"We were now not only tattooed, but what they called tabooed,[[S]] the meaning of which is, made sacred, or forbidden to touch any provisions of any kind with our hands. This state of things lasted for three days, during which time we were fed by the daughters of the chiefs, with the same victuals, and out of the same baskets, as the chiefs themselves, and the persons who had tattooed us. In three days, the swelling which had been produced by the operation had greatly subsided, and I began to recover my sight; but it was six weeks before I was completely well. I had no medical assistance of any kind during my illness; but Aimy's two daughters were very attentive to me, and would frequently sit beside me, and talk to me in their language, of which, as yet, however, I did not understand much."
The custom of marking the skin, called tattooing, is one of the most widely-diffused practices of savage life, having been found, even in modern times, to exist, in one modification or another, not only in most of the inhabited lands of the Pacific, from New Zealand as far north as the Sandwich Isles, but also among many of the aboriginal tribes both of Africa and America. In the ancient world it appears to have been at least equally prevalent. It is evidently alluded to, as well as the other practice that has just been noticed, of wounding the body by way of mourning, in the twenty-eighth verse of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, among the laws delivered to the Israelites through Moses:—"Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you," both of these being doubtless habits of the surrounding nations, which the chosen people, according to their usual propensity, had shown a disposition to imitate.
The few civilized communities of antiquity seem to have been all of them both singularly incurious as to the manners and conditions of the barbarous races by whom they were on all sides so closely encompassed, and, as might be expected, extremely ill-informed on the subject; so much so, as has been remarked by an author who has written on this topic with admirable learning and ability, that when Hanno, the Carthaginian, returned from his investigation of a small part of the west coast of Africa, he had no difficulty in making his countrymen believe that two hides, with the hair still on, which he brought back with him, and which he had taken from two large apes, were actually the skins of savage women, and deserving of being suspended in the temple of Juno as most uncommon curiosities.
But, little as these matters seem in general to have attracted the attention of the ancient writers, their works still contain many notices of the practice of tattooing. We may cite only one or two of a considerable number that have been collected by Lafitau,[[T]] although even his enumeration might be easily extended. Herodotus mentions it as prevailing among the Thracians, certain of whom, he says, exhibit such marks on their faces as an indication of their nobility. Other authors speak of it as a practice of the Scythians, the Agathyrses, and the Assyrians. Cæsar remarks it as prevailing among the Britons; and there can be no doubt that the term Picti was merely a name given to those more northerly tribes of our countrymen who retained this custom after it had fallen into decay among their southern brethren, who were in reality of the same race with themselves, under the ascendancy of the arts and manners of their Roman conquerors.
The Britons, according to Cæsar, painted their skins to make themselves objects of greater terror to their enemies; but it is not unlikely that the real object of these decorations was with them, as it appears to have been among the other barbarous nations of antiquity, to denote certain ranks of nobility or chieftainship; and thus to serve, in fact, nearly the same purpose with our modern coats of arms.
Pliny states that the dye with which the Britons stained themselves was that of a herb called glastum, which is understood to be the same with plantain. They introduced the juice of this herb into punctures previously made in the skin, so as to form permanent delineations of various animals, and other objects, on different parts of the body. The operation, which seems to have been performed by regular artists, is said to have been commonly undergone in boyhood; and a stoical endurance of the pain which it inflicted was considered one of the best proofs the sufferer could give of his resolution and manliness.
Among the Indians of America, some races are much more tattooed than others, and some scarcely at all. It it stated that, among the Iroquois only, a few of the women are in the habit of tracing a single row of this sort of embroidery along the jaw; and that merely with the intent of curing or preventing toothache, an effect which they conceive is produced by the punctures destroying certain nerves. It appears to be the general practice in America, first to finish the cutting, or graving of the lines, and afterwards to introduce the colouring, which is commonly made of pulverised charcoal. This last part of the operation occasions by far the greatest pain. Among the native tribes of Southern Africa, the fashion is merely to raise the epidermis by a slight pricking, which is described as affording rather a pleasurable excitement.
At the Society Isles these marks, according to Cook, were so general, that hardly anybody was to be seen without them. Persons of both sexes were commonly tattooed about the age of twelve or fourteen; and the decorations, which Cook imagined to vary according to the fancy, or perhaps, which is more likely, the rank of the individual, were liberally bestowed upon every part of the body, with the exception, however, of the face, which was generally left unmarked. They consisted not only of squares, circles, and other such figures, but frequently also of rude delineations of men, birds, dogs, and other animals. Banks saw the operation performed on a girl of about thirteen years of age, who was held down all the while by several women, and both struggled hard and made no little outcry as the artist proceeded with his labours. Yet it would seem that the process in use here is considerably more gentle than that practised in New Zealand; for the punctures, Cook affirms, could hardly be said to draw blood. Being afflicted by means of an instrument with small teeth, somewhat resembling a fine comb, the effect would be rather a pricking than a cutting, or carving, of the flesh. Unlike what we have seen to be the practice among the American savages, the tincture was here introduced by the same blow by which the skin was punctured. The substance employed was a species of lamp black, formed of the smoke of an oily nut which the natives burned to give them light.
The practice of tattooing is now, we believe, discontinued at Otaheite; but the progress of civilization has not yet altogether banished it at the Sandwich Islands. When Lord Byron was at Hawaii, in 1825, he found it used as a mark of mourning, though some still had themselves tattooed merely by way of ornament. On the death of one of the late kings of the island, it is stated that all the chiefs had his name and the date of his death engraved in this manner on their arms. The ladies here, it seems, follow the very singular practice of tattooing the tips of their tongues, in memory of their departed friends. In the Tonga, or Friendly Islands, it would appear from Mariner's very minute description of the operation as there practised, as at Otaheite and elsewhere, the instrument used is always a sort of comb, having from six up to fifty or sixty teeth. There are, Mariner tells us, certain patterns or forms of the tattoo, and the individual may choose which he likes. On the brown skins of the natives the marks, which are imprinted by means of a tincture made of soot, have a black appearance; but on that of a European, their colour is a fine blue. The women here are not tattooed, though a few of them have some marks on the inside of their fingers. At the Fiji Islands, on the contrary, in the neighbourhood of the Tonga group, the men are not tattooed, but the women are.
The term "tattoo" is not known in New Zealand, the name given to the marks, which are elsewhere so called, being in this country "Moko," or, as it has been more generally written, from a habit which the natives seem to have of prefixing the sound "a" to many of their words, "Amoco."[[U]]