Even a brief survey of the relevant literature reveals that, from ancient to modern times, poisoned arrows have been employed in almost all parts of the world. As for the dawn of arrow poisoning, there lies only conjecture. Perhaps ancient humans first encountered the possibilities when they noticed more serious wounds and infections resulting from weapons coated with the dried remains of their prey’s blood and gore.
The Bible records the cries of Job: “The arrows of the Almighty pierce men, and my spirit drinks their poison.” Homer mentions in the Odyssey that Ulysses had knowledge of poisoning arrows and that Achilles was killed by an arrow wound in his heel.1 One may ask how such a wound could have been fatal unless the arrow was poisoned.
For killing his wife and children, Hercules, son of Zeus, was confronted with the punishment of the Twelve Labors. After completing his second task, killing the Hydra that lived in the swamp of Lerna, he dipped his arrows in her blood to poison them. The myth continues that in his fourth labor, he killed the great boar of Mount Erymanthus with poisoned arrows, and in his sixth, a flock of man-eating birds with bronze beaks and claws.
The most widespread method of poisoning arrows among North American Indians mirrors that of the ancient Greeks, who buried the remains of deadly adders until putrefied. The finished product contained not only snake venom, but also gangrene and tetanus bacteria.2 In the fourth century, Quintillian, lieutenant of the Roman general Maximus, confronted the Franks, who fired large poisoned arrows from catapults behind a thick log palisade. Gregory de Tours wrote that wounds inflicted by these Frankish arrows would surely cause death.3 The Romans employed the Numidians, whom they first encountered during the Punic Wars, as mercenaries because their poisoned arrows terrorized the Teutonic tribes.4
Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny wrote that the Celts and Gauls poisoned their arrows with the juice of Lineum, a genus related to hellebore. The Celts applied sap from the Yew tree, and the Dalmatians and Daces, Aster helenium (Sneezeweed).5 The Gauls used aconite, the favored arrow poison in both Europe and Asia, with fifty species known in Europe and twenty-four in India.
The Scythians, Aristotle reported, poisoned their arrows with a mixture of snake venom and putrefied blood. Classical literature is replete with references to arrow poisoning by the peoples of the Black Sea and Asia Minor.6
A 1644 English book on “field sports” offers the following description of preparing an arrow poison known as the crossbowman’s herb:
This decoction is made of the roots of the white Hellebore, which should be gathered towards the end of August as it is then at its best season and strength. The way to treat them is to take off all earth and any kind of viscous matter which may adhere to them and wash them well. After this they should be pounded and placed under a press to extract all their juice, which will have to be carefully strained and then put over a fire to boil. All froth and viscosity which may remain must be skimmed off the juice. When this is done, the juice must be strained again and then set in the sun from ten o’clock in the morning till the day declines. This process will have to be repeated for three or four days or more. Each day before the juice is set in the sun it must be strained, when it should be like syrup, and of the same color but thicker. If you put a straw or a bit of stick in it, it should adhere to it, and that which gathers together most quickly and which if smelt makes people sneeze violently, is the strongest.7
The long history of arrow poisoning in Asia reaches into relatively modern times. Customary behaviors surrounding the concoction of arrow poison among the Ainu of Hokkaido indicate that the pattern precedes the rise of historical Japanese civilization. In the late nineteenth century, Europeans often accompanied the Ainu on hunts and described their observations, including those on arrow poisons.8 The Ainu prepared such deadly poisons that a bear would die in a matter of hours after being struck.
Ainu arrow poison was based around two species of Aconitum: A. ferox (Indian Aconite) and A. japonicum (Japanese Aconite), two of the most lethal members of the genus. In the spring the Ainu dug, peeled, and dried the roots in the sun, after which they pounded them into a powder between two stones.9 They then added the gall bladders of three foxes10 and boiled the mixture in a quart of water until it was reduced by half. After straining the concoction, they allowed it to dry to a pulpy consistency. At this point, the poison maker added six crushed poisonous spiders and more water and boiled it to a gummy consistency. Some Ainu poison makers would bury the compound for several days, but others applied the sticky mass directly to specially designed poison-carrying
Western observers witnessed that only a few Ainu men knew the secrets of poison and that they carried out their preparation with much secrecy and formality. To test the poison before applying it to arrows, one would touch a small piece to the tongue. If the poison was good, a numbing and tingling sensation would immediately occur in the mouth.
