"The beauty of the Solomon Island canoes has excited the admiration of all voyagers, navigators and explorers from the time the islands were first visited by white men" wrote the British naturalist Sir Charles Morris Woodford.

Distinctive among the hundreds of different Oceanian canoes is the crescent-shaped, plank built, Tomako canoe with its slender lines and fascinating upwardly-projecting bow and stern decorated with shells and feathers. This was the black painted war canoe of the Solomon Island head hunters.