Travellers to the Pacific, Australasia and America Case Contents

These are practical tools made from local materials. The stones are fixed to the wooden handles with gum from trees.

This is a cast of the fossilised jaw found in South America and given to Canterbury Philosophical and Literary Institution Museum in 1841 by General William Miller. The original was lent to the British Museum in 1845, when it was used to help establish the new species of elephant ancestor Mastodon andium. Canterbury Curator John Brent allowed the British Museum to keep the original in exchange for a cast and various other fossil specimens.

The form and decoration of these clubs is unique to people from Nootka Sound. One has a serpent-head handle unlike any other clubs so far recorded. They were collected during Captain Cook’s voyages in 1776-79.

The coconut cup would have been used for fermented drinks. It is a high status item with decorations linked to the Cook Islands.

The decorative hair comb from Tonga is made of coir fibres.

The gourd was used for burning coral to create lime, which was chewed with beetle leaves.

Pearl shells for the necklace have been carefully serrated round the edges and bound with pandanus (aromatic plant) leaves, hibiscus string and dyed black fibres.

One of a pair of snowshoes used by animal trappers and made from local materials except for the cloth, which probably came from Stroud in Gloucestershire, which had trading links with Canadian trappers.

A Maori stone club and a throwing club from Fiji, both of them for use, not decoration.

People living in the South Seas have created a large range of different fishhooks, each suited to catching a particular type of fish.

These paddles and scoop date from about 1815 to 1840. They are for decoration rather than practical use and were originally made for local trade. As the South Seas opened up to visitors from the west, the decorative paddles became much sought-after collectors’ items among Europeans.

They were made on one island, Ra’ivavae, but some were traded to Taluh, another island, and acquired from there. The carvings were made with sharks’ teeth or European tools. One paddle is decorated with heads and dancing girls. The scoop has an unusual squared handle.

These long spears are particular to people living in the Torres Strait. They are richly decorated status symbols and have hollow bottoms.

A Maori weapon for fighting, decorated with a head, eyes and a tongue.

Headrests were valued, high status items. This example has inlaid decoration including a flying bird. It is probably one of the objects collected during Captain Cook’s voyages and distributed among museums in Britain.