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Show MALLBBY.) TATTOOING IN GUIANA AND SAMOA. 77 Mr. Everard F. im Tburn, in his work previously cited, pages 195-' 96 among the Indians of Guiana, says: Painting the body is the simplest mode of adornment. Tattooing or any other permanent interference with the snrface of the skin by way of ornament is practiced only to a very limited extent by the Indians; is used, in fact, only to produce the small distinctive tribal mark which many of them bear at the corners of their mouths or on their arms. It is true that an adult Indian is hardly to be found on whose thighs and arms, or on other parts of whose body, are not a greater or less number of indelibly incised straight lines; but these are scars originally made for surgical, not ornamental purposes. The following extracts are taken from Samoa, by George Turner, LL. D., London, 1884: Page 55. Taenia and Tilafainga, or Tila the sportive, were the goddesses of the tattooers. They swam from Fiji to introduce the craft to Samoa, and on leaving Fiji were commissioned to sing all the way, " Tattoo the women, but not the men." They got muddled over it in the long journey, and arrived at Samoa singing, " Tattoo the men and not the women." And hence the universal exercise of the blackening art on the men rather than the women. Pago 88. " Herodotus found among the Thraciana that the barbarians could be exceedingly foppish after their fashion. The man who was not tattooed among them was not respected." It was the same in Samoa. Until a young man was tattooed, he was considered in his minority. He could not think of marriage, and he was constantly exposed to taunts and ridicule, as being poor and of low birth, and as having no right to speak in the society of men. But as soon as he was tattooed he passed into his majority, and considered himself entitled to the respect and privileges of mature years. When a youth, therefore, reached the age of sixteen, he and his friends were all anxiety that he should be tattooed. He was then on the outlook for the tattooing of some young chief with whom he might unite. On these occasions, six or a dozen young men would be tattooed at one time; and for these there might be four or five tattooers employed. Tattooing is still kept up to some extent, and is a regular profession, just as housebuilding, and well paid. The custom is traced to Taenia and Tilafainga; and they were worshipped by the tattooers as the presiding deities of their craft. The instniment used in the operation is an oblong piece of human bone ( oa ilium), about an inch and a half broad and two inches long. A time of war and slaughter was a harvest for the tattooers to get a supply of instruments. The one end is cut like a small- toothed comb, and the other is fastened to a piece of cane, and looks like a little serrated adze. They dip it into a mixture of candle- nut ashes and water, and, tapping it with a little mallet, it sinks into the skin, and in this way they puncture the whole snrface over which the tattooing extends. The greater part of the body, from the waist down to the knee is covered with it, variegated here and there with neat regular stripes of the untattooed skin, which when they are well oiled, make them appear in the distance as if they had on black silk knee- breeches. Behrens, in describing these natives in his narrative of Roggewein's voyage of 1772, says: uThey were clothed from the waist downwards with fringes and a kind of silken stuff artificially wrought." A nearer inspection would have shown that the fringes were a bunch of red ti leaves ( Dracama terminalis) glistening with cocoa nut oil, and the " kind of silken stuff," the tattooing just described. As it extends over such a large surface the operation is a tedious and painful affair. After smarting and bleeding for awhile under the hands of the tattooers, the patience of the youth is exhausted. They then let him rest and heal for a time, and, before returning to him again, do a little piece on each of the party. In two or three months the whole is completed. The friends of the young men are all the while in attendance with food. They also bring quantities of fine mats and native cloth, as the hire of the tattooers; connected with them, too, are many waiting on for a share in the food and property. |