My previous post mentioned Father Molina's point of view on the "Oceanian" presence in Patagonia c.500 AD. He also mentions Polynesian ceremonial clubs or "okewa". Today's post will explore other articles on these clubs in the Americas.
In 1930, José Imbelloni (1885-1967), an Italian anthropologist who lived and worked in Argentina, wrote a paper about the Okewa and other similar artifacts (Imbelloni, J. (1930). ON THE DIFFUSION IN AMERICA OF PATU ONEWA, OKEWA, PATU PARAOA, MITI, AND OTHER RELATIVES OF THE MERE FAMILY. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 39(4(156)), 322–345. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20702331).
The paper includes several photographs and describes artifacts unearthed in Arkansas, California, the State of Washington, Oregon, Michigan, British Columbia (Canada), Mexico, Peru, Argentina,
Imbelloni discards "convergence" by which people in the Americas created artifacts that are identical to those manufactured in New Zealand by Polynesian people (" not only because I consider such a convergence improbable which supposes also a somewhat astonishing parallelism of creative stages; but also on account of a large number of purely morphological circumstances.")
Imbelloni concludes as follows:
"The fact is that to this day nobody has ever faced the phenomenon in its integrity, because statements were based on a few discoveries, and more especially on North American ones, without taking South America into account; and some other writers dealt with the subject with much lightness, accepting commonplace explanations. The difficulty was avoided: now by bringing to bear the criterion of “convergence” in accidental inventions to a degree unsuitable even according to Bastian himself; now by impugning the veracity of the evidence of authors and writers of the last generation, as regards the specimens I have not been able to locate in the Museums; now by supposing that everything can be explained through a transposition of labels and objects in the glass-cases of ethnographical collections.
Against all these presumptions we have seen that the specimens found and collected by me, in these pages show unity and congruence.
To North America belong the following specimens: five standard patu onewa made of green and brown stone; two bodies of patu which very probably were of the onewa type; one argillite patu with a two-headed handle, similar to the Chatham specimens; three specimens of the miti model; and several patu paraoa, shaped according to the pattern of New Zealand.
To South America belong the following specimens: four patu onewa and two okewa.
The discoveries are located all along the Pacific Ocean zone in the northern continent, as well as in the southern.
The area of spatular weapons comprehends in North America: British Columbia and the States of Washington, Oregon and California. It is not necessary to assume that the origin of Nos. 4 and 5 from Michigan is apocryphal. A well-known track led the Indian tribes from the west to the Great Lakes region, by following the courses of the rivers. As for the southern steps, they form an uninterrupted chain along another beaten track, the way of the Uto-Aztec wandering—California-Arkansas-Mexico.
In South America the same element becomes visible in Peru and Araucania. It is interesting to note that the form of the patu onewa prevails toward the north and that of the okewa toward the south; let us note also the identity of type in the territories placed on both sides of the Cordillera de los Andes: the Argentine Nequén and the Chilian Province of Cautin, two areas connected by a corridor, whose ethnological content defines them as two communicating vessels.
Thus, the facts are connected by a natural logic that links them and throws light upon them all; and I am quite ready with profound admiration for those ethnologists who, with the preconceived idea of denying the migration of cultures from the Pacific to America, will be obliged to display much ingenuity in refuting, or cloaking with smoky clouds, the simple nature of the facts I have stated.
I beg of the reader not to forget that this paper contains only the American discoveries of the mere family stricto sensu, and no other. We must likewise consider in separate chapters.
(a) The derivatives proper to the New World, and especially the two foci of Nootka Sound and Araucanía, so plentiful with local variations.
(b) The quadrangular ceremonial axes which are toki tikitiki in Mangaia.
(c) The acclimatization in America of the whole Oceanic system of words, customs, and hierarchies connected with the word toki."
Alternative Explanations
Imbelloni mentions two of them: convergent creative styles in different cultures or misplaced labels on museum collection artifacts. There are more. See, for instance, Ivory, C. S. (1985). Northwest Coast Uses of Polynesian Art. American Indian Culture and Research Journal , 9(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.17953 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xk7z6b2).
Ivory argues that these artifacts in North America date from the late 18th century and are not older than 1778. During this period the natives living along the Pacific Northwest in the US and Canada (British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington) were exposed to European goods and also to objects coming from Polynesia "especially those, such as the Tahitian gorget or the Marquesan club, which would enhance their status or prestige, or those like the Samoan club, which would be practical substitutes for implements in use in the culture. In both cases, the Native Americans sought not to change their culture, but to expand or enhance it through exotic, innovative or unusual objects. That these objects were Polynesian is not as important as the fact that they were both differentfrom and adaptable to Northwest Coast life."
Ivory also notes a pre-European⁄American contact through "the wreckage of Japanese vessels drifted on prevailing currents to the Northwest Coast some even with surviving crew members."
Imbelloni in his description of the Limay artifact pictured further up (See: Imbelloni, J. (1929). Un arma de Oceanía en el Neuquén. Reconstrucción y tipología del hacha del río Limay. Humanidades (La Plata, 1921) 20, 293-316. https://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/art_revistas/pr.2174/pr.2174.pdf), clearly states that he agrees with Juan Ambrossetti's 1908 publication about this same artifact, stating that "these American ceremonial weapons form part of the Polynesian culture."
The "Toki"
Imbelloni also noticed that the word "Toki" was used in Polynesia and among the Chilean Mapuche people to designate ceremonial axes or adzes. He wrote a paper about this (Imbelloni, "TÓKI" La primera cadena isoglosemática establecida entre las islas del Océano Pacífico y el Continente Americano, Revista de la Sociedad de Amigos de la Arqueología, 1931. V, 129-149):
"The phoneme toki extends unaltered from the eastern limit of Melanesia, through all the island groups of the Pacific, to the maritime territories of the two Americas, with a wide area of penetration into the interior of the northern continent, as well as the southern one, where the diffusion has followed the dual East and South direction, to the southern lands...
A more or less valuable part of the cultural heritage of the Native Americans is directly dependent on the migrations that the Pacific Islanders made to the west coast of America, fanning out from their last garlands of land, Hawaii in the North and the Marquesas, Paumotu, Rapa Nui in the South..."
Further reading
Juan B. Ambrosetti, Clava lítica, de tipo peruano, del territorio del Neuquen, en Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires, tomo XVII (1908), p.229-231.
José Miguel Ramírez Aliag, Contactos transpacíficos: un acercamiento al problema de los supuestos
rasgos polinésicos en la cultura mapuche. ISSN 0716-0887, CLAVA 5 1992, Museo Sociedad Fonck, Viña del Mar - Chile
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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