Tattooing in the Marquesas 



By WiLLowDEAN Chatterson Handy 



INTRODUCTION 



Drawings and photographs of tattooing patterns on the bodies of 

 natives were made by the author during a residence in the Marquesas 

 Islands in 1921. As tattooing is now forbidden by the laws of the country 

 and the art is consequently dying out, this collection of the last specimens 

 of tattooing patterns which exist today in the Marquesas has seemed to 

 demand a complementary collection of information regarding the practice 

 of the art, to the end that the beautiful motives might at least be partly 

 accounted for and might some day take their merited place in the history 

 of art. The data have been drawn from natives who have been decorated, 

 from one old tuhuna, or artist, who has practised tattooing, and from 

 literary sources, thus piecing together a fairly accurate picture of the 

 practice. Discussion of the design itself, of which the natives know 

 nothing today beyond the nomenclature, is undertaken in a spirit of ap- 

 preciation and with the hope that the suggestions offered regarding the 

 evolution and significance of this form of decoration may uncover other 

 possibilities and lead to a more conclusive interpretation of the art. 



THE PRACTICE OF THE ART 



It would appear that this form of body decoration was not confined to 

 certain ranks or classes in the Marquesas, though what might be called 

 a property qualification limited somewhat the complete covering and finer 

 work to the wealthy who could afford to employ the best artists and stand 

 the attendant expense of feeding them and their assistants as well as the 

 large band of ka'ioi who erected the special house for the occasion. A 

 father prepared long in advance for the payment for tattooing of his first- 

 born, raising pigs, and planting ute, paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyri- 

 fera), for the making of tapa as gifts for both the ka'ioi and the tuhuna. 

 Payment also took the form of ornaments, war clubs, and more recently, 

 guns. Langsdorflf says that they paid for their decorations according to 

 the greater or less quantity of them, and to the trouble the figures re- 

 quired ; that during the thirty or forty years when the body was gone over 

 again and again with the tattooing bones until the skin was completely 

 covered, the cost became considerable ; and that such all-over decoration 

 necessarily indicated a person of great weahh (10 p. 120Y. It follows 



^ Throughout this paper the numbers in parentheses refer to the bibliography on 

 page 26. 



