Pohnpei Tattoo

NATURE ART: TATTOHISTY OF WESTERN OCEANIA |

In 2000 B.C., old sailors who spoke an Austronesian language came to the west Isles of Micronesia (Marianas, Yap and Babelthuap) from Southeast Asia." A few hundred years later another sea tribe, the Lapitas, went further eastwards from New Britain/Admiralty Island to Polynesia and reached Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Though the Lapitas inhabited these sun-kissed isles around 1100 BC, leaving tattoo instruments and ceramic remains largely similar to tattoo design, it would take eight hundred years before their offspring colonised other parts of Oceania, among them the Marquesas (100 BC), Easter Island (400 AD), Hawaii (500 AD), Tahiti (600 AD) and New Zealand (900 AD).

Appearance of the full-length tattoo of the Pingelap and Mwoakilloa Islanders, Micronesia, 1826. Back of Pingelap and Mwoakilloa tattoo, 1870s. Naturally, the great distance that separated many of the islands and people of Oceania tend to separate them, although there were occasional contact.

As a result, in the vast oceans, there evolved varieties of fundamentally similar social culture features, such as veneration of ancestors, the existence of a universe force present in all living and dead things (mana, polynesia; débbo, micronesia), and faith in the godly origin of culture like tattoos. Physical markings were usually made by a priest' group of men (Polynesia) or females (Fiji, Micronesia).

On the other hand, the tattoo artists were affected and not only lost the motivations to make the unbelievably daring skins of their forefathers, but were also often compelled to stop the "pagan" tradition that was once at the centre of their ancestry. While trying to frame a reflection on the tradtional convictions and societal practices behind tattoos in Oceania, I wrote two articles: one on the Western Pacific and one on tattoos in Polynesia.

The following is an outline of the tattooing' story and techniques as they have been practised conventionally on the Pacific West Isles, which include Micronesia, Fiji and the Solomon Isles. Tattoos were closely connected to the surroundings in all these areas and most of the tattoo motives were icons of the great natural power that influenced the world of these island people.

The tattoo industry in the West Pacific developed from Mother Earth as the supreme inspirational force through movement, observation, touch and active search for the symbols that unveiled the universe. Mikronesia ("small islands") is made up of several large groups of archipelagos just off Melanesia and the Philippines, among them Palau, the Carolines, the Marshalls, the Marianas and the Gilberts.

Early known drawings of the Marshall tattoo, 1816. As with all the people of Oceania, the people of these remote coastal areas were experienced seafarers and merchants, which helped to achieve a high degree of uniformity in much of the area. Several of the Micronese peoples' culture characteristics seem to be comparable to those of Melanesia and Indonesia, such as large ornamented ceremony halls, sophisticated fabrics, the existence of a clan and classification system, professionally crafted marine cannus, and various types of physical and formal cultures - among them weapons, faith in natural minds, and the godly origin of the tattoo.

Tattoos exist all over Oceania, and the almost confusing variety of different arts makes it initially hard to recognise all shapes as repetitive and fundamental to the whole area. However, a close look at tattoo mythologies shows a constantly returning theme: that most of the design comes from the natural world and it was a present from the deity.

Tattoos on the Marshall Isles were no different. The island was landed by Levoj and Lanij, the two children of the creator deity Lowa, who formed and designated the island and put it into the sea. When they (?) tattoo all beings with their specific colours and marks, Levoj and Lanij are said to have come to humans:

Tattoo of a Caroline Islander, c. 1835. However, even the tattooing showed the islanders' and animals' beauties for all to see. Elaborately contoured outlines imitated the stripe pattern of the royal angelfish (Pygoplites diacanthus), which was named "eá" or "tattooed". Six-sided squares symbolised the turtle's shell, triangular tooth formations of sharks, branched line, shrimp bones, line of points, mussels, curved motives of goose clams (lepas anserifera) and many other motives like "mast", "canoe", "clouds" and "sea swell", which are connected with the nautical way of these occidental aguonauts.

Aristocrats or commoners, Marshall type of tattoo meant position and one could recognize a chieftain (iroij) by the prominent tattoo on heads and necks, just as fingertattoos (eoon-addin) were limited to equal gender. Similar cases of fingertattoos in high-ranking females have also been recorded in Fiji.