Their bamboo arrowhead was about two inches long and slightly excavated or channeled on one side. It was loosely affixed to a point shaft several inches in length, which was inserted into a reed shaft. The composite construction prevented a bear or man from removing the arrow because the head would disconnect within the victim’s body.
The Ainu hunter dipped the arrowhead into pine-tree gum before applying a ball of poison the size of a pea in the channeled side, flattening it with his thumb. Finally, he once again dipped the arrowhead into the pine-tree gum, which kept the poison firmly attached.
None of the Ainu poison-arrow research mentions its use in combat. By the time Western observers had contacted the Ainu, the Japanese government had expressed strong disapproval of arrow poison and outlawed its manufacture.
North of the Ainu, the native peoples of Kamchatka-Kurile applied Anemone virginiana (Virginia Wind Flower) and Anemone nemorosa (Scarlet Wind Flower) to their arrows.11
Russian explorers in the Kurile Islands in the late 1700s reported the natives with a plant called Liutik. With a mixture made from the root, they painted their bodies and anointed their arrowheads to poison them.12 The plant was later identified as a species of Anemone.
The first recorded Japanese encounter with enemies using poisoned arrows came in 1274 when Kublai Khan launched a force of 30,000 Koreans and Mongols in 450 ships against Japan at Hakata Bay on the island of Kyushu. The attackers excelled at massed cavalry maneuvering and armed themselves with javelins, maces, and poisoned arrows.13
The peoples of China are well known for their arrow poisons in both hunting and warfare.14 A. japonicum was widely used in northern China. The Book of Later Han by Fan Ye (398 — 445) recounts an attack by the Xiongnu [Huns] against a town defended by the hero Geng Gong:
Geng Gong climbed onto the ramparts, and led his soldiers into battle. He coated his arrows with a poison, and spread the rumor among the Xiongnu that the Han had sacred arrows, and the wounds of those who were hit would certainly be extraordinary. Then he used powerful crossbows to shoot these arrows. The barbarians who were hit noticed that their wounds were all frothing up. They were very frightened then.15
Many species of Aconitum flourished, especially in the mountainous regions of China, where hunters and warriors of Yunnan and Guangxi concocted arrow poisons into the twentieth century.16 The Nosu of southwestern Szechwan devised a powerful arrow poison, as did the Miao of Kweichow and the peoples in southeastern China. In the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu rulers praised the skill of southwestern crossbowmen, who could shoot small birds on the fly with their poisoned ar-rows.17 Chemical analysis determined that Miao poison was extracted from the root of Aconitum spp. and that of the Nosu from the leaves and stems and resembled the “black aconite” favored by some Tibetan groups.18 The Burmese and Vietnamese also employed aconite arrow poison.19 That of the Lhoba in southern Tibet had such toxicity that, while making it, they were compelled to cover their mouths and work with a following wind so that not even the smallest trace could blow into their eyes.
