Bark Cloth Making, Netting and Art.
Bark Cloth Making and Netting.
I put the two processes of bark cloth making and netting together, as being the only forms in which material is made in pieces of substantial size.
Bark cloth is used for making perineal bands, men’s caps, illness-recovery capes, bark cloth head strings, mourning strings and dancing aprons and ribbons. Netting is used for fishing and hunting nets, sleeping hammocks, the various forms of carrying bags and the mourning vests worn by the widows of chiefs.
Bark Cloth Making.
Bark cloth is made by both men and women out of the bark of three different kinds of tree; but I do not know what these are. They strip the bark from the tree, and from the bark they strip off the outer layer, leaving the inner fibrous layer, which is about ⅛th of an inch in thickness. They have no method of fastening two pieces of bark or cloth together, so every garment has to be a single piece, and the size of the piece to be made depends upon the purpose for which it is wanted. The cloth is made in the usual way by soaking the prepared bark in water for about twenty-four hours, and then hammering it with a heavy mallet upon the rounded surface of a cut-down tree trunk ([Plate 79]).
The mallet used ([Plate 51, Fig. 3]), however, differs from the wooden mallet of Mekeo and the coast. It is a heavy black roller-shaped piece of stone, tapering a little at one or both ends, and being broader at the beating end than at the holding end. It varies in length from 10 to 18 inches, and has a maximum width of about 2 or 2½ inches. The beating surface is not flattened, as is the case with the Mekeo beaters, but it is rather deeply scored with a series of longitudinal and transverse lines, crossing each other at right angles, or nearly so. This scoring generally covers a surface space of about 3 inches by 1 or 2 inches, and is done with pointed pieces of similar stone, or with the tusks of wild pigs.
As the hammering proceeds the bark becomes thinner and larger in surface, and when this process is finished, the cloth is hung up to dry.
The colouring of the cloth, if and when this is added, is done by men only, and, like body-staining, is nearly always in either red, yellow, or black. The red stain is obtained from the two sorts of earth used for red face and body-staining, being, as in the other case, mixed with water or animal fat, so as to produce a paste. Another source of red stain used for cloth is the fruit of a wild tree growing in the bush, which fruit they chew and spit out. I do not know what the tree is, but I do not think it is the Pandanus, whose fruit is, I believe, used for body-staining. The yellow stain is obtained from the root of a plant which I understand to be rather like a ginger. They dry the root in the sun, and afterwards crush it and soak it in water, and the water so coloured becomes the pigment to be used. The black stain is obtained in the same way as that used for face-staining. These dyes are put on to the cloth with the fingers, which the men dip into the dye, or with feathers. In making a design they do not copy from a pattern placed before them, nor do they first trace the design on the cloth.