Weird "sword"

[Jim McDougall]

At the risk of a clumsy interpretation, I decided to look further into the idea of this having West African religious/spiritual associations and found some potential ideas amidst the complexity of these.

My speculation is this item may be from the Haitian/Dominican sphere, and potentially, owing to the very old appearance of the metal, could date to the French colonial period there. Further it may have connection to the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) the insurrection of slaves, mulattos under the suzerainty of French overlords.

The religions of West Africa (many people here were Fon, Ewa and Aja from Dahomey) who practiced VODUN, which later evolved into 'Voodoo' in the southern states of US. ..as well as spirit pantheons from the western Congo became the complex African religion syncretic with Catholicism.
This is connected to the Santaria noted.

While monotheistic, there is a highly complex pantheon of gods/spirits termed IWA who are humans who act as intermediaries with this pantheon.

Without getting myself too far 'into the weeds' (too late) ..
there is one named 'Ogun' (?) who is associated with PETWO, defender of Rada values, and carries weaponry,

The Petwo side of things is 'hot' ..assiociated with fire, violence in these defenses of Rada, the softer cooler values.

I am thinking that somehow this might be a ceremonial bearing or perhaps inspirational weapon in which the blade resembles flames in these respects.

While admittedly somewhat wild in speculative suggestion, it seems to be in course with this VERY unusual 'weapon', which aligns more spiritually than as an actual weapon.

[Ian]

Well, this is getting interesting! This thread may go on for a while in exploring the mystical elements of this item. I find the possible African spiritual connection very interesting, and its possible entree into the U.S. via slavery.

[Tim Simmons]

It could be an very stylised Haitian Vodou version of Shango axe morphed into a machete, a significant element in Haitia.

[Jim McDougall]

Tim that is a viable suggestion as what we are dealing with is the stylized and often temporal interpretations of spiritual concepts and beliefs.
I think Ausjulius' idea is well placed and looking back to discussions in which he was a key contributor back in 2009 showed his keen interest in these areas.

The Dahomean hwi and the varied types of 'ada' swords of the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria seem to have many variations of 'themed' ceremonial swords. In many cases they were stylistically like many of the actual weapons used, however many were so artistically oriented that they would not have been feasible as battle weapons.

In many cases, the artistic styling might be subtle, as it would seem possibly pertaining to the example we are discussing.

In reading through some posts it was noted that another symbolic element in Dahomean regions was the shark (see the cutlass illustrated below with bifurcated tip and handle).
The plate of hwi examples is from "Sabers Decores du Dahomey" Palau Marti, Objets du Mondes, VII: 4, 1967.

The hwi shown with briquet hilt illustrates the interpolation of colonial weapons with tribal blades as often the case in ethnographic weapons. While initially thought this was of course a French briquet, it was found actually this was German (by regimental marks on hilt). While French colonized most of these West African areas, the Germans were present in Togo.