Bolo with wide blade and t-grip for identification

[Ian]

Hal. Nobody seems to know exactly where these bolos come from, nor the man in the photo. I suspect we will resurrect this thread down the road when we hit upon the answer.

As promised, I am attaching pictures of two knives of the Ilongot, a noted headhunting tribe in northern Luzon. The bolo used by the Ilongot has a fairly distinctive form and the scabbard is unusual in its decoration, featuring MOP inserts and dangles.

Ian.

[Ian]

Having thought the last word on the inscription of the man's photograph may be "TIMOR" I have been thinking over the next to last word and I believe it is "CANAKA," which may be a corruption of "KANAKA." The word kanaka is Polynesian and means human. It was adopted by Europeans to mean anyone from Polynesia or Melanesia.

Kanakas were routinely abducted in the 19th C. from the Torres Strait Islands and Timor to work as slave labor in the sugar cane fields of northern Australia, notably in the State of Queensland. There are still descendants of these people living in northern Australia today.

I think this man is a kanaka from Timor. On further reading of Henry O. Forbes' A Naturalists Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, I was struck by the following passage:

"What the pedigree of the Timorese is I have not sufficient evidence for forming any decided opinion; but that they are a race in which many elements comingle seems certain. I saw no one with what I can with perfect truth designate as "black skin" such as seen among the Aru islanders. Tall, well-proportioned men, with frizzly hair, and of a rich and yellowish brown or of a choclate colour, I saw in abundance, as well as short, stumpy men with straight hair and no lack of beard or moustaches."

Forbes further decribes a prominent presence of "Mongols" (Chinese) as local merchants, and even a tribal group of red-haired, fair-skinned natives who intermingled and bred freely with other local groups.

Quite an ethnic melting pot. In a previous post on this thread I rather boldly said the man in the photograph was unlike any Asian/SE Asian native that I had seen in thirty years of traveling in the region. I've never been to Timor. But it sounds as though Timor has some very unusual ethnic blends, involving Malay, Chinese, European, and Pacific Island groups. The man in the photograph may well have emerged from such a comingling.

Until someone comes up with something more conclusive, I'm going for a Timor kanaka in the picture, and his bolo as being a variation of either a local golok/parang or a European machete.

[fearn]

Hi Ian,

It's possible that the man is from Timor, but there's a bit of evidence against him.

As I pointed out above, the Timorese look Papuan, which means dark skin and frizzy hair. Similarly their blades apparently don't look like this specimen.

A sample handle (admittedly on a replica klewang) from the archives is shown here

So far as I can tell, this handle is the same as Draeger shows in a sketch of a timorese parang.

I like the idea of "cana" being short for Kanaka--but I don't think we're in the right part of SE Asia yet.

F

[Ian]

Fearn:

Reading Forbes the last couple of days has given me quite a different picture of the Timorese. They have a wide mix of ancestry that goes far beyond Polynesian/Melanesian roots. Indeed their collective culture appears to have been one of interbreeding among all groups that settled the island.

The man's appearance is not typical of a Malay, Chinese, Polynesian, Melanesian, or any other racial group I have encountered in the region. So he probably is mestizo, which makes it very difficult to place where he might be from. The fact that mixed racial breeding appears to have been quite common on Timor enhances my view of an origin there, but it is far from firm evidence.

Fearn is correct that the bolo in question bears no resemblance to the traditional weapons described as coming from Timor. I think it may be an "unconventional" weapon from that island. Just as the man may be of mixed heritage, I also think the bolo he holds is of mixed origins. That may explain why nobody seems to have a clear idea of where it comes from or what it resembles. The blade looks looks like a machete. I don't know what the hilt resembles.

[Conogre]

Hi Guys...so THIS is where you all went!
Tom, glad to see that someone else came up with another one so that we're finally heading towards a type, where as up until now it was the only one I'd dever seen.
And yes, by the way, I still have it....the blade is definitely hand forged and completely unlike a machete in any fashion except for the fact that it's much thinner than anything I've seen from either the Philippines or the Indonesian area.
As to Timor, I have an opi that's almost twice as thick as the "mystery sword", while much thinner side profile.
Along the spine, near the guard, it's got 7 rows of three bars, very much like some of the tourist dhas from Thailand from the Vietnam era, opening the possibilty that it could well be from one of the older hill tribes that just aren't that well researched, maybe?