Francis Hamilton, a British medical doctor stationed on the Nepalese frontier in the early 1800s, dispatched an assistant into the mountains in search of plants that the local tribesmen used for poisoning arrows. The assistant returned with several species of Ranunculus (Aconitum is a member of the Ranunculus family), including A. similax (Greek derivation meaning “poisonous tree”) and A. trollius, all known as bish by the mountain people. Referring to Aconitum, which he suspected as the key ingredient in the various bish, Hamilton wrote,
This dreadful root, of which large quantities are annually imported, is equally fatal when taken into the stomach and when applied to wounds, and is in universal use throughout India for poisoning arrows; and there is too much reason to suspect for the worst of purposes. Its importation would indeed seem to require attention of the magistrate. The Gorkhalese [Goorkha] pretend that it is one of their principal securities against invasion from the low countries, and they could so infect all the water on the route by which an enemy was advancing as to occasion his certain destruction.20
The Goorkha and other tribes inhabiting the flanks of the Himalayas poisoned weapons with the root of A. ferox.'2'1 In an experiment to test the effectiveness of the poison, researchers injected two grains of the Goorkha’s bish into the jugular of a “good-sized strong dog.” The dog convulsed in one minute and was dead in three.22
The Abor of northeast India, neighbors of the Mishmis, live on the border between Assam and Tibet. Both groups use poison arrows that can kill tigers, buffaloes, and elephants in hunting and warfare. British medical doctor Sir Thomas R. Fraser, assigned to India in the midnineteenth century, wrote, “Our troops were assailed with poisoned arrows in Major-General Babbage’s Abor Expedition of 1848, and they were used in most of the subsequent punitive expeditions, which also originated from the depredations of these turbulent tribesmen.” 23
In the last expedition against the Abor and Mishmis in 1911, the British “on many occasions were subjected to flights of poisoned arrows.” 24 Medical officers treated six poison-arrow wounds, and three of the wounded died.
The Abor were forthcoming about the ingredients in their arrow poisons: Aconitum and Croton oil, pig’s blood, serpent’s venom, and the fruit and juice of several poisonous plants. Fraser’s analysis identified A. ferox and sometimes A. heterophyllum (Atis).25
Fraser also studied Entada scandens (Sword Bean), another arrow poison ingredient, as well as Sri Lankan fish poison.26 This plant, along with Artocarpus integrifolia (Jackwood) and Feronia elephantum (Elephant Apple), strengthened the lethal mix and lent an adhesive quality.
In comparing their arrow poisons, Fraser learned that Croton oil heavily influenced the Abor poison whereas Aconitum dominated that of the Mishmis. “From information derived from the tribesmen, arrows poisoned with croton are preferred in warfare, because, in their experience, death from aconite arrows can be generally prevented by merely washing the poison out of the wound with water; whereas Croton arrow wounds, even if so treated, cause local effects likely to result in death by secondary septic poisoning.” 27
The aconite-treated arrows of the Abor and Mishmis could kill an elephant (two and a half tons, or 2,540 kilograms) with thirteen arrows and a water buffalo (700 kilograms) with four or five. On the basis of the above figures, two arrows could kill a two-hundred-pound man. The most potent poison concoction Fraser examined was so deadly that one arrow could kill three men.28
Plants, particularly flowering ones, provided the poisons for North American Indian and Asian arrows; however, the Kung San (Bushmen) of the northern Khalahari Desert in southern Africa mixed one of their most effective arrow poisons from the larvae and pupae of chrysomelid beetles (Diamphidia; Arrow Poison Beetle). The cocoons live between twenty centimeters and one meter underground around the host plant, the dza tree (Commiphora angolensis). The grub of Lebistina, found near its host the marula tree, was also a source. Lebistina, fittingly, was the Roman goddess of corpses, funerals, and the underworld.
The Kung San simply squeezed the contents of the larvae/pupae on the arrow just behind the point, perhaps drying it over a fire, or they combined the contents of the chrysomelid beetle with crushed Lebistina and tree gum to augment the poison and create an adhesive. A third method entailed drying the larvae/pupae, grinding it to a powder, and reconstituting it with plant juice (adhesive) before applying it. The Kung San arrow poison could kill a rabbit-sized animal in only a few minutes, but they might have had to track large animals, such as giraffes, for days before the poison brought them down.
