The similarity in shape and decoration between these early clubs is striking and might suggest that all the specimens come from a single region of Guiana. They certainly define an early homogeneous group of Guiana clubs securely datable to the first century of European contact. –

Warwick Bray, 'One Blow Scatters the Brain: An Ethnographic History of the Guiana War Club', 2001.A

little while ago, I wrote an article about the magnificent burial finds by archaeologists at Sipan in Peru, artifacts that may be equated with those of the Egyptian pharaohs, for finery and art in gold, silver and other materials. In comparison, however, the Peruvian objects have about them a brashness that sets them apart from the more staid remains associated, say, with Tutankhamen.

That sumptuous brashness I like to think of as American, a development of two continents lost to the knowledge of the rest of the world, nigh on 35,000 years, until the galleons of Christopher Columbus' fleet touched the white sand beaches of the Bahamas on that day "full of fate", October 12, 1492.

Unlike most other recent immigrants to this hemisphere, Bermudians share a commonality with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, for we were the first humans to settle permanently in this minute acreage of those great continents, albeit late in the day in 1612. We are perhaps the last people to occupy land in this hemisphere that had not been previously colonized by another human society.

Thus, the title of my article mentioned in the opening sentence was "We are Americans too", but this did not survive the editorial red pen. Americans, however, we are, in much the same way as were the settlers of the lands to the west of the mighty Orinoco River, lands called "Guiana" by those aboriginals, meaning the "land of many waters", divided and joined as they were by many South American rivers flowing north to the Caribbean Sea.

Columbus sighted these lands on his third voyage in 1498, but paid little attention to an area that later would draw the adventurous looking for 'El Dorado' in its hinterland. Like the modern seekers of paradise at the infamous Jonestown, Guyana, many found but an intractable environment and untimely death.

Sir Walter Raleigh went looking in 1595 and 'described El Dorado as a city on Lake Parime far up the Orinoco River in Guyana', but this was disproved by the travels of Alexander von Humbolt at the beginning of the 19th century. The Europeans eventually divided the land of waters into Dutch, English and French Guiana, the former two becoming Suriname (like our cherries) and Guyana in modern times.

Perhaps as long as 40,000 years ago, people began to cross from the extreme eastern reaches of Asia into Alaska, spreading from there to nearly all points of North and South America. Some of the descendants of those peoples from the north eventually reached Guiana on the northeastern coast of the southern continent. By the time of the arrival of Columbus, the area was divided between the Arawak on the coast and the more aggressive Carib in the interior. Later, the Arawak were the first to colonise the West Indies chain of islands northwards, but were replaced there by the warlike Caribs by the late 15th century.

One type of artifact created in Guiana before Columbus, but in use at the time of contact with Europeans was the wooden war club, intricately decorated in geometric patterns. Four such clubs are at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, while a fifth is at the British Museum. A sixth has turned up in the collections of the National Museum of Bermuda, taken in the 1950s by Robert Canton and Edward Tucker from a shipwreck thought to be the

San Pedro, a Spanish vessel, possibly an African slaver, 11 years old when lost here in 1596.

In February 2010, Colin McEwan of the British Museum, and Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo of the University of Florida, identified the Bermuda object ("an incredible artifact") as a Guiana war club. Dr. Warwick Bray, a leading expert on an implement that in 'one blow scatters the brain' added these remarks.

"By now you have solved the problem of what the item is, and I can't even imagine how it came to be labelled Muisca (from Columbia). The club fits perfectly into predictions for what a contact-period Caribbean club should look like. My article says everything I know about the early mainland examples, but I would emphasise that none of the early European collections comes with a good provenance. I tried very hard to tie them down, but the documentation just isn't there, and I can't do better than Guyana in the broadest sense, including possibly the mouth of the Orinoco.

"Also there must be a possibility that your club is from the islands. I didn't go into this problem for lack of time and space, and it is still only partly researched (though not abandoned). Perhaps we can help each other on this. What I need is early images of the islands, with people and clubs. The reference is to an illustration I found in P.C. Emmer (1999)

General History of the Caribbean, published by UNESCO. The picture shows a Carib man and a woman standing under a tree, and the man carries a club of just the kind we are interested in. The original print is in Jean Baptiste Du Tertre (1667-1671)

Histoire Generale des Antilles, Paris."

Thus it appears that an extremely rare item of Amerindian heritage found its way into Bermuda waters, demonstrating that travellers in all ages collected curios for the home front. The Bermuda war club also underscores that the shipwreck heritage of these islands is of international import. It is also another connection that Bermuda has had with "Demerara" over the last three centuries or so, one of the more recent being when men like Earl Darrell of the Bermuda Contingent 1st Caribbean Regiment, joined Dan Goodlock and other soldiers from Guiana and the Caribbean in the distant fields of conflict in Italy and Egypt in World War Two.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments may be made to director[AT]bmm.bm or 704-5480.