it as ‘Collery,’ and the Tamulian Kallar and Marawar (of Madura), who use it in deer-hunting, term it ‘Valai Tadi’ (bent stick). The Pudukota Rajah always kept a stock in arsenal. The length greatly varies, the difference amounting to a cubit or more; and three feet by a hand-breadth may be the average. The middle is bent to the extent of a cubit; the flat surface with a sharp edge is one hand broad. ‘Its three actions are whirling, pulling, and breaking, and it is a good weapon for charioteers and foot soldiers.’ Prof Oppert, writing ‘On the Weapons, &c. of the ancient Hindus’ (1880), tells us that the Museum of the Madras Government has two ivory throw-sticks from Tanjore and a common wooden one from Pudukota; his own collection contains four of black wood and one of iron. All these instruments return, as do the true boomerangs, to the thrower. The specimens in the old India-House Museum conform with the natural curvature of the wood, like the Australian; but, being thicker and heavier, they fall without back-flight. Not a few of the boomerangs cut with the inner edge, the shapes of the blade and of the grip making them unhandy in the extreme.

Fig. 41.—The Stick and the Shield.

1. Various forms of Australian Tamarang or Parrying Shields; 2. Shield of Mundo Negros; 3. Negro parrying Shield; 4. Old Egyptian Parrying Shield; 5. Dowak straight flat Throw-stick (Australia); 6. Boomerang that does not return; 7. Boomerang that does return.

Fig. 42.—Throw-sticks.

1. Australian Tombat; 2. Malga War-pick; 3–6. Australian Waddy Clubs; 7. Hatchet Boomerang.

Fig. 43.—Old Egyptian Boomerang.

Fig 44.—Bulak Sword.

Fig. 45.—Hieroglyphic Inscription on Wooden Sword, of Bulak.

From the throw-stick would naturally arise the Chakrá, the steel wheel or war-quoit, which the Akális—a stricter order of Sikhs—carried in their long hair, and launched after twirling round the forefinger.[119] The boomerang-shape is also perpetuated in the dreaded Kukkri or Gurkha Sword-knife, now used, however, only for hand-to-hand fighting. I have mentioned the Cuchillo or Spanish clasp-knife- and the Italian sickle-throwing. The Australian weapon was unknown, like the shield, to Tasmania, whose only missile was the Waddy or throw-stick.

As the Australian club, swelling at the end, developed itself in one direction, to the Malga (war-pick) and hatchet, so on the other line it became, by being narrowed, flattened, and curved, the boomerang and the boomerang-sword. Finally, the immense variety of curves—some of them bending at a right angle—were straightened and made somewhat long-oval and leaf-shaped for momentum and impetus.

THE BOOMERANG-SWORD.

The direct descent of the curved wooden Sword of Egypt from the boomerang is shown in many specimens. The blade becomes narrow, flat, and more curved; the handle proves that it is no longer a mere missile, and the grip is scored with scratches to secure a firmer grasp.[120] The best specimen known to me is in the Bulak Museum.[121] It is a light weapon of sycomore wood, measuring in length 1 mètre 30 cent. (4 ft. 3 in.), in breadth nearly 15 cent. (6 in.), and in thickness 0·2 cent. (0·78 in.), while the depth of the perpendicular connecting the arc with the chord is 10 cent. But what makes it remarkable is that the Sword bears at one side the so-called ‘Cartouche’[122] of King Ta-a-a (17th dynasty), and at the other end of the same side in a parallelogram the name and titles of Prince ‘Touaou, the servant of his master in his expeditions.’ This fine specimen was found with the mummy and other articles at the Drah Abu’l-Neggah, the Theban cemetery.

The paddle or original oar, mostly used by savages with the face to the bow,[123] is of two kinds. The long, pointed spear-like implement serves, as a rule, for deeper, and the broad-headed for shallower, waters. Both show clearly the transitional state beginning with the club and ending with the Sword.

