Handy — Tattooing in the Marquesas 15 



the teaching of the tuhitna of the northwestern group by those of the 

 southeastern ; there are to be found in Hterary sources accounts of the 

 vogue of different artists and statements from which may be deduced 

 complete changes in the type of design. With a view to discovering how 

 dependent style was upon the taste and originality of individual artists, the 

 names of all artists who executed the designs recorded were noted. When 

 two pieces of work done by the same tuhuna were found, the choice of 

 pattern seemed sometimes to be identical (PI. xi, C), sometimes altogether 

 different (Pis, ix, B and x. A), while the work of different tuhuna was 

 sometimes identical (PI. xiii, B). It would seem that all tuhuna^ drew, 

 more or less at their will, from a single body of design. 



In the hope of making as clear as possible the probable evolution of 

 this art in the Marquesas towards the elaborate conventional design that 

 prevailed when it was forbidden thirty-eight years ago, the following de- 

 tails are set down. 



Quiros records in his description of Mendana's visit to the south- 

 eastern islands in 1595, the observation of "fish and other patterns painted" 

 upon the faces and bodies of the natives. This is corroborated by a living 

 informant who says that formerly women had birds and fish behind their 

 ears and on their legs, and men are reported to have had lizards on their 

 faces. The next word from a voyager that comes to us of this group 

 is dated nearly two centuries later when Forster observes in 1772 that 

 the motives in Tahu Ata are not naturalistic but geometric, taking the 

 form of "blotches, spirals, bars, chequers, and lines;" while J. R. Forster 

 confirms this analysis, adding however, "circles," and Marchand in 1790 

 reiterates the two lists and swells them with "parts of circles .... square 

 or oval figures .... inclined and variously crossed lines." It would 

 appear, then, that in the southeastern islands during these himdred and 

 eighty-odd years, there had been in the type of design a change from the 

 naturalistic to the geometric. 



We have no similar statements regarding what was happening in the 

 northwestern group during the early period, the first observations there 

 being set down by Marchand in 1790, who visited both groups. Though 

 Marchand touched for a short time at only two bays in the northwestern 

 islands, still it is valuable to have his statement that he finds in Ua Pou 

 the same custom of tattooing as in Tahu Ata but not so general, few 

 tattooed individuals being seen (11, p. 167). Unfortunately he does not 

 define the types of motives there as he does in Tahu Ata. Just a few 

 years later, however, in 1803, Langsdorff gives a number of drawings 

 from the northwestern group with explanations of them (10: PI. vi, p. 

 117; PI. vii, p. 119; PI. VIII, p. 122; pp. XIV, XV, XVI ). which show that 



