[Editor’s Note: This regular Cross Paths feature examines artwork and artifacts from the MPMRC’s collections.]
By Stephen Cook
Mr. Cook is Head Curator of Ethnography at the MPMRC
In 1634 William Wood, a colonist in the Massachusetts Bay colony, described Mohawk tomahawks as “staves of two foot and a half long, and a knob at one end as big as a football.”1 This is a fairly accurate, though slightly exaggerated description of seventeenth century ball clubs from the Eastern Woodlands; most range between twenty and twenty-six inches in length and three to five inches across the ball end. These formidable weapons were also an important symbol of personal spiritual power and social prestige. They were a warrior’s biography and a mark of distinction.
Ball clubs differed slightly from east to west across North America, with no two clubs being quite the same. Although they were highly personalized weapons, they were still created in essentially the same way. Native artists manufactured the clubs from hard wood trees such as maple, cherry and birch, selecting the portion where the truck meets the root mass. This area has a natural curve in the grain that ends in the dense root burl, making it ideal for a ball club.
The ball club was often embellished with elaborate incised designs, animal or human effigies and pictographs. The effigies are usually carved over the top of the ball portion of the club, often grasping the ball portion of the club. These were not carved solely for decorative purposes, as the human and animal effigies often represented personal or clan guardians, and carried important religious symbolism. Antoine Denis Raudot, wrote in 1709:
A man puts on it [the club] his divinity, the symbol of his name, which is a beaver, an otter, or some other animal or bird; he depicts on it also his face, the number of men he has killed and the prisoners he has taken, and for his own glory he leaves such war clubs in places where he has been on some expedition in order that his enemies may know who killed their people and of what nation he is.2
In addition many ball clubs were also painted, usually in combinations of red and black, colors associated with life and death respectively. In the Northeast, particularly southern New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, some very important clubs were also decorated with brass and shell inlays, further enhancing their symbolic impact as objects of status and power.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the ball club was primarily a weapon and a symbol of a warriors status in the community. This had changed by the middle of the nineteenth century, when ball clubs were rarely used in combat. During this time slightly smaller versions of ball clubs were made, sometime without using a root burl. These were used only in important dances and ceremonies as symbols of personal achievement, pride and status in the community, a tradition that continues today.
Native artists in Maine made a slightly different form of club, one that is unique to their homeland, the root club. These clubs were also made from root burls, usually Gray Birch, and the artists left short portions of the root attached. These root projections were either sharpened to a point or carved with a variety of animal and human forms. There is evidence that this style of club, in a simple and utilitarian form, was being made as early as the late eighteenth century.
Some of the early clubs were carved with simple facial features or mythological animals and were used in important ceremonies and dances. The root club at this time was an important symbol of Penobscot and Passamaquoddy cultural identity more than it was a weapon. During the later part of the nineteenth century Penobscot and Passamaquoddy artists began to carve elaborate animal and human effigies on both the handle of the club and the root projections. The handles were also usually chip-carved in geometric and floral designs. Many clubs were painted, especially during the first half of the twentieth century. These modifications were in response to a growing tourist economy in the area, and represented the artist’s ability to capitalize on this new market.
Native artists continue to carve elaborate root clubs today, where their carving skills are just beginning to be recognized as a true art form. The root club has now taken on the dual role of being an important symbol of personal achievement and skill as well as a cultural artform that is admired by collectors around the world.
Despite their reputation as weapons of frontier warfare, ball clubs and root clubs are more importantly a personal record of a man’s status and role within the community and a testament to his artistic skills as a carver. Today’s Native artists continue this tradition by making these clubs both for private use and public sale, further enhancing the role of the ball or root club as a cultural symbol.
Footnotes:
1 William Wood, 1977. New England’s Prospect. Ed Alden G Vaughan. Amherst: Massachusetts UP. Wood is referring here to an English football or soccer ball, which was a bit smaller then than now.
2 This quote is from Antoine Denis Raudot’s letters written in Quebec in 1709. Translated in, W. Vernon Kinietz. The Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1615-1760. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP. 1965
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