by Alyssa Caldito
This wooden shield features three long prongs at the bottom and several bamboo arrowheads attached to the back. The middle prong is long and skinny, with three sticks of wood reinforced by rattan. Along the back of the shield are rows of rattan, which are used to secure the arrowheads. These arrowheads would have been laced with poison to instantly kill opponents.
The shield itself originates from the Kalinga tribe, one of the many Igorot tribes in the Cordillera region of Northern Luzon. The prong patterns of the shields had important cultural and practical value, as many other traditional Kalinga shields had two bottom prongs to accompany the three top prongs. When held upright, the shield looks like a rough depiction of a human, with the two bottom prongs appearing to look like legs, while the three top prongs look like a head with raised arms. This depiction of a person is even more apparent when shields from different groups were compared and found that the statures of these “people” matched the statures of the groups that they came from (Tavarelli, 1995). In battle, it was thought that warriors would use the top prongs to disable their opponents by tripping them, then use the bottom two prongs to immobilize their heads. This goes along with the Igorot reputation of being “headhunters,” in which Igorot men would behead their opponents for religious reasons.
This item is part of the H.E. Smith Collection, which has several writings produced by Mrs. Carrie Smith and are accessible here.
Citations
- Tavarelli, Andrew. (1995). Protection, Power, and Display: Shields of Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia. Boston College Museum of Art.
- Interior, U. S. N. M. I. S. D. of the. (1877). Bulletin—United States National Museum no. 137 1926 [Digital Book]. https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/bulletinunitedst1371926unit