Handy — Tattooing in the Marquesas 13 



festival place where admiring friends and relatives were gathered to view 

 them. There, two large drums (pahu ana-ana) and three small ones 

 (tutu) were beaten, the opoti marching with the ka'ioi around the paved 

 area to show his designs. While two men and two women danced, the 

 ka'ioi accompanied them with handclapping and the chanting of a putu 

 or special chant for the oho'au patu tiki. In an unpublished manuscript 

 Dordillon and Pere Pierre state that at this feast a human victim was 

 sacrificed and eaten. When a man gave a feast in celebration of his wife's 

 acquisition of a bit of tattooing, as Langsdorff reports was sometimes done 

 (10, p. 121), she was allowed to eat hog's flesh as a very special privilege. 



THE DESIGN 



Any attempt today to make a first-hand study of tattooing design must 

 be based upon the examination of not more than a hundred and twenty- 

 five persons who are the only living examples of the practice and whose 

 designs represent for the most part a late development of the art, and 

 upon their explanations and descriptions, and those of the single surviving 

 practitioner of the art, whose actual practice ceased many years ago. The 

 practice was forbidden by the French in 1884 and the edict was enforced 

 as strictly as possible from that time on in the group of Nuku Hiva and 

 Ua Pou, where the government was in occupation. On Hiva Oa, Tahu Ata, 

 Fatu Hiva, and Ua Huka, the practice continued some years thereafter in 

 the absence of authority to abolish it. As a consequence, one finds in the 

 northwestern group that the majority of examples is the work of tuhuna 

 of the southeastern islands, a few very old people, alone, representing 

 that of the former islands. Just as these northwestern natives now 

 living went surreptitiously to tuliinia of the other group to be tattooed 

 upon parts of the body that would not show beneath their clothes, so in 

 the southeastern group those who continued the practice after the pro- 

 hibition was actually enforced there, about twenty-five years later than in 

 the more closely espionaged islands, were decorated chiefly upon the legs 

 from hips to ankles where dress or trousers would cover the pattern. 

 Gradually, even this practice ceased, and today the only tattooing that is 

 done is now and then of names in print upon the arm. It will be seen 

 from this, that only upon very old people can anything approaching a full 

 suit of tattooing be seen. Though there is but one man living who, as far 

 as I know, might be called fully tattooed, still there are to be found on 

 different subjects designs for practically all parts of the body originally 

 covered. There still remain several women fully tattooed, probably for 

 the reason that their designs are less conspicuous. The plates herewith 



