FIG. 4: Ceremonial club. Nuu-chah-nulth, Western Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Before 1778. Wood (yew). L: 33.8 cm. Provenance: Collected by Captain James Cook at Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound,1778; Sir Ashton Lever, Leverian Museum, London, England, 1780–1786; Dr. James Parkinson, 1786–1806, London; Leverian Museum Collection auction, July 8, 1806; Richard Hall Clarke, Esq. Bridwell, Uffculme, North Devon, England, then by descent, 1806– 1967; Bearnes Sales Rooms, Torquay, Devon, England, December 12, 1967; J. J. Klejman, New York, 1967; S. K. Bennet, Washington, DC, 1968–2006; George Terasaki, New York; Donald Ellis, New York, 2006–2012. University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, 2945/1. Photos: John Bigelow Taylor. Courtesy of Donald Ellis. 107 FIG. 3: Chart showing the dispersion of zoological material collected on Cook’s three voyages. Previously reproduced in Peter J. P. Whitehead, 1969, “Zoological Specimens from Captain Cook’s Voyages,” in Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 5(3). While this chart specifically tracks zoological specimens, it gives some sense of the complexity of the dispersion of Cook artifacts within about a century of their collection. Cook’s third voyage and of world art history, the artist who created it as early as the mid 1700s was clearly from the Northwest Coast, placing it firmly within the last generation of traditional Nuu-chahnulth (formerly referred to as Nootka) objects created before European contact in that region. Carved from yew wood in the shape of a hand holding a sphere, it may have been both a ceremonial symbol of its owner’s high rank as well as a functional tool or weapon for dispatching large fish or sea mammals. It is considered the oldest known and most finely executed club of this style (of which the MOA holds at least four other examples). And, as Michael Audain, chairman of the Audain Foundation, notes, “While certain Nuu- chah-nulth objects collected by Cook exist in museums abroad— for example, in London, Berlin, and Vienna—this is the first and only in Canada.”
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