543 



All the women tattoo the face and the body in a pattern 

 identical with that of the Massim, and undoubtedly borrowed 

 from them. The tattoo is done by pricking the skin with a 

 thorn of the sago palm or of the lawyer cane, and introducing 

 by this means a substance made of charcoal and some other 

 materials. The tattoo marks show deep blue on the brown 

 skin. The design is done in a fixed order, as in the Motu 

 tribe, ^22) though apparently the order is not the same in the 

 two tribes. The first tattoo, which takes place at the age of 

 four or five, is done in the lower abdominal region and round 

 the vulva. Then the left hand and forearm are worked over ; 

 after that the right hand. Both upper arms follow. Then, 

 just before the swelling of the breasts, this part of the body is 

 tattooed, and next in order comes the legs. The ornamenting 

 of the face is connected with a small feast, in which women 

 only participate. Taro is brought into the house and the girl 

 sleeps on it. The next day the girl's face is tattooed, and in 

 the afternoon the food is eaten. The shoulders of a woman 

 are tattooed after marriage, and the faces and bodies of the 

 men are never tattooed. 



The dress and ornaments varied with the occasion. 

 Broadly, one may distinguish three typical forms — the normal 

 form of dressing, the mourning, and the festive, attire. In 

 the case of a man the essential article of clothing, the perineal 

 string or cloth, remains unaltered, the ornaments only being 

 changed : these are removed during mourning and increased on 

 festive occasions. The women have different kinds of grass 

 petticoats for each of these occasions. 



The man's perineal band consists either of a piece of native 

 rope (called in this case Ivciri), or a piece of cloth (Lcimoa), 

 beaten out of the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree. Both 

 are worn in the same way, the cloth automatically rolling up 

 into a rope-like shape. The string is passed round the body 

 and between the legs, lying over and between the testicles 

 and displacing the penis to the left. The prepuce is extended 

 and passed under the rope, the penis being thus kept in posi- 

 tion. This arrangement of the genitals is called Bu'i. 



Nowadays the natives have practically abandoned their 

 old form of dressing under the stress of missionary influence, 

 and are clothed in European rags of often indescribable 

 filthiness, so that one only sees the Bu'i arrangement on old 

 people or at feasts, when the natives revert to their ancient 

 fashions. The man's dress is completed by a pair of 

 armlets and the comb as described above. The armlets 

 {Tsdriha; in Motu, Gdna) were plaited with a kind of 



{22) Cf. O. G. Seligman, op. cit., p. 74. 



