Georg Forster, Cook’s scientific draftsman on his second trip around the world, noted about the clubs in Tonga:
“But by far the greatest part were carved all over in many chequerd patterns, which seemed to have required a long space of time, and incredible patience, especially when we consider, that a sharp stone, or a piece of coral, are the only tools, which the natives can employ in this kind of work. All the different compartments were wrought and divided with a regularity which quiet surprised us, and the whole surface of the plain clubs was highly polished, as if our best workman had made them with the best instruments.”
In 1777, on his third voyage around the world, James Cook had the opportunity to witness ceremonial club fights at a festival of thousands of Tongans on the Ha'apai group in the north of the Tongan archipelago. According to the Tongans, the mana – the divine energy of the ancestors – was mobilized by the codes of the ancestral gods in the carving of the club, and additionally strengthened by small bundles of sacred red feathers attached to the end of the handle and above the striking part of war clubs such as this one, which has a square cross section.
Whether there was actually a secret Tongan plan to kill Captain Cook and his crew and to seize the two ships at this club ceremony – as some of Cook’s fellow travelers suspected after their return – is doubted by modern scholarship. Cook named the Tongan archipelago the “Friendly Islands” – Friendship Islands.