This offering in the Adelaide museum from 1934 looks like an effective weapon doesn’t it? Those Papua New Guinean head hunters certainly knew how to keep their potential trophies from getting damaged before they had a chance to shrink them!
Chronicle 23 Aug 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91069573
Head Hunters Weapon for Surprise Attack.
Noose around the head, tight around the neck and a quick jab in the back of the neck. Not really a nice way to go.
Having caught animals with a catching pole before though, I have to say it is not as simple as it looks.
I can’t imagine it being too easy to get this spiked version over the head you covet without doing it some kind of damage.
I wonder if this is an actual weapon or just an interesting artifact?
A search for headhunters weapons mostly returned images of heavy clubs. After all if you’re going to shrink them you don’t need the skull to remain intact do you.
As a child I remember being taken to the Melbourne Museum to see an exhibition of historical medicine and witchcraftery. Ok, that isn’t what it was called but you know what I mean.
One of the exhibits that day was a darkened operating theatre set-up complete with tools for hacking off limbs, a table designed to drain blood, a screaming soundtrack and, of course, rivers of fake blood.
I still remember that excursion happily and fondly remember that day being where I saw my very first real-life shrunken heads.
Ahhhh…. Memories… 😉
Buried words and Bushwa. 
I’m trying to conjure up visions of two tribes going to war armed with these things. It seems a bit unreal that the opposition would each be trying to get one of these over their opponents head. I mean, what would happen if two enemies both got each other at the same time? Call a truce, or one man down each without being able to finish the job.Mankind is a grisly beast.
Your reminiscence is worrying in that your sigh at the end makes it sound like you’d have quite happily been hacking limbs off in that hospital. If I ever come to dinner remind me to steer clear of the kitchen.
xxx Huge Hugs xxx
I had a similar vision, I think the danger would be in putting out an eye with that spike rather than it doing its intended job. It seems to me to be the kind of weapon that only works when someone is sitting quietly with their back to you and not paying too much attention, not something I would be doing if I was hanging out in head-hunter territory I tell you!
You wouldn’t be the only one to steer clear of me when I am in the kitchen surrounded by my sharp, sharp, knives. Is it something I said? (Maybe like something I heard recently from a certain sharp stick collector? “My preshusssss” 😀 )
Hmmm… I wonder if that spike thing was meant to sever the spinal column or pierce the jugular? Sorry, but you know how um… geeky I can be. 😀
I’m totally with you, it would need to be carefully placed for either of those grisly outcomes wouldn’t it? Nice of those desirable heads to stay so still isn’t it…. 😉
Oh wait! I just had a thought. What if they tightened the noose and then dragged it around in a circle – sort of like a can opener? Ahem, no I don’t need medication…
Eeek! What a thought! It would want to be a long stick, just to keep out of the splash zone. 😉
*sneak, sneak, sneak… lift…. swing…..!* I can just see it being caught up on tree branches at the critical moment leaving the hunter horribly exposed….
-giggles- well, you have to give the ‘head’ a fighting chance, don’t you?
Once again this makes me think of a cartoon character – guess what I spent a bit of time doing as a kid – fuzzy wuzzy Elmer “Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting heads”… as he sneaks up behind his unsuspecting victim…
Okaaayyy… “Having caught animals with a catching pole before though, I have to say it is not as simple as it looks” combined with ” fondly remember that day being where I saw my very first real-life shrunken heads”… hhhmmm, interesting.
YES! Elmer is perfect! I can’t imagine the hunt going any better for a real life headhunter than it did for Elmer’s shotgun if this was the only weapon at their disposal. 🙂
I’m afraid any catching pole I used in my days working at an animal refuge didn’t come with the murderous spike attachment though. Probably just as well, I would have been tempted to use it on some of the ‘humans’ that came through the door at a place like that. As for the shrunken heads, I was always a child who preferred the fairy tales where the evil stepmothers/sisters/bad guys got their just desserts and died unhappily ever after…. 😀
PS: I know you and the G.O. are Tom Cole fans so you might be interested in the comment I got on https://picsandstuff.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/tom-cole-buffalo-hunter-or-superhero-1938/ today. 🙂
Fantastic. I’ll show the G.O.
Great that Hell West & Crooked is on Kindle… we may see the movie yet 🙂
I’m just wondering why heads shrink when dried (and smoked according to the excerpt)… surely the skull would keep them pretty much the original size?
Welllll, I’m going to have to admit I have done a bit of research on shrinking heads (for another post I did about them, I am not planning any souvenir hunting myself!) so I can condense one method down to; cut the back of the head open to take the skull out and remove all the squishy bits, they sew the orifices closed and boil it, much like a hunter prepares a skin. Once it is ready (shrunk) and flexible they shape it over a period of time, then fill it with plant fibres and decorate it. Ta daaa! Unpleasant souvenir complete.
Sounds complicated… you really want to have one to go through all that, but I suppose at least it means your souvenir is portable!
Anyway, that saves me having to look it up myself… I wonder what the net police think of such searches!!!
I wonder how many heads were wasted before the method was perfected? Ewwww…
Yes, those net police. Some of the research I have done into the most obscure facts in these articles has taken me to the most amazing places. If I am being tracked I expect that the men in white coats will turn up in a padded van to take me away one day. 🙂 if I stop blogging unexpectedly you will have a pretty good idea of where I will be….. 😉
That memory is the perfect opening scene for a mystery novel! it sets up the principal character. The detective? Could be. The serial killer? Certainly. The enigmatic witness/narrator? Definitely.
Serial killer? Eeeek! It is a fine line between academic interest and a plastic-lined room in the basement isn’t it…. 😉 I expect that my parents would have been very concerned about me if I had come home and tried to shrink my sisters head after that trip.
I still have the souvenir badge from that visit tucked away somewhere all these years later. 🙂
I can honestly say I had never pondered how a shrunken head ended up, well, shrunken. Thanks for the lesson. And I wonder what the victors did with the rest of the body – or maybe I don’t want to know.
I wonder who was the first one to think that carting around full-sized heads on their trophy belt was annoying and that shrinking them down would be much more convenient? And, really, ewwww to the method of doing so.
I can just imagine that long-ago hunter sitting around the fire saying to himself “Hmmmm, if I took out the bone it would be lighter, but floppy. What to do, what to do… Ah Ha!
“Honey…. Can you bring out a big cooking pot? No, not a special one, you aren’t going to want to use it again…” 😉
Ha! Humanity knows no limits when it comes to creativity, does it?
Shudder!
Just make sure you are wearing a kevlar scarf…
Not ‘arf!
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