Among this party of Haidas was Makdē'gos, the tattooer of the tribe, whose work is truly remarkable. The designs made by him are symmetrical, while the lines are uniform in width and regular and graceful in every respect. In persons tattooed upon the breast or back the part operated upon is first divided into halves by an imaginary vertical line upon the breast through the middle of the sternum and upon the back along the middle of the vertebral column. Such designs are drawn double, facing outward from this imaginary line. One side is first drawn and completed, while the other is merely a reverse transfer, made immediately afterwards or at such future time as the operation of tattooing may be renewed.
The colors are black and red, the former consisting of finely powdered charcoal, gunpowder, or India ink, while the latter is Chinese vermilion. The operation was formerly performed with sharp thorns, spines of certain fishes, or spicules of bone; but recently a small bunch of needles is used, which serves the purpose to better effect.
As is well known, the black pigments, when picked into the human skin, become rather bluish, which tint, when beneath the yellowish tinge of the Indian’s cuticle, appears of an olive or sometimes a greenish-blue shade. The colors, immediately after being tattooed upon the skin, retain more or less of the blue-black shade; but by absorption of the pigment and the persistence of the coloring matter of the pigmentary membrane the greenish tint soon appears, becoming gradually less conspicuous as time progresses, so that in some of the oldest tattooed Indians the designs are greatly weakened in coloration.
Upon the bodies of some persons examined the results of ulceration are conspicuous. This destruction of tissue is the result of inflammation caused by the tattooing and the introduction under the skin of so great a quantity of irritating foreign matter that, instead of designs in color, there are distinct, sharply defined figures in white or nearly white cicatrices, the pigmentary membrane having been totally destroyed by the ulceration.
Fig. 517.—Haida tattoo, sculpin and dragon fly.
The figures represented upon the several Indians met with, as above-mentioned, were not all of totemic signification, one arm, for instance, bearing the figure of the totem of which the person is a member, while the other arm presents the outline of a mythic being, as shown in Fig. 517, copied from the arms of a woman. The left device is taken from the left forearm, and represents kul, the skulpin, a totemic animal, whereas the right hand device, taken from the right arm of the same subject, represents mamathlóna, the dragon fly, a mythic insect.