[Conogre]

Well the original swords that began this thread have now been unarguably identified as being from the Philippines, although which tribe is still open to question.
Engar's post of weapons from the museum in madrid has 2 exacly like ours and one with a slightly different hilt.
See "Museo Militar Madrid"-weapons-photo 2 and numbered 2, listed as "Machete Filappino" and "Museo Nacional Anthropologia Madrid", photograph #26 for two more, with no name or origin listed, other than included with the Philippine weapons.
Perhaps Engar could be persuaded to ask the museum officials if they have any additional information the next time he visits?
Mike

[Ian]

Mike:

"Unarguably" is a little strong, I think. I'm not willing to accept a Philippines origin just yet. Museum staff are notoriously bad at assigning attributions for edged weapons, so I would like to see the historic documentary evidence on these bolos before agreeing completely with you.

If you look through the pictures of these displays, there are some minor and major anomalies. For example, a couple of khoumiya have strayed on to one board, and many of the displays show an eclectic mix of Moro, Visayan, Luzon, and frankly Spanish weapons.

Comparing the original subject of this thread with the similar examples shown in the Madrid Museum, I am not seeing the fancy cut out designs at forte on the museum examples, nor I do see the sloppy rattan work on the hilts of the Madrid specimens.

If you look through the variety of swords and other edged weapons shown in the Madrid displays, the Machete Filappino is a distinct oddity, with its fat-bellied blade, a hilt with square cross-section (as opposed to round, octagonal or hexagonal) and a bifid, full-tang hilt construction. There is nothing else that remotely resembles this combination of features. This suggests to me that this machete is not primarily of Philippine origin. I would suggest that it is at least based on a style imported from elsewhere by the Spaniards (perhaps Central or South America where the fat-bellied form of machete has been common, and may have developed originally).

A connection to Spanish America is something I have thought since I first saw these bolos. There was certainly extensive trade between the Philippines and Spanish America, especially Mexico. Indeed, several of the Governors of the Philippines during the Spanish period came from Mexico.

Whatever may have been the origin of what is labeled the Machete Filappino, it seems to have virtually disappeared from the Philippines today, perhaps replaced by what we recognize as modern machetes or by traditional bolos.

There remain some further loose ends for me with respect to the attribution of the original subject of this thread to the Philippines. There is the picture of a very un-Filipino looking man holding a similar bolo, and the cryptic, partly legible inscription. I'm not seeing anything there that would confirm the Philippines, and there is no legible reference to a place or tribal group that would confirm a Philippine origin.

Lastly, despite the substantial experience on this Forum with Philippine edged weapons, including several native Filipinos from various parts of that country, nobody has identified these definitely as Philippine in origin. Nobody is saying, "my grandfather had one hanging on the wall" or "the oldtimers used to cut bananas with these things." With the exception of Federico, there has been a resounding walang wala. Does this mean that none of them have ever seen or heard of anything resembling these bolos in the Philippines?

Those are the reasons I'm still skeptical Mike. Provide some documented answers to my questions and concerns, and I will happily agree with you that these are from the Philippines.

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Definition of machete: "Machete" is a Spanish term, and I found three on line references to the defnition of machete.
"1. A large heavy knife with a broad blade, used as a weapon and an implement for cutting vegetation.
[Spanish: diminutive of macho, sledge hammer; alteration of mazo, club, probably from maza, mallet, from Vulgar Latin mattea, mace.]


2. A large heavy knife used in Central and South America as a weapon or for cutting vegetation.
Synonyms: matchet, panga


3. A machete (pronounced muh-shet-ee) is a cleaver-like tool that looks like a very large bread knife. The blade is about 1.5 – 2.0 feet (0.5 m – 0.6 m) long. An English equivalent term is matchet. Since the 1950s, most modern factory made machetes are of very simple construction, consisting of a blade and full length tang punched from a single piece of flat steel plate of uniform thickness (and thus lack a primary grind), and a simple grip of two plates of wood or plastic bolted or rivetted together around the tang. Finally, one side is ground down to an edge - although some are made so cheaply that the purchaser is expected to finish the sharpening. These machetes are usually provided with a simple cord loop as a sort of lanyard, and a canvas scabbard - although in some regions where machetes are commonly used tools, the users may make decorative leather scabbards for them.

The machete is normally used to cut through thick vegetation such as sugar cane or jungle undergrowth (the lack of a primary grind makes the machete much less effective on woody vegetation), but it can also be used as an offensive weapon. Machetes were the primary weapon used by the Interahamwe militias in the Rwandan Genocide. The modern machete is very similar to some forms of the mediaeval falchion (a type of sword), differing mainly in the lack of a guard and a simpler hilt.

A panga (a Swahili word) is a variant used in East Africa, with a broader blade and a squared off tip. In the Philippines, a bolo is a very similar tool, but with the blade swelling just before the tip to make the knife even more tip-heavy for chopping.

Other similar tools include the parang and the golok (from Malaysia and Indonesia), however these tend to have shorter, thicker blades with a primary grind, and are more effective on woody vegetation."