Bushmen in southwest Africa rub the extracted resin from the root of Buphane toxicaria (Oxbane) on a small stone, which they place in the mouth of a snake, usually the ringhals. They force venom out to mix with the resin and coat arrow and spear tips with the resulting gum.29
Longman and Walrond, archery historians, offer this comment about Bushmen arrow poisons:
The Bushmen use both vegetable and animal poisons. The former are chiefly obtained either from the bulb of the Amaryllis toxicaria [Upas Tree] or the juice of one of the Euphorbias [Milkwort]. Animal poisons are of several kinds, amongst them being the matter from the poison-gland of several kinds of snakes; they also, like the Ainu, use the juices from large black spiders. The most terrible poison of all, however, is made from the body of a grub called N’gwa, or K’aa, which drives any unfortunate raving mad before he dies in agony.30
Kung Bushmen of the Dobe region shoot poisoned arrows or throw poisoned spears in public duels and occasionally hit bystanders, including women and children. The poison can kill a man in about six hours, and attempts to remove the poison, by sucking, for example, are usually futile.31
The Akoa Pygmies of the Congo have formulated a complex and highly toxic arrow poison. Although they do attack enemies with it, their poison is designed as a hunting aid to paralyze the muscles and stop the heart of a wounded animal before it is lost in the dense jungle undergrowth. Ten kinds of plants are incorporated, among them two of the approximately two hundred species of Strychnos (Nightshade), one of Strophanthus (Poison Rope), one of Erythrophloeum (Sassy Bark), one of Amaryllis, and wild peppers. Wild yam juices and fig latex provide body and an adhesive quality.
The poison maker crushes the ingredients in a bowl into which he mixes his own saliva. When the liquid turns a brownish-red, he adds a marsh toad, whose skin is toxic, and boils the concoction until it thickens into a paste. He then adds crushed beetle grubs and black stinging ants, scrapes the paste from the bowl, and encloses it in soft bark, which he places in the body of a monkey, shot for the purpose, and buries. After several days ofputrification, he exhumes the poison package and adds the sap of a euphorbia tree as a final adhesive.
The Akoa Pygmies have some of the most powerful arrow poisons in Africa. Strychnos, a tropical liana, provides strychnine, also a major ingredient in the infamous curare of the Amazonian Indians. The poison must contact blood to activate, but a slight scratch can cause fatality. The Indians of the Amazon often coated their fingernails with the sap of the Strychnos during hand-to-hand combat. When this poison is introduced into the blood, the muscles involved with breathing become paralyzed, and suffocation results.
The Poison Rope in the Akoa Pygmy recipe is also found in the arrow poisons of the native peoples of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, and, in fact, most of the west coast of Africa. They mix the crushed seeds into a paste with saliva and set it in the sunlight for a few hours. The sap of euphorbia helps bind the poison to the arrow. Introducing this poison into the blood results in muscular paralysis, producing death and a condition difficult to distinguish from rigor mortis. S. kombe is the most popular of the genus Strophanthus, but S. amboenis (Omuhundure), S. hispidus (Inee), and S. speciosus (Common Poison Rope) are also prevalent. This arrow poison can kill a hippopotamus in twenty minutes. Although the sticky white latex collected from a cut in the bark of the euphorbia often serves as a poison adhesive, a few of the species, particularly E. virosa and E. subsala, are themselves toxic.
African arrow poisons, just as lethal although somewhat rare and limited in distribution, include Adenium bohemians (Desert Rose), Asclepias stellifera (Milkbush), Buphane disticha (Candelabra Flower), Pachypodium lealii, and Abrus precatorius (Rosary Pea). Genus Amaryllis comprises the notorious A. belladonna (Naked Lady), the bulb of which is poisonous to humans. The bark of Erythrophloeum contains the alkaloid erythro-phleine, which affects the heart similarly to digitalis.
Woodchips from Acokanthera spp. (Bushman’s Poison)—the most common species being A. longiflora (Apple Blossom Cassia), A. oppositi-folia (Common Poison Bush), and A. schmperi (Poison Tree)—are frequently included as ingredients in making poison. The chips are boiled in water for as long as twelve hours or until a thick black paste forms. Tree gum becomes the adhesive. An arrow poisoned with Acokanthera can kill a large animal in fewer than twenty minutes.
