Nifo'oti (cane knife)

This is a nifo'oti, a hand weapon with a wooden handle, wooden blade and a distinctive hook. It is one of several forms of nifo'oti that have been made in Samoa from at least the early 1800s.

The first nifo'oti may have been modelled on cane knives or the blubber knife of early nineteenth century English and American whalers. These knives became a popular weapon in the Samoan civil wars of the mid to late 1800s and can be seen in old photographs from the period. The most common form of nifo'oti was a wooden club carved with long teeth along one side and a single curved hook projecting at the end of the other. In 1927, anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa considered the wooden nifo'oti a modern development most likely made for show and ceremonial purposes. However, in the United States at the Peabody Museum in Salem, there is an example of a wooden nifo'oti given to the museum in 1821 that points to a much earlier origin (1).

In the nineteenth century, Samoans engaged in spear throwing and club fighting contests but weapons were most often used in small scale skirmishes or ambushes. Fighting could be vicious and the injuries if not fatal, very serious. Battles were fought over major chiefly titles and to settle disputes or avenge insults. It has been noted that firearms were not widely used in this period and no one side had a monopoly on them (2).

Some indigenous weapons had importance as heirlooms and were passed down and in some cases even named. The family war club was known as the 'anava, and it would be brandished on the malae of the village when a troop of warriors were setting out to march. In the twentieth and twenty first centuries, indigenous forms of weaponry were still made in Samoa for cultural performances and the tourist market.

This nifo’oti is part of a larger collection of artefacts accumulated by Frank Corner, a New Zealand diplomat who worked in London as Deputy High Commissioner between 1952 and 1958 and later in the Pacific Islands. In 1961, Corner became New Zealand's Ambassador to the United Nations. He chaired the Trusteeship Council for two years, and served on the United Nations Security Council. Corner was the leading proponent of decolonisation of Pacific territories under New Zealand control, and provided the leading intellectual arguments in favour of decolonisation of Tokelau, the Cook Islands, Niue, and Western Samoa.

Acquisition History

In 2018, this collection was donated to Te Papa by Victoria Corner.