As well as these patrons, precious females they could have afforded also carried a tattoo on their shoulder, named boilak (from the Frigatebird's tail), breast and a'secret' tattoo on the volva in a way similar to tattoo practices elsewhere in Micronesia (e.g. Palau, Pohnpei, Ulithi) and Fiji; these patrons were tattooed by tattooists.

Tats on old ladies, around 1950. The Pohnpei Womens Physical Design, 1870s. Also in Fiji and especially on Viti Levu the vulgar tattooed girls were wearing their'liku' or rock. It was a traditional practice that only men, not woman, could carry a tattoo (vei-qia), and the sketches were made by skilful performers called heritage-priests.

In the turn of the last millennium, according to a man (mbuli) who wrote, the woman who carried out the sorrowful rites were expressly described as "wise women". You were a kind of practitioner and their opposite was the'expert tattoo artist'. The ritual was carried out in the hidden niches of the woods, and young females were usually getting tattoos after they had entered adolescence and before they got marrie.

"Tattoos were the adored and fine ornaments of the ladies, to whom both men and ladies placed great value, and it was done in the following way. Before the tattoo, the lady has to go on a 12-hour long diet, from sunlight to evening, and the previous day she has to go fishing for fresh water shrimp from darkness to daybreak and find and obtain three spikes of lemons that are fastened to reeds as handles[for the tattoo instrument].

After that the tattoos began, the holy part (vulva) being the first to be done. He had to give the "wise men" an association as a serious or provisional sum, then he had to give the owners food and a banquet on the 4th working days after the surgery.

Until then, the flesh on the patient's bodies would have cured. Then all the youngsters gathered to watch the sheds fall down and it made them envious to see the pretty patterns. It' made her get tattoos. "Come, come, o spirit, from the Western Queens; of course there were other tattoo moulds and instruments used in Fiji, and all drafts were obligatory.

According to one of the missionaries, the Creator of Fiji, who was a divine chieftain and also the serpent gods, was punishing Degei in the hereafter, probably because they had not put down their balances like his daughters did â?" the first. Indeed, the tattooing of wives was still common in a cavern below the Nakauvadra Mountains of Viti Levu, where it is said that Adi Vilaiwasa, Degei's daugther, got her tattoo.

On the Lau Islands of Fiji, young ladies were dyed on their backs, faces, pudges and hands with an adze-like tool immersed in a carbonized, dark brown candle pigmented with a shark's teeth or fish's bones. Traditionally, old ladies have worked on their customers' skins in three or four instalments over a year or more.

People said that if the girls accept lover in the course of their tattoo inauguration, the hurt would intensify. After it was over, her finger and corner of her face were tattoos to show that she was fit to get married. Ethnographical observation and illustration of Fiji tattooing practices, as found on Viti Levu: Tatttooed man of Yap, c. 1930, was added by the famous natural scientist and painter Theodor Kleinschmidt.

Returning to Yap, Furness noticed that the tattoo crest was built from the winged bones of the Frigatebird, the edge of which consisted of an approximately one inches long section with six small incisive incisors at one end of it. In the Marshalls and Hawaii tattoo ridges were made of Albatros bones, but in the Marshalls the frigates were used as well as their tale nibs, which were used as template tens.

Tattoos of frigatebirds, Solomon Islands, years 1930. In popular beliefs, frigatebirds in Oceania were widely associated with mystique as a predatory, greedy and gluttonous pirate who was also able to find ground. It was a widely held faith, and many people living in Melanesia, Indonesia and Polynesia had tattoos on the coat of arms of frigates, which included the Easter Islanders who were living on the Far East border of the Pacific.

In Micronesia and Fiji, as already mentioned, tattoos were appreciated as a traditional practise and appreciated for its embellishing, juvenile conserving and sexuality. This has also lost its status within the community and precious men and woman have devoted much of their lives to improving their unbelievably wealthy bodies of tattoos, thereby strengthening their mental state.

Like in other parts of Oceania, tattooing rites on the Marshall Islands were joint events and often concentrated on people of high rank. Most tattoos were unattainable for ordinary people because the cost was so high. The Lae Atoll also says that citizens had the right to get tattoos: "To tattoo a citizen, a man was chosen to be the representative of his cowi (clan).

