“Her hair was in two plaits of flame, and the glittering ghost flowers were over her ears. You know she had for months been out of the day and under the hands of those who prepare the dancers. Her body was as rounded as the silken bamboo, and her skin shone with the gloss of ceaseless care.
“She advanced before the silent hundred, moving as the slow waters of the brook, and as she passed each one she looked into his eyes and challenged him, as the fighting man his enemy. Only she looked love and not hatred. Then she bounded into the center of the line and, casting off her kahu, she stood before them, and for the first time bared her beautiful body in the titii e te epo, the Dance of the Naked. She fluttered as a bird a few moments, the bird that seeks a mate, the kuku of the valley. On her little saffroned feet she ran about, and the light left her now in brilliancy and now in shadow. She was searching for the way from childhood to womanhood.
“Then the great pahu, the war-drum of human skin, was struck by O Nuku, the sea-shells blew loudly, and the Hurahura was proclaimed. You know that. Few are the men who resist. Titihuti was as one aided by Veinehae, the Woman Demon. She flung herself into that dance with madness. All her life she and her mother had awaited that moment. If she could tear the hearts of those warriors so that their breasts heaved, their limbs twitched, and their eyes fell before her, her honor was as the winner of a battle. It was the supreme hour of a woman’s existence.
Photo from Brown Bros.
Tattooing at the present day
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Easter Islander in head-dress and with dancing-wand
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
My tattooed Marquesan friend
“The judges seized the flambeaux and scrutinized closely the faces of the men. First one yielded and then another. Try as they might to be as the rocks of the High Place, they felt the heat and melted. A dozen were told off in the first few minutes of Titihuti’s dance, though Tahiatini and Moeo had won but two or three. Faster grew the music, and faster spun about her hips the torso of Titihuti. The judges caught the rhythm. They themselves were convulsed by the spell of the girl. The whole line of the silent hundred was breaking when, as the breadfruit falls from the tree, suddenly sprang upon the mead the foreigner who had come but that day. Though others of the ship tried to hold him, he broke from them, and, clasping Titihuti in his arms, declared that she was his, and that he would defend his capture. The drums were quieted, the judges rushed to the pair, and, for the time of a wave’s lapping the beach, spears were seized.