Handy — Tattooing in the Marquesas 21 



found in early Nuku Hiva design (PI. xiii) ; but it seems impossible 

 definitely to assign particular conventional motives to the one medium or 

 the other. However, it may perhaps be stated that geometric elements 

 did originate on wood, and that the influence of geometric adzing and 

 carving appears in tattooing both in certain transferred elements and in 

 a general conventionalization of the primitive naturalistic motives. Inas- 

 much as Fatu Hiva is known to be the carving center, we may further 

 define the geometric influence as springing directly from wood-carvers 

 of the southeastern group. 



The use of solid patches may be traced with interest, as here again 

 we find a different treatment in the two groups. Some modern infor- 

 mants describe the men of Nuku Hiva as formerly having half of the body 

 entirely black (PI. xii, B) ; one remembers seeing a man with solid- 

 black legs ; several testify that when a man was completely tattooed in 

 design, if he could bear it, the spaces were gone over and filled in until 

 all pattern was obliterated and he was completely black. In corroborat- 

 ing this custom in Nuku Hiva, Langsdoriif says that he saw some old men 

 who were punctured over and over to such a degree that the outlines of 

 each separate figure were scarcely to be distinguished and the body had 

 an almost negro-like appearance. (See also 14, p. 78; 8, p. 155; 17, p. 

 306; I, p. 106.) There are no accounts of such a practice in the south- 

 eastern islands, and this seems to point to an aesthetic sense there, which 

 was lacking in the northwest, for certainly people with sufficient artistic 

 sense to originate these beautiful patterns would not have covered them 

 afterwards and considered the results the "height of perfection in orna- 

 ment," as did the tuhuna of Nuku Hiva, according to Langsdorff and the 

 other early voyagers. 



Desgraz, who was in Nuku Hiva at approximately the same time as 

 Melville, when Hiva Oa tattooing was the vogue, describes the use there 

 of black bands containing delicate figures. These are today the funda- 

 mentally distinguishing feature of the Hiva Oa type of body design as 

 well as of the face pattern. On the other hand, both from descriptions 

 of natives today and from examination of the tattooing of the only old 

 man and old woman to be found, whose patterns were put on by Nuku 

 Hiva tuhuna, the basic principle of the Nuku Hiva type seems to have been 

 solid patches. Leg patterns for women found today fall into three dis- 

 tinct types: that of Nuku Hiva (Pis. xvii-xix), Ua Pou (Pis. xx-xxi), and 

 Hiva Oa (Pis. xxii-xxvm). The first is distinguished by triangular patches 

 of different sizes fitted together with half inch spaces between them, the 

 only regularity of arrangement being their placing so as to form a straight 

 line down the center front of the leg. Flamelike edges, inset teeth, and 



