kalak

Updated: June 18, 2025

We saw three kinds of spear at Cape York; one is merely a sharpened stick used for striking fish, the two others, tipped and barbed with bone, are used in war. Another spear, occasionally used in fighting, has three or four heads of wood each of which is tipped and barbed with a smaller bone than is used for the kalak.

John MacGillivray - Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850. : Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, Etc. to Which Is Added the Account of Mr. E.B. Kennedy's Expedition for the Exploration of the Cape York Peninsula. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition. — Volume 2

At a little distance, perhaps, would be a small chapel with the priest's house adjacent, and the somewhat more commodious houses of the tax-gatherer and starosta the head man of the village, when he happened to be a farmer. Sometimes he was a kalak keeper, scarce one degree superior to his fellows.

John Ironside - The Red Symbol