By surviving the Jock in Iowi ( "torture ceremony"), all the male members of his whole group could be Tattoo. If a member of the group was on another of the islands during the test period, that member could be sailing at a later date and the irooj[boss] would give him the right to be getting a tattoo, because his member had lived through the foresail inowi.

Strongly tätowierter man of Gilbert Island, 1880, and other tattoo samples, 1900. Nevertheless, about a fortnight before a tattoo meeting for a chieftain holy rocks that represent the tattooist' s god, Levoj and Lanij, were "sacrificed". It has been said, for example, by verbal tradition that the tattoo ridges for high-ranking chieftains were once made from the bone of young men.

Naturally, we also used humans' bone to make tattoo combs throughout the Pacific, which included those made for use in Kiribati, Tonga, the Society Islands, Marquesas and Samoa. However, in the case of the marshalese, young men could prevent the shedding of blood if they could get the winged bone of albatross on the most northerly part of Wake Island.

The Gilbert Island tattoo pattern, around 1900. Face tattoo of a chieftain from Gilbert Island, 1900. Besides the tattoo of men's bodies, high chieftains could also have their faces inked, which was an indicator of their status. After everything was finished, the patient was given a tattoo on a mats in a special "tattoo house" and a song or prayers were offer.

This text, taken around 1900, was given during the tattoo of Kabua, a chieftain of the Namu Atoll: The Teutonic explorer Adelbert Chamisso, who came to the island in 1815, said that favourable portents were found before the tattoo could begin: a trial that could take several whole working day if the right characters were not welcomed by the god.

Then the next step of the tattoos was started, when a big song was performed by all present. A chieftain, escorted by a group of wives, was dancing around the tattoo parlour. A procession followed, during which the individual to be got the tattoo in the middle of the cabin and masculine members of the aristocracy and the lower class took their mandatory places at the edge of the ground.

Those who were forbidden from doing the stencilling and tattoos themselves took a position outside the hous. When the tattoo artist started writing his templates on his client's meat, the girls quit playing drums and silently sang a choir. They never raised their voice because it was off-limits to divert the tattoo artist.

Eventually the time came when the ink got into the tattooed area. They started drumming fiercely; they beat their limbs and raised the loudness of the following tune to cover all the screams or groans from the tattoo house: for the musician. Take care of the line, you tattooist! In the western part of Yap, only soldiers were permitted to decorate their feet with a design described by traveller Dr. William H. Furness as Thilitrak, but since the war had abated until 1900, the limitation was ignored and men found it attractive to decorate their feet to please them.

Others were very complicated motives covering the entire trunk, back and feet of a man. Yap Island tattoo artist and two Yap bosses' physicals, 1900. The Yapese, a Yapese author who worked in Yap and the Marshalls around 1930, noticed that the Yapese were calling it "gyachau " and that the arts were done by typical female artists.

The Micronesians were particularly skilled at picking up reflective sea sweep pattern from shafts that were fractured against islands. Looking more closely, the deeply bluish posterior zigzag on the Yapesen seems to be the same. And, on the basis of the above-mentioned tattoo clipping vocabulary, it can be said that many of the motives are also deduced from navigation and the seas.

Nevertheless, the Yap's drafts were as costly as they were in all Micronesia. The tattoo artist received a large pre-payment for a large tattoo that covers the bottom and other parts of the skull. He also received a large pre-payment and some other presents that were given to his mates. As tattoos took a lot of skills and a very tedious job, the real prize could include a large quantity of fibres for the production of mats, belt, shells, boxes with lids and even a canoe.

A Mogmog Island man, Micronesia, around 1900. The tattoo shown here was the property of a 25-year-old man, in whom the single strokes are clearly outlined by his pale bay skin," says the musician. With the older locals the ink was already very blurry, so that the single designs and fine strokes converged.

Designed to accompany the front sirloins, the boats are a line of three catches on both sides, trapped in a safety net and prepared to be taken ashore. A similar reverse colour pattern is typical of men from Ontong Java in the Solomon Islands. Japanese men showed samples that seemed quite similar, although men from the Ulithi chains, and especially Mogmog Atoll in the Nordic countries, had very different styles, especially on the necks, bottom and upperighs.