Mr. J. E. Calder,[124] describing the Catamaran of the swamp tea-tree (Melaleuca, sp.) on the southern and western coasts of Tasmania, says (p. 23): ‘The mode of its propulsion would shock the professional or amateur waterman. Common sticks, with points instead of blades, are all that were used to urge it with its living freight through the water, and yet I am assured that its progress is not so very slow.’ Spears were employed in parts of Australia to paddle the light bark canoes,[125] and the Nicobar Islanders have an implement combining spear and paddle: it is of iron-wood, and of pointed-lozenge shape, about five feet in length.[126]

THE CLUB-SWORD.

The African paddles, usually employed upon lagoons and inland waters, are broad-headed, either rounded off or furnished with one or more short points at the end. Every tribe has its own peculiarities, and a practised eye easily knows the people by their paddles. A broad blade, almost rounded and very slightly pointed, is also made in the Austral Isles, in the Kingsmill Islands, and in the Marquesas.

Fig. 46.—Transition from Celt to Paddle Spear and Sword Forms.

1. Wooden Club Sword from New Guinea; 2. Paddle from New Guinea; 3. New Zealand Pattu-Pattu, or Meri; 4. Pattu-Pattu from the Brazil; 5. Analogous forms; 6. Ditto, ditto; 7–10. Club Paddles from Polynesia; 11–13. Wooden Spears from Friendly Islands.

Fig. 47.—Clubs of Fiji Islands.

Fig. 48.—Wooden Swords and Clubs of Brazilian Indians.

THE PADDLE-SWORD.

Fig. 49.—Pagaya, Sharpened Paddle.

The passage of the paddle into the Sword is well shown amongst the wilder ‘Indians’ of the Brazil. The Tupis still employ the Tacapé, Tangapé, or Iverapema, which is written ‘Iwarapema’ by Hans Stade, of Hesse, in the charmingly naïve account of his travels and captivity.[127] It was a single piece of the hard, heavy, and gummy wood which characterises these hot-damp regions,[128] and of different shapes with and without handles.[129] The most characteristic implement is a long and rounded shaft with a tabular, oval, and slightly-pointed blade: it was slung by a lanyard round the neck and hung on either side. With a weapon of this kind the cannibal natives slaughtered Pero Fernandes Sardinha, first Bishop of Bahia, and all his suite; the ‘martyrs’ had been wrecked on the shoals of Dom Rodrigo off the mouth of the Coruripe River. The scene is illustrated in the ‘History’ of the late M. de Varnhagen (p. 321).

A similar Brazilian instrument was the Macaná, still used on the Rio das Amazonas, and there called Tamarana. It retains the form of the original paddle, while for offensive purposes the pointed oval head is sharpened all round. In parts of the Brazil the Macaná was a rounded club; and the sharpened paddle used as a Sword was called Pagaye.[130] The Peruvian Macaná and the Callua—the latter compared with a short Turkish blade—were made of chonta-wood (Guilielma speciosa and Martinezia ciliata) which was hard enough to turn copper tools.[131] Mr. W. Bollaert[132] tells us that the ‘Macaná was said by some to be shaped like a long Sword, by others like a club.’ It was both. The Tapuyas set these broad-headed weapons with teeth and pointed bones.

Fig. 50.—Clubs.

1–4. Samoa Clubs; 5. Cross-ribbed Club; 6. Toothed Club (Fiji).

Fig. 51.—Paddles.

1–3. Spear Paddles; 4, 5. Leaf-shaped; 6. Austral Isles; 7. New Ireland; 8. African, from Gaboon River; 9. African, from Coast of Dahome.

Ojeda, during his famous voyage to Carthagena, found the warlike Caribs wielding great Swords of palm wood, and the women ‘throwing a species of lance called Azagay.’ General Pitt-Rivers’ collection has a fine flat Club-Sword, five feet two inches long, straight and oval pointed, from Endeavour River, Queensland, and a smaller article, about three feet, with a longer handle, from Australia. Barrow River, Queensland, has supplied him with a half-curved wooden blade five feet long.

