The Earliest Traders - First Nations Trading Routes

These items are immediately identifiable from any warrior’s kit- spear and shield. The spear is an implement which seems to have been developed in some form, through time as well as place, in every culture. From the most ancient of times right up to the present, humans have devised and made spears in some form or another to suit purposes such as hunting, fighting or ceremony. The most common employment for them was for hunting and the serrated point on the spearhead shown here indicates that this is what it was used for. When a target was struck with this type of spear, the head would embed itself in the animal, opening the wound and making it bleed, therefore weakening it and making the prey easier to stalk or chase down.

For defence but also for ceremony, wunda were once used across a large portion of Western. They appear to have been produced mainly by peoples living in the area between the Gascoyne and Murchison rivers, then traded to other groups along the vast network of inland exchange routes. The zigzag design was universal and seems to be associated with rain and water. The lines represent surging floodwaters or ripples on sand or the surface of a large body of water.