Probably the pronounced uniformity of the Yap pattern is due to legend that the Mogmogese invented tattoos on Yap. And, because the tradition was new to them, they could not fall back on the large range of Mogmog design that had been created on this land over many generation.

Thus, it is likely that the Japanese Tibetan practice of getting a tattoo was probably due to the fact that a few designs were developed only seldom, if ever, after the first visits of much of the island's Mogmogs. Matogmog Men's Tattoo, 1870, and matogmog women with lavish calf and legsattoos, c. 1900. Fishbones dominate most of the feminine designs and several lines of sharks' teeths (Nilpaho) can be seen on the tuck.

Like the Ontong Java woman, the pudendum was Tattoo. In the case of Japanese wives, tattoos were more or less reserved for the male courtesan (Failu). They were imprisoned by other groups as a companion for the men in the "Failu" and tattoos on the back of their hand, feet and upper thigh to remind them of their status in society.

Mogmog also had a tattoo of a woman with the "secret sign" on her possum. Tattoo design of a Yap mispile, 1900. Woman tattoo on Yap Iceland, 1900. Pohnpei was another MICronesian island with feminine tattoo artists. Feminine tattoo artists had both sexes of the hand, arm, leg and thigh but specific belly, vulval and buttock shapes were reserved for the woman - as well as penistattoos (pelikomata), which were covered in three coats for men.

As other parts of Oceania, a tattoo described maturity and the ability to marry, as well as pedigree and family stories. Poohnpei sleeve tattoo (pelipel), 1870s. Before Captain James Cook in 1769, after his trip to Tahiti, invented the Polish term for tattoo (tatau, "to mark") in British, the severely tattooed Jeoly (pictured: Giolo) created a stir in England in 1692 as a side stage.

In spite of the short-lived succes of the Jeoly show, many businessmen soon realised the benefits of showing tribal people, especially those with tattooing. Though Jeoly neither spoke English nor understood his mother language, some ethnographical detail was gained from his brief biography that sheds light on the little-known residents and traditions of Meangis, as well as their tattooing.

"I saw the Isle twice and two others nearby. Jeoly said to me that his dad was a Raja of the archipelago where they were living; that there were no more than thirty men and about a hundred girls on the archipelago; that he himself had five girls and eight kids and that one of his girls made it.

Most of the men and wives on the entire archipelago were drawn like this. I heard him tell me that the people of Meangi had and often fished in boats, and that they often went to the other two small isles, whose people were speaking the same as them.

South Pacific Tattooed Ethnic'Guys', 1890. They were the only ones they talked to, and once, when he, his dad, his mom and brothers, went to one of these other archipelagos with two or three other men, they were caught by a heavy breeze on the Mindanao coastline, where they were brought ashore and marketed as servants by the island's herdsmen.

Tattoo of Lukunor Atoll, Micronesia. Tuuk (Truk) Inselmann with tattoo and other ornamentation, Micronesia, 1900. For, in addition to what he could be shown in England, I hoped that if I could get some cash, I could take him back to Meangis and reinstate him there in his own land, and through his favour and his negotiations to build a trade for the herbs and other produce of these isles.

Solomon Islands are an extensive archipelago that runs approximately from northern to southern direction and comprises both melanesic (scarification) and Polynesian (tattoo) cultured parts of the bodily group. Again and again the tattoo designs of birds and fishs seem to predominate the Solomon peoples' art repertory and perhaps no more than the frigatebird, which was used here as in Micronesia also for the building of tattoo ingames.

And if the dead man didn't have the tattoo, he wasn't supposed to go to the other world. In Melanesia's Ulawa, young men and women were getting tattoos during their pre-wedding ritual. Traditional figurines were the M-shaped wing of the Frigatebird - a motive that is very prominent in the decoration and architectural style of the Solomon Islands - tattoos on the temple.

In San Cristobal, the fringes were usually cut into the grip of a men's war club, although the pine trees of a pelagic were sometimes in place. It was also referred to in certain invocations as "manu epu" or "holy bird", and some races, such as the people of Ontong Java, kept freigates as free-flying domestic animals.

Chieftains daughters with full compliments on face tatsos, Ulawa Island, 1927. a)'frigate bird elbows' on the temple; b) walnut and tonsil rhombus on the brow; c)'reflections of waggle leaf of coconut' on the brow; d)'snake path' chevrones on the cheeks; e) rhombs between the snake's trail. Other motifs on Ulawa were a diamond symbolising the walnut of the tropic one.