Arrow poisons were used by the Tangale, Longuda, Borok, Pongo, Keri-Keri, Ngizim, Marghi, Lakai, Chibbuks, Dakkakerri, Ibibio, and Yoruba.32 One scholar observed, “The Ibibio are the most expert poisoners on earth, though other Semi-Bantu tribes run them a close second. It is said that the Yoruba as well as Ibibio know drugs from which no effect will be visible for several months, but death is sure to result.” 33
Animal and vegetable toxins for arrow poison were known throughout the Sudan. The Hausa in east-central Africa based a complex arrow poison on Strophanthus.34 The Akamba (central Bantu) traded poisons—
Acocanthera schimperiana, Adenium obesum (Elephant Foot) and A. soma-lense, Cassia spp. Crotalaria retusa (Rattleweed), Euphorbia spp., Securidaea longipedouculata (Little Tree), and Tephrosia vogelii (Fish Poison Bean)— with their neighbors the Kikuyu, Embu, Tharaka, and Mijikenda. Contiguous groups who created arrow poisons from these ingredients include the Masaii, Wasania, Wakamba, Wanderobo, and Wa Nyika. The Sakayes, Somangs, and Obok are also cited.
The Zulu poisoned their arrows and spears with an extract from the root bark of Combretum caffrum (Cape Bushwillow). A scientific investigation of these poisons in the late 1970s determined that this poison holds great promise in the treatment of solid tumor cancers. The investigators wrote,
Unlike conventional tumor treatment, which often destroys healthy as well as cancerous cells, the Zulu poison targets only blood vessels formed inside tumors. Why the poison does this is still unknown.
By shutting off the cells’ supply of oxygen and nutrients, the poison stops a tumor thriving, and forces it into decline.35
Along the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya, the Giriama boiled the branches of the muriju, a species of the Acocanthera group, to create a sticky poison that quickly stops the heart. The Wakamba became the major Kenyan elephant poachers by the 1970s with such poisons, which can kill an elephant in a matter of hours. In Madagascar the roots, leaves, flowers, and berries of the Tanghinia tree produce an effect like that of Acocanthera, a poison primarily for warfare.36 On the west coast of Africa, a seventeenth-century traveler noted, “When they are at war with one another, they coat their arrowheads with poison which they make from the sap of a certain green herb; but these poisoned arrows are not allowed to be carried except in wartime.” 37
An 1800s account identified the Akus and the Somali of western Africa as poison-arrow users.38 Likewise, the warriors and hunters of the west African kingdom of Benin (formerly Dahomey) made an arrow poison from Strophanthus sarmentosus (the source of cortisone) and S. preusii (Twisted Flower) “with various kinds of nastiness added,” including the gall of the drummer fish.39
References to poisoned arrows abound in the Islamic tradition. Since the law of Muhammad forbade one Muslim from killing another, battles involving Muslim contestants featured arrows designed not to kill but to engender sufficient pain to nullify the effectiveness of enemy fighters. In standard battle, two men rode a chariot, one driving and the other, with poisoned arrows or darts, sitting between the driver’s feet facing backward.40
Many references to poison arrows come from Indonesia. The Javan tribes, as well as groups in Borneo, Sulawesi (Celebes), and Irian Jaya (western New Guinea), devised poison from the sap of the Upas tree. They considered Upas tiute the most potent of the genus but sometimes mixed U. antiar with it.41 Borneo tribes, such as the Punan, coated blow-gun darts with Strychnos toxifera (curare), Antiaris toxicaria (Ipoh Tree or Upas Tree),42 and/or an unknown species of Aconitum.43 On the Malaysian Peninsula, Aconitum was the choice for blowgun darts. In the Philippines, tribesmen covered their arrows with aconite poison,44 and the Javans derived their poisons from Antiaris toxicaria, Upas, a tree of the mulberry and breadfruit family. The Karen people of Burma and the Mentawai of Siberut, Indonesia, have been adept at poisoning arrows for centuries. In Burma and Assam, the poison sources are varieties of Antiaris, Strychnos, and Strophanthus.
