L’éclat des ombres 75 struck their oars against the side of the boat in unison. The sun, which made the mother-of-pearl incrustation twinkle and gleam with the passage of every wave, was already moving down on the horizon. The rowers doubled their speed in order to ensure they would reach the place where they were to spend the night. Count Rodolphe Festetics de Tolna, Chez les Cannibales, 1903. WHITE, RED, AND BLACK In October of 1895, this is how the intrepid Hungarian explorer Rodolphe Festetics de Tolna described the singlehulled canoes of Choiseul Island in the northwestern part of the Solomon Islands Archipelago—a melting pot for Melanesian and Polynesian cultures situated southeast of New Guinea—as they set out on a headhunting raid from which he was to return embittered. Before him, the first Spanish explorers under the leadership of Alvaro de Mendaña y Neira in 1598 and French navigators such as Jean-François de Surville in 1769 had also admired the expert manufacture of the canoes as well as their sparkling aesthetic qualities. The elevated silhouette of these vessels is unmistakably recognizable among the wide range of canoe forms in the South Pacific. In the Roviana Lagoon area, the shape is said to be inspired by a mythological spirit resembling a canine and named Tiola, who taught men how to build the first war canoe with tall extremities that are intended to represent his head and tail. The hull is made of about twenty lightweight planks obtained from specific varieties of coastal trees with very straight trunks and especially pliable wood. These are reinforced by stout curved sections of root lashed securely to the FIG. 2a and b: Model war canoe. Western Solomon Islands. Late 19th century. Wood, resin, shell (Nautilus sp.), vegetal fiber, textiles, feathers, seeds. L: 350 cm. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, inv. 72.1988.2.1. © Musée du Quai Branly. Photo: Patrick Gries. This model canoe, an exactly proportional replica of the great war canoes of the islands of New Georgia, Vella Lavella, Choiseul, Santa Ysabel and Gela, was acquired by the Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie from Dutch dealer Loed van Bussel. The few mentions of it in the archives associate it with Eton College in Cambridge, England. Given that in the 1880s such models were made on New Georgia for sale to Westerners, the hypothesis that it was collected by Bishop John Richardson Selwyn (1844–1898), the son of G. A Selwyn, the founder of the Anglican Church’s Melanesian Mission, could be viable. Some objects that John Selwyn collected on Gela, or gifts he received as a sign of their faith from islanders who had converted, were given by his descendants to what is now the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge. While its history is somewhat uncertain, this commissioned object nevertheless dates to a pivotal time in local history, when headhunting raids were discouraged by missionaries and even more vehemently banned by the British colonial authorities. At the same time that this destruction of local culture was taking place, its sculptors were manufacturing replicas of war paraphernalia (clubs, spears, shields, and canoes) for Westerners in order to satisfy a demand from them that was created by a mixture of a horrified fascination with these predatory ways and a recognition of the remarkable abilities of Solomon Islands sculptors.
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