Nifo'oti (cane knife)

This is a nifo'oti, a hand weapon with a wooden handle, metal 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.

Origins

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).

Warfare in nineteenth century Samoa

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 perfomances and the tourist market.

Acquisition History

This nifo'oti is part of a large collection of Pacific Islands and foreign ethnographic material purchased by the museum from an auction at McKenna's Antique and Fine Art Gallery in December 1929.

Notes

(1) Peabody Essex Museum , Salem Cat no: 7121A12/2 Donor : B.F.Johnson. Date received 1821

(2) Howe K.R. 1984 Where the Waves Fall. George Allen and Unwin. Sydney page 245