The Spanish left records of arrow poisoning by tribes in northern Mexico. The Jova put an amalgam of putrid cow livers, rattlesnake venom, centipedes, scorpions, and various poisonous plants on their arrow points. In the Caribbean, the Spanish confronted the Carib, whose arrow poison came from the sap of the Mancenilla tree (Hippomane mancinella),45 one so deadly that, according to legend, the Indians tied captives to it to ensure a slow and horrible death. They also used Hura crepitans (Sandbox Tree), which is half a million times more toxic than potassium cyanide. The Arawak and Taino tribes doctored their wounds from poison arrows in warfare by covering them with a poultice of Maranta arundinacea (Arrowroot).46
Various authors reported Florida native peoples in possession of arrow poison. Ponce de Leon, when in search of the Fountain of Youth, is said to have died from a poisonous arrow wound. In 1521 another famous explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, was killed by a poison arrow on the island of Mactan in the Philippines.47
The native peoples of northern South America use curare, perhaps the best known arrow poison, for both warfare and hunting. The name is derived from their words woorari, woorali, or urari, all meaning “poison.” Many variations exist, but the basic recipe contains S. toxifera, S. guianensis, Chondrodendron tomentosum, and Sciadotenia toxifera. To one, several, or all of the above could be added snake venom, poison ants, the root of the hyarri, or the secretion of several types of “Poison-Dart” frogs. To obtain its poison, the Indians agitate the frog until it secretes a white, frothy substance through its skin. The secretion from one frog can poison as many as fifty arrows, the lethality lasting on the tips for at least a year. The Dendrobates azureus is so deadly that just brushing against the frog’s skin is enough to kill an adult.
A convention has arisen around naming a poison after the method of its storage. Curare made from Strychnos is stored in a calabash and that from Chondrodendron in a bamboo tube; hence, one hears of calabash curare or bamboo curare.
Indians evaluate curare potency in various ways. A common procedure involves pricking a toad with a curare-coated twig and counting the times it jumps before it dies. In one experiment archers, avoiding vital body organs, shot a large adult ox in the nose and both hips with three curare arrows. Within four minutes the animal was disoriented and staggering, and it died in twenty-five minutes.48
While one might assume that arrow poisoning is ancient history, such is not the case. Botanist Edward R. Ricciuti comments:
Witness the recent and bizarre spectacle of pygmy warriors carrying bows and poisoned arrows into combat alongside the Zairian army during the recent skirmishes with Katangese rebels in the Shaba region. Rebel soldiers who had routed the well-armed Zairian forces shuddered and lost heart at the news that the little men from the deep jungles were heading for the front.49
During World War II, Borneo and Malay tribesmen attacked Japanese forces with blowgun darts coated with Aconitum. The Balugas of Luzon joined the American forces against the Japanese armed with poisoned arrows,50 and the Punan of Borneo killed many Japanese invaders with Strychnos darts. Earlier in Java, local tribesmen fought the Dutch colonial administration with darts poisoned with Upas.51
The survey of military arrow poisoning has established that the practice is ancient, efficient, universal, and present as a potent weapon of warfare even in modern times. Some researchers, however, are of the opinion that arrow poisons are not native to Australia52 whereas others note that Australian aborigines knew more than twenty poisons for fish and killed emus by poisoning their watering holes with the leaves of Taphrosi purpurea (Faux Indigo).
There is little mention in the relevant literature concerning arrow poison in warfare or hunting for classic Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Aztec and the Maya, as well as Polynesia, yet numerous poisonous plants grew in the area. Perhaps this lack of weapon poisoning relates to elite combat where noble warriors fought close to their enemies with clubs and swords. Weapon poisoning seems to have predominated in areas where the bow and arrow was the typical weapon.
Because North American arrow-poisoning behaviors were quickly curtailed with the conquest of the New World, much of the documentation in the preceding survey was drawn from modern medical, botanical, and anthropological experts and must suffice to present a world context in which North American Indian practices can be evaluated.
World History
