Teegeae. — On Old Maori Civilisation. 537 



cannot have been on the conventional pattern, for "bne perfect 

 moko is the exact likeness and copy of another. This refers 

 only to the particular tattooing, in spirals, &c., with which we 

 are generally acquainted ; the face of a chief pourtrayed by 

 Cook gives an entirely different set of markings ; and, again, 

 the mokokuri pictured by White" shows a series of short 

 straight lines, arranged in sets of threes, which are alternately 

 horizontal and vertical. The difference between the decora- 

 tions of one set of Pacific Islanders and the next, and even the 

 different systems in vogue among the Maoris themselves, show 

 that tattooing has probably had some common source, but has 

 been so affected by an immense interval of time, and by the 

 isolation of those practising it, that it is almost impossible to 

 find out what the original form was. However, its form 

 matters little compared with its signification, and I trust to be 

 able to prove that its significance is unmistakable. 



I have, in a former paper (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xx., 

 p. 361), called attention to the fact that the common word for 

 tattooing had meanings leading to the conjecture that tattoo- 

 ing was once a form of wanting ; and I have now to strengthen 

 that conjecture by showing that every word used by the Poly- 

 nesians for tattooing points backward to the same conclusion. 



When Cook returned to Britain from the South Seas he 

 enriched our language with a new word, or what was said to 

 be a new word in European speech, viz., " tattoio," as applied 

 to a pattern punctured on the skin. The word is Tahitian, 

 and should be written tatau. It is a form of the word tau, 

 and is one of the most common and wddely spread of Poly- 

 nesian vocables. Besides its general meaning, " to puncture 

 markings on the skin," t it appears also to apply to trading 

 and numerical calculations. In Maori, it means " to count " ; 

 in Moriori, " to calculate " ; in Samoan, " to count, to buy, to 

 barter " ; in Tahitian, " to count or number " ; in Tongan, " to 

 trade"; in Nine, "to count, to buy"; in Marquesan, "to 

 count " ; in Mangarevan, " to be counted," &c.:|: 



These words so widely distributed show at once that the 

 tattoo was not a mere ornament ; it was something that was 

 of use in buying and selling — some mode in which accounts 



* Frontispiece, vol. i., "Ancient History of the Maori." See also 

 Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xx., p. 35.3. 



t Tahitian, tataii, ; Tongan, tatataic ; Rarotongan, tatatatau ; Pau- 

 motuan, tatau ; Futuna, tatau, &c., all meaning " to tattoo." 



\ Maori, tatau, to count. Moriori, tait, to calculate. Samoan, tau, to 

 count, to buy or sell ; fa'a-tau, to buy, to sell, to count. Tahitian, tatau, 

 counting, numbering. Tongan, faka-tau, to trade. Niue, totou, to count ; 

 faka-tau, to buy. Marquesan, tatau, to count. Mangarevan, tatau, to be 

 counted. Hawaiian, kakau-kaha, to print, or mark the skin. Outside 

 Polynesia proper, c.f., ]\Iatu, taiuar, to chaffer. Macassar, tatvara, to 

 haggle. Nala (New Guinea), tava-tava, to buy. 



