PERSONAL ORNAMENTATION.
Among the means taken by these people to produce personal ornamentation that of tattooing the face and wearing a labret is the most noticeable. The custom of tattooing having existed from the earliest historical epochs is important, not only from an ethnological but from a medical and pathological point of view, and even in its relation to medical jurisprudence in cases of contested personal identity.
Without going into the history of the subject, it may not be irrelevant to mention that tattooing was condemned by the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian, among others, who gives the following rather singular reason for interdicting its use among women: "Certi sumus Spiritum Sanctum magis masculis tale aliquid subscribere potuisse si feminis subscripsisset."[2]
In addition to much that has been written by French and German writers, the matter of tattoo-marks has of late claimed the attention of the law courts of England, the Chief-Justice, Cockburn, in the Tichbourne case, having described this species of evidence as of "vital importance," and in itself final and conclusive. The absence of the tattoo-marks in this case justified the jury in their finding that the defendant was not and could not be Roger Tichbourne, whereupon the alleged claimant was proved to be an impostor, found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to penal servitude.[3]
Style of personal ornamentation adopted by the women of Saint Lawrence island.
Why the ancient habit of tattooing should prevail so extensively among some of the primitive tribes as it does, for instance, in the Polynesian islands and some parts of Japan, and we may say as a survival of a superstitious practice of paganism among sailors and others, is a psychological problem difficult to solve. Whether it be owing to perversion of the sexual instinct, which is not unlikely, or to other cause, it is not proposed to discuss. Be that as it may, the prevalence of the habit among the Eskimo is confined to the female sex, who are tattooed on arriving at the age of puberty. The women of Saint Lawrence island, in addition to lines on the nose, forehead and chin, have uniformly a figure of strange design on the cheeks, which is suggestive of cabalistic import. It could not be ascertained, however, whether such is the case. The lines drawn on the chin were exactly like the ones I have seen on Moorish women in Morocco. Another outlandish attempt at adornment was witnessed at Cape Blossom in a woman who wore a bunch of colored beads suspended from the septum of her nose. These habits, however, hardly seem so revolting as the use of the labret by the "Mazinka" men on the American coast, of whom it is related that a sailor seeing one of them for the first time, and observing the slit in the lower lip through which the native thrust his tongue, thought he had discovered a man with two mouths. The use of the labret, like many of the attempts at primitive ornamentation, is very old, its use having been traced by Dall along the American coast from the lower part of Chili to Alaska. Persons fond of tracing, vestiges of savage ornamentation amid intellectual advancement and æsthetic sensibility far in advance of the primitive man, may observe in the wearers of bangles and earrings the same tendency existing in a differentiated form.
DIVERSIONS.
I doubt whether Shakespeare's dictum in regard to music holds good when applied to the Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls, and among no people is there such a noticeable absence of "treason, stratagem and spoil." A rude drum and a monotonous chant, consisting only of the fundamental note and minor third, are the only things in the way of music among the more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has been described as the table-beer of acoustics. Eskimo singing is something more. The beer has become flat by the addition of ice. One of our engineers, who is quite a fiddler, experimented on his instrument with a view to seeing what effect music would have on the "savage breast," but his best efforts at rendering "Madame Angot" and the "Grande Duchesse" were wasted before an unsympathetic audience, who showed as little appreciation of his performance as some people do when listening to Wagner's "Music of the Future."
Where they have come in contact with civilization their musical taste is more developed. At Saint Michael's I was told that some of their songs are so characteristic that it is much to be regretted that some of them cannot be bottled up in a phonograph and sent to a musical composer. On the coast of Siberia I heard an Eskimo boy sing correctly a song he had learned while on board a whaling vessel, and on several of the Aleutian islands the natives play the accordeon quite well; have music-boxes, and even whistle strains from "Pinafore."