Fig. 52.—Samoan Club

(Godeffroy Collection).

Fig. 53.—Wooden Sabre.

Fig. 54.—Wooden Chopper.

Fig. 55.—Knife (Wood),

from Vanna Lava.

THE WOODEN SWORD.

The fine Ethnological Museum of Herr Cesar Godeffroy[133] of Hamburg and Samoa, illustrating the ethnology of the Pacific Islands, contains many specimens of the knob-stick bevelled on one side of the head to an edge and gradually passing into the Sword. On the right-hand entrance-wall are, or were, two fine sabres (fig. 53) of Eucalyptus-wood, labelled ‘Schwert von Bowen (Queensland).’ The Sandwich Islanders, we see, still wield the Sword-club with sharp-cutting edges, like their neighbours of New Ireland. The savage Solomon Archipelago has supplied a two-handed sabre of light and bright-yellow wood; its longitudinal mid-rib shows direct derivation from the paddle-club. There is also a lozenge-shaped hand-club, which may readily have given a model to metal-workers. It is of hard, dark, and polished wood, and the handle is whipped round with coir (Tafel xx. p. 97): the length is seventy cent. by four of maximum breadth. The Swords are unfortunately not figured in the catalogue; but there is a fine wooden knife forty-nine cent. long by six cent. broad, with open handle and highly-worked grip (Tafel xxi. p. 135). It comes from Vanna Lava, Banks Group, New Hebrides, Polynesia (fig. 55).[134]

Fig. 57.—Wooden Rapier-Blade

(Dublin Museum).

Fig. 56.—Irish Sword.

The wooden Sword extended deep into the Age of Metal. Articles of the kind have been brought from New Zealand, which are evident copies of modern European weapons. Wilde (p. 452) gives the wooden Sword, found five feet deep in Ballykilmunary near High Park, county Wicklow, with some bog-butter, but he finds no indications of its age. The length is twenty inches (fig. 56). Upon the side of the blade, and of a piece with it, stands a projection whose purpose is unknown: it is evidently inconvenient for a toy; but if the relic be a model for a sand-mould, the excrescence would have left an aperture by which to pour in the metal. This view is supported by the shape of the handle, which resembles the grips of the single-piece bronze Swords found in different parts of Europe. The Dublin Museum also contains[135] a blade apparently intended for thrusting, and labelled ‘Wooden Sword-shaped Object.’ The material is oak, blackened by burial in bog-earth: it has a mid-rib, a bevelled point, and no appearance of being a model (fig. 57).

THE STONE-SWORD.

Whilst wood was extensively used for Swords, the Age of Stone supplied few. The broad and leaf-shaped silex-flakes, dignified by the name of Swords, are only daggers and long knives. The fracture of flint is uncertain, even when freshly quarried.[136] The workmen would easily chip and flake it to form scrapers, axes, spear-heads, and arrow-piles; but after a certain length, from eight to nine inches, the splinters would be heavy, brittle, and unwieldy. Obsidian, like silex, would make daggers rather than swords. Such are the stone dirk and cutlass in the Kensington Museum. Several European museums preserve these flat, leaf-shaped knives of the dark cherty flint found in Egypt. The British Museum contains a polished stone knife broken at the handle, which bears upon it in hieroglyphics the name of ‘Ptahmes (Ptah-son), an officer.’ There is also an Egyptian dagger, of flint from the Hay Collection, still mounted in its original wooden handle apparently by a central tang, and with remains of its skin sheath.[137] The Jews, who borrowed circumcision from the Egyptians, used stone knives (τὰς μαχαίρας τὰς πετρίνας). Atys, says Ovid, mutilated himself with a sharp stone,—

