After careful study of the topic, less positive and conclusive authority is found for this explanation of tattooing than was expected, considering its general admission.
The great antiquity of tattooing is shown by reference to it in the Old Testament, and in Herodotus, Xenophon, Tacitus, Ammianus, and Herodian. The publications on the topic are so numerous that the notes now to be presented are by no means exhaustive. They mainly refer to the Indian tribes of North America with only such comparatively recent reports from other lands as seem to afford elucidation.
TATTOO IN NORTH AMERICA.
G. Holm (b) says of the Greenland Innuit that geometric figures consisting of streaks and points, are used in tattooing on the breasts, arms, and legs of the females.
H. H. Bancroft (b) says:
The Eskimo females tattoo lines on their chins; the plebeian female of certain bands has one vertical line in the center and one parallel to it on either side. The higher classes mark two vertical lines from each corner of the mouth. * * * Young Kadiak wives tattoo the breast and adorn the face with black lines. The Kuskoquim women sew into their chin two parallel blue lines.
William H. Gilder (a) reports:
The Esquimau wife has her face tattooed with lampblack and is regarded as a matron in society. * * * The forehead is decorated with the letter V in double lines, the angle very acute, passing down between the eyes almost to the bridge of the nose, and sloping gracefully to the right and left before reaching the roots of the hair. Each cheek is adorned with an egg-shaped pattern, commencing near the wing of the nose and sloping upward toward the corner of the eye; these lines are also double. The most ornamented part, however, is the chin, which receives a gridiron pattern; the lines double from the edge of the lower lip, and reaching to the throat toward the corners of the mouth, sloping outward to the angle of the lower jaw. This is all that is required by custom, but some of the belles do not stop here. * * * None of the men are tattooed.
An early notice of tattooing in the territory now occupied by the United States, mentioned in Hakluyt (d), is in the visit of the Florida chief, Satouriona, in 1564, to Réné Laudonnière. His tattooed figure was drawn by Le Moyne, Tabulæ VIII, IX.
Capt. John Smith (a) is made to say of the Virginia Indians: