Mentawai bow, arrows and quiver.

[DaveF]

Here's a Mentawai bow, arrows and quiver, dating from the mid-1990s. The guy I bought it from told me he had been travelling with his girlfriend in Sumatra in 1996 when they took a ferry to Siberut, with no idea what they would find there. They ended up staying with a Mentawai family for a couple of weeks and shared their plentiful supply of cigarettes with them. When they were leaving, their host took his bow and arrows and gave it to them, in thanks for all the cigarettes they'd shared and left behind. I didn't stop to ask why he had chosen to sell such a wonderful gift for so little.

The bow is about 66 inches long and is light and slim, seeming to be made from the traditional palm wood. The wooden arrow tips are all wound with a very fine thread and one of them has some white substance on it. Would this be poison and does anyone know how long such poisons retain their efficacy? The blunt arrow has the same length shaft as the others, but the blunt tip is much shorter and one of the arrows has a thin metal tip which looks like copper. The bow string looks like it's made in the traditional way from tree bark and the quiver is also made in the traditional way, from bamboo covered in sago leaf with a coarse braided rope for carrying.