Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

Very probably the beginning of tattooing was the wish to frighten one’s enemy, as masks were worn by many tribes, and as the American painted his face with ocher. That state was followed by the natural desire of the warrior, as evident yet as in Hector’s day, to look manly and individualistic before the maidens of his tribe. And finally, as heraldry became complicated, tattooing grew, at least in Polynesia, into a record of sept and individual accomplishments and distinguishing marks. Here it had, as an art, freed itself from the bonds of religion, so that the artist had liberty to draw the Thing as he saw it, and had not to conform to priest-craft, a rule which probably hurt Egyptian art greatly.

In New Zealand, where the Polynesians went from Samoa, a sometime rigorous climate demanded clothing, and the head became the pièce de résistance of the tattooer. There was a considerable trade among whites in the preserved heads of New Zealanders until the supply ran out. White dealers procured the raiding of villages to sell their victim’s visages. Museums and collectors of such curios paid well for these tattooed faces, but the demand exhausted the best efforts of the whites. After the rarest examples were dead and smoked, there was no stimulating the supply. The goods refused to be manufactured. The Solomon Islands now supply smoked human heads, but they have no adornment.

Birds, fish, temples, trees, and plants—all the cosmos of the Marquesan—was a model for the tuhuka. He often drew his designs in charcoal on the skin, but sometimes proceeded with his inking sans pattern. He never copied, but drew from memory, though the same lines and tableaux might be repeated a thousand times; and always he bore in mind the caste, tribe, and sex of the subject. Thus at a glance one could tell the valley and rank of any one, much as in Japan the station, age, moral standing, and other artificial qualities of women are indicated by their coiffure and obi, or sash.

The craft did not require any elaborate tools. The ama or candlenut soot with water, a graduated set of bone-needles, of human and pig origin, and a mallet were all the requirements. The paint or ink was of but one color, black or brown, which on a dark skin looked bluish and on a fair skin black. The marking of the parts most delicate and sensitive to pain, as the eyelids, was a parcel of the endeavor to promote stoicism and to show the foe the mettle of his opponent. Man did not consent for thousands of years to share his ornamentation with women, and then insisted that the motif be beauty or the accentuation of sex.

The tattooers, in order to learn from one another, to have art chats, to discuss prices and perhaps dead beats or slow payers, had societies or unions, in which were degrees and offices, the most favored in ability and by patronage being given the highest rank, though now and again a white man, by his superior magic and force, though no tuhuka at all, held the supreme position.

A shark upon the forehead was the card of membership in the tattooers’ lodge, to which were admitted occasionally enthusiastic and discerning patrons of art.

At festival times, when tapus were to some degree suspended and the intertribal enmities forgotten for the nonce, thousands of men, women, and children gathered to eat, drink, and be merry, and to be tattooed, as one at country fairs buys new dresses and trinkets. It was to these fêtes that the pot-boilers, fakers, and beginners among the talent came; men who would make a sitter a scrawl for a heap of pipi, shells and gewgaws, a few squealing pigs, a roll of tapa, or, most precious of all, a whale’s tooth. Like our second- and third-class painters, our wretched daubers who turn out canvases by the foot (though hand-painted), these tramps, who, by a dispensation of the priests and a mocking providence, were tapu, not to be attacked in any valley, strolled from tribe to tribe, promising much and giving little. Some worked largely on repair jobs, doing over spots where the skin had been abraded by injuries in battles, or by rocks or fire. The man who was well dressed in a suit of tattoo, or the lady who was clothed from toes to waist in a washable peau de femme, kept these garments in as good condition as possible, but when accident or the fortune of war injured the ensemble they hastened to have it touched up.

An artist of the first rank, one who in a Marquesan salon would have a medal of honor, disdained such commissions, but dauber and South Sea Da Vinci alike often had their work hung upon the line, when they were taken by the enemy and suspended at the High Place before being dropped into the pit for the banquets of the cannibal victors.

It was always of interest to me to wonder how men learned tattooing. Painters, carvers, etchers, and sculptors have material ever available for their lessons. They can waste an infinity of canvas, wood, copper, or marble if they have the money to spend, but how about the apprentice or student who must have live mediums even for practice?

Well, just as there are Chinese who, for a consideration, take the place of persons condemned to death (though they do not, as alleged, make a living out of it), and others who, though it exhaust and finally kill them, enter deadly trades or hire out for war, there were Marquesans who offered themselves as kit-cats for these students and sold their surface at so much an inch for any vile design or miserable execution. I can see these fellows, well covered with tapa, hiding whenever possible the caricatures and travesties that made them a laughing show. These Hessians had no pride in complexion. Their skins they wanted full of food, nor cared at all for their outside if the inside man was replete.