ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the object itinerary of a tomahawk from its elusive origins on the North American east coast, via the armoury at Tre Kronor, the old royal palace in Stockholm, to its present location in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. A careful examination of its shape and materiality proves that the tomahawk was a creole object from the outset, shaped and given meaning in a colonial contact zone. Where it is now in the museum, the tomahawk is an example of the desire of the Western world to collect and control, yet at the same time it manifests the power of a single object to wriggle free of given categorizations.
