Thomas Worsnop, in the Prehistoric Arts of the Aborigines of Australia, says:
This practice of tattooing by scarification was common all over the continent, varying in character amongst the respective tribes, each having its own distinctive marks, although all patterned upon one monotonous idea.
This is far from evidence of distinct tribal marks, the slight varieties of which may be only local or tribal fashions.
Alfred C. Haddon (a), p. 366, says:
Tattooing is unknown, but the body used to be ornamented with raised cicatrices. * * * The Torres strait islanders are distinguished by a large, complicated, oval scar, only slightly raised and of neat construction. This, which I have been told has some connection with a turtle, occupies the right shoulder and is occasionally repeated on the left. I suspect that a young man was not allowed to bear a cicatrice until he had killed his first turtle or dugong.
The same author, op. cit., says of the Mabuiag of Torres straits:
The people were formerly divided up into a number of clans. * * * A man belonging to one clan could not wear the badge of the totem of another clan. * * * All the totems appear to have been animals—as the crocodile, snake, turtle, dugong, dog, cassowary, shark, sting-ray, kingfish, etc.
The same writer, in Notes on Mr. Beardsmore’s paper, in Jour. Anthrop. Inst. of Gr. Br. and I. (a), says:
A large number of the women of Mowat, New Guinea, have a Λ-shaped scar above the breasts. * * * Maino of Tud told me that it was cut when the brother leaves the father’s house and goes to live with the men; and another informant’s story was that it was made when a brother harpooned his first dugong or turtle. Maino (who, by the by, married a Mowat woman) said that a mark on the cheek recorded the brother’s prowess.
D’Albertis (c) tells that the people of New Guinea produced scars “by making an incision in the skin and then for a lengthened period irritating it with lime and soot. * * * They use some scars as a sign that they have traveled, and tattoo an additional figure above the right breast on the accomplishment of every additional journey. * * * In Yuli island women have nearly the whole body covered with marks. Children are seldom tattooed; slaves never. Men are hardly ever tattooed, though they have frequently marks on the chest and shoulders; rarely on the face. Tribes and families are recognized by tattoo marks.”