Ille etiam saxo corpus laniavit acuto;

and the Romans sacrificed pigs with flints. Several undated poniards in our collections are remarkable: for instance, the English daggers of black and white flint, rare in Scotland and unknown in Ireland; (a) the Iberian or Spanish blade in the Christy Collection, five and a half inches long, and found at Gibraltar; the Tizcuco blade of chalcedony, eight inches long (ibid.); (b) the Danish dagger in the Copenhagen Museum, thirteen and a half inches long (the rounded handle makes it a ‘marvel of workmanship’); and (c) the flint hatchet-sabre of the same collection, fifteen and a half inches in length. It is a mystery how the minute and delicate ornamentation, the even fluting like ripple marks, on these Danish flint-daggers was produced.

Fig. 58.—Fragments of Stone Knives from Shetland.

Fig. 59.—Flint Daggers.

a. Iberian or Spanish Blade (Christy Collection); b. Danish Flint Dagger; c. Danish Flint Hatchet Sabre.

A better substance than flint was found in the compact sandstone and in granitic serpentine, so called because that rock resembles a snake’s skin. It is easily worked, while it is harder than the common serpentine. A dagger or knife found beside a stone cist in Perthshire is described as a natural formation of mica-schiste.

The Stone Age produced nothing more remarkable than the Pattu-Pattu or Meri of New Zealand, which an arrested development prevented becoming a Sword. Its shape, that of an animal’s blade-bone, suggests its primitive material; and New Guinea has an almost similar form, with corresponding ornamentation in wood. What assimilates it to the Sword is that it is sharp-edged at the top as well as at the side. It is used for ‘prodding’ as well as for striking, and the place usually chosen for the blow is the head, above the ear, where the skull is weakest. Some specimens are of the finest green jade or nephrite,[138] a refractory stone which must have been most troublesome to fashion.

THE SWORD OF WOOD AND STONE.

Wood, however hard and heavy, made a sorry cutting weapon, and stone a sorrier Sword; but the union of the two improved both. Hence we may divide wooden Swords into the plain and the toothed blades, the latter—

Armed with those little hook-teeth in the edge,

To open in the flesh and shut again.

An obvious advance would be to furnish the cutting part with the incisors of animals and stone-splinters. In Europe these would be agate, chalcedony, and rock-crystal; quartz and quartzite; flint, chert, Lydian stone, horn-stone, basalt, lava, and greenstone (or diorite); hæmatite, chlorite, gabbro (a tough bluish-green stone), true jade (nephrite), jadite, and fibrolite, found in Auvergne. Pinna and other shells have been extensively used—for instance, by the Andamanese—as arrow-heads and adze-blades.[139]

Fig. 60.—Australian Spears armed with Flints at Side.

Fig. 61.—Sword of Sabre Form, with Sharks’ Teeth

(South Pacific).

From the Meyrick Collection, now in the British Museum.

Fig. 62.—Armed with Obsidian

(Mexico).

Tenerife, and the so-called New World, preferred the easily-cleft green-black obsidian,[140] of which the Ynkas also made their knives. The Polynesian Islands show two distinct systems of attachment. In the first the fragments, inserted into the grooved side, are either tied or made fast by gum or cement. In the second they are set in a row between two small slats or strips of wood, which, lastly, are lashed to the weapon with fibres. The points are ingeniously arranged in the opposite direction, so as to give severe cuts both in drawing and withdrawing. The Eskimos secure the teeth by pegs of wood and bone. The Pacho of the South Sea Islanders is a club studded on the inner side with shark’s teeth made fast in the same manner. The Brazilian Tapuyas armed a broad-headed club with teeth and bones sharpened at the point.[141] In ‘Flint Chips’ we find that a North American tribe used for thrusting a wooden Sword, three feet long, tipped with mussel-shell. Throughout Australia the natives provide their spears with sharp pieces of obsidian or crystal: of late years they have applied common glass,[142] a new use for waste and broken bottles (fig. 70). The fragments are arranged in a row along one side near the point, and are firmly cemented. There is no evidence of this flint-setting in Ireland: but the frequent recurrence of silex implements adapted for such purpose has suggested, as in the Iroquois graves, that the wood which held them together may have perished. We read in ‘Flint Chips’ that the Selden Manuscript shows a flake of obsidian mounted in a cleft wooden handle, the latter serving as a central support, with a mid-rib running nearly the whole length. The sole use of the weapon was for thrusting.[143]

Fig. 63.—Wood- and Horn-Points.