Tattoos were placed on the middle of her brow and connected with a zigzag line that broke her up: a line named "nunu i niu" or "reflection of coir leaves". "Kevrons (talamata), known as " serpent path ", were knocked into the cheek, as were extra rhombuses, and a "clouds" tattoo graced the forearm.

Its common name for tattoo was u. s. ("Push, Draw, Write") and for tattoos any tattoo theme was either Rampu or "to strike". "The individual who does the tattoo is paying with shell cash, and the pin was made from the sharp bones of a feather. He was kept up for several nights to cause drowsiness, and before the real knocking began, a preacher was instructed to say an incantation to avoid aches.

As half of the face was inked, drumming was struck to tell the neighbouring towns; and when the Frigatebird was finished, the percussionists resumed their choir. After the tattoo was dry, massage in cream from the cock. Ticopian tattoo motives, 1930. a) Frigatebird wing; b) Delta; c) Mount or coconut-frond sparrow; d) Annelid; e) Faracau plant flowers; f, h) Sharks; g) Dental motives; i) Large fishing motives; y, k) Small fishingatterns.

Tattoos on Tikopia were done solely by recognised masculine specialists (tufunga ta tau), who were held in high esteem in their own congregations. The tattoo customers were free to work with anyone they wanted, but usually they would visit relatives for their constant work. A tattoo artist said that no other species would do it," he said, "local pigments were made of carbon black blended with the trunk of a native plant named Kawunasu, which is a wood.

Males were more pronounced than females and they tolerated finishing their breast tats in a day or two. Almost every tattoo motive comes from Mother Earth, and pisces (face, arm, hand, knee, etc.) and birds of prey such as the frigates (face and shoulder) dominated - such patterns were also engraved into the canoe hull.

A further motive, faccaraumano, was ascribed to the sharks, and the motive faccanifo ("toothing") was tattoos in the center of the breast from the throat to the belly-button. Further drafts were the pistil for stomping coconuts (urumuti) and a small plant (se farakau), which resembles the crucifix of Malta, although the people of the island strongly declared in the 1930' s that the motive was not of christan origins.

Strongly Tibetan tattoo, 1973. Men's forehead, corner and cheek were first getting tattoos, then the main areas of the breast and back rounded off the series. Even the face of a woman was initially made of a piece of meat or another base motive and a more complicated dual volume along the line of the jaws from head to toe.

This last mark was obtained after reaching adolescence, but before marrying, as it was an obligatory practice that females were tagged before their weddingr. It was thought that the tattoo master's tattoo master's matau was personified with psychic strength and was placed under the care of an forefather who was asked to minimize the pains while knocking his hands.

A tattoo artist interviewee around 1930 chanted the following holy song to proclaim the river mateu to his ancestors: "Come, male forefather, to guard over the matuthat it may be lightweight, do not make wound the people' s body once the fragmentation work was performed, the tattoo artist more recently recieved a batch of Payments from his patient's relatives includ-ing nutrition, sindca nuts oder tobaccon.

Sketch of a Kingsmill Group tattoo head, South Gilbert Islands, circa 1840. Tattoo professionals in the South Gilberts and North Tuvalu (Ellis Islands) were men named Tatunga ta'utau, who were highly regarded. Young-girl men were not getting tattoos before the tender ages of twenty, and slave have never deserved the privileges.

Mostly the tattoo was composed of small slanting contours about an eightth of an inch apart. After the tattoo artist welcomed him, he placed these objects on a pad on the ceramic side of his home. "This is your ancestor, Tokelau, 1840; Bowditch Island tattoo artist with'magical eyeshade' working on his males.

The island of Vaitupu is located in today's Tuvalu and to the western side near Bowditch. This is where the tattoo of Taffunga also had eyeshadow when you tapped a tattoo into the body by palm. Like in parts of Solomon Islands and Micronesia, the men and woman of Vaitupu were forced to have themselves inked like a tattoo of pisces, because this was an inherited privilege that gave them an ascription.

In the 1930s, the oldest were questioned and were prohibited from speaking of the oldest at meetings if a tattoo had not been placed on a person: You' re like an ultra ('ulafi'), you' are not like a laya (a high-coloured fish), or what's wrong with you there, do you have a fale-vaka (tattoo design)?