Fig. 64.—Mexican Sword of the Fifteenth Century, of Iron Wood, with Ten Blades of Black Obsidian fixed into the Wood. (This weapon is twenty-five inches long.)

The people of Copan (Yucatan) opposed Hernandez de Chaves with slings, bows, and ‘wooden Swords having stone edges.’[144] In the account of the expedition sent out (1584) by Raleigh to relieve the colony of Virginia, we read of ‘flat, edged truncheons of wood,’ about a yard long. In these were inserted points of stag-horn, much in the same manner as is now practised, except that European lance-heads have taken their place. Knives, Swords, and glaives, edged with sharks’ teeth,[145] are found in the Marquesas; in Tahiti, Depeyster’s Island, Byron’s Isles, the Kingsmill Group, Redact Island,[146] the Sandwich Islands, and New Guinea. Captain Graah notices a staff edged with shark’s teeth on the cast coast of Greenland, and the same is mentioned amongst the Eskimos by the late Dr. King.[147]

In the tumuli of Western North America, Mr. Lewis Morgan, the ‘historian of the Iroquois,’ mentions that, when opening the ‘burial mounds’ of the Far West, rows of flint-flakes occurred lying side by side in regular order; they had probably been fastened into sticks or swords like the Mexican. Hernandez[148] describes the ‘Mahquahuitl’ or Aztec war-club as armed on both sides with razor-like teeth of ‘Itzli’ (obsidian), stuck into holes along the edge, and fastened with a kind of gum. Mr. P. T. Stevens (‘Flint Chips,’ p. 297) says that this Mexican broadsword had six or more teeth on either side of the blade. Herrera, the historian, mentions, in his ‘Decads,’ ‘Swords made of wood having a gutter in the fore part, in which the sharp-edged flints were strongly fixed with a sort of bitumen and thread.’[149] In 1530, according to contemporary Spanish historians, Copan was defended by 30,000 warmen, armed with these and other weapons,[150] especially with fire-hardened spears. The same have been represented in the sculptures of Yucatan, which imitated the Aztecs. Lord Kingsborough’s ruinous work on Mexican antiquities, mostly borrowed from Dupaix, shows a similar contrivance (b and c). A Sword having six pieces of obsidian in each side of the blade, is to be seen in a museum in Mexico.[151] A Mexican Sword of the fifteenth century is of iron-wood, twenty-five inches long, and armed with ten flakes of black obsidian; and the same is the make of another Mexican Sword nearly four feet long.[152]

Fig. 65.—Mahquahuitls.	Fig. 67.—Mexican Sword, Iron-Wood, armed with Obsidian. (One metre eight inches long.)	Fig. 68.—Mexican Spear-head (Fifteenth Century), Black Obsidian, with Wooden Handle.
Fig. 66.—Mexican Warrior.	Fig. 69.—New Zealand Club.

The next step would be to use metal for bone and stone. So the Eskimos of Davis Strait and some of the Greenlanders show an advance in art by jagging the edge with a row of chips of meteoric iron.[153] This would lead to providing the whole wooden blade with an edge of metal, when the latter was still too rare and too expensive for the whole weapon. This economy might easily have overlapped not only the Bronze, but the Iron Epoch.

The tooth-shaped edge was perpetuated in the Middle Ages, as we see by serrated and pierced blades of Italian daggers. That it is not yet extinct the absurd saw-bayonet of later years proves.