Eastward of Tikopia, the first-born chieftains' children on the island of Bellona were given a tattoo named Tawkuka, symbolising their leading position in the parishion. Females here and on neighbouring Rennell Island were wearing marks (tu'u) consisting of a row of fishing motives over the boobs and a long line ending in the frigate birds motives at the necks and the umbilicus.

Men with different tattoos than females were shown on Rennell, although the "dolphin" design was more common in both cases. When a man walked through their lives, various other tattoo items were added to their bodies. After the young man was inaugurated, he was given a tattoo with an adornment of three parallellograms (te aha) placed in a compartment above the belly button (B).

Epaulet-like tats on the shoulders were carried only by men who were wed (C), and extra geometrical tats under the shoulders and a delicate net around the calf were conceived when a person approached maturity and was identified as the eldest (D). Chieftains and heads were coated with a very large number of extra ink (E), the most important of which was the Hakasapa: the half-moon motif on the buttock.

Steps of the men's tattoo on Rennell Island, 1935. Patients were tattooed in similar progressive stages and this is shown in the figure above: tattoo for single girls (F), single wives (G), middle-aged and older wives (H). Noble and other high-ranking ladies were wearing even more designs, especially extra set of straight line tattoo on the front and back of the upper leg and leg and figurative tattoo on the arm.

Stadiums of women's tattoo on Rennell Island, 1935. A traveller to Rennell also noticed that the High Priest's Lady and High Chieftain Tahoa themselves were wearing a tattoo pattern that was not seen in other human beings. In Ontong Java in Polynesia and in neighbouring Nukumanu, tattoos were the most valuable bodydecor.

Completing the tattoo took many working hours, and the work itself was not only aching, but also the skin inflammation that started afterwards because so much of the skin was decorated. Often the tattoo was contaminated and severe fever and abcesses were present even in the most fresh tattoo. Comprehensive tattoosing was carried by both genders and because of the complex pattern in stages.

Ink from the weather-beaten walnuts of a native strand bush was collected and when heating, an non-transparent ink was formed, which was used for the tattoo. Face and bodily tats by Ontong Java Frauen, 1990'. In 1895, one of the visitors wrote that tattooists were always qualified females who were part of special care homes and the artistic style was handed down from father to son.

Different tattoo motives of tattoos for woman, 1910. It has been handed down orally that the surgery was given to man by a godson called Luahina and tattoos were done by females in her honour. It was Luahina, who was the son of the sea god Lolo, who made the many isles of the Ontong Java Arcipel ago; he was also the first leader.

The tattooing of the Ontong Javan originates from marine work. The name and description of the tattoo itself make this clear in a 1890 sketch - most of them are now largely obsolete. Men and women's brow and the temple were adorned with a row of small rectangles representing the Frigates.

Below the upper line of these coloured squares, the men were wearing a different design that looked something like the tip of the pointer that symbolised the bill of the same avian. Complex tattoo of an older Ontong Java man with "riff" patterns on his arm and many other naturalist motives, around 1880. Next to the smack (up and down) is the tattoo of an eatable riff worms (it has many legs or spores), followed by sentences of small cetaceans.

Both men and females had shark (four) flanking their umbilicus. On the way back, three or four small tattoos were placed directly over the underarms. Further motifs of seafood were added. Four strips in the centre line of the back symbolised even more sculpted rabbit tpus segments, which were finished with two joined-headed rabbit tpus beads.

The return to the man's chest and chest shows an insignia that some modern commentators who came to see Ontong in the 1990s call a "fish hook pattern". That is probably a misinterpretation because a hundred years ago men with tattoos unveiled that it symbolised an oceans attack in concept. Sitting on a line of similar but smaller design that imitates a flatwater riff.

This tattoo's horizontal shape reflects the bumps in the riff, which are partially due to small draining canals and partially due to the spaces between the single caves. This is symbolized by the tattoo on the picture, as the stripes of black paint depict very dark waters and the black and blue squares a swarm or a sandbank.

The tattoo depicted in this way was, of course, very uncommon a hundred years ago, but it was typical of what a fully Tattoed man would look like to the onlooker. Most of the men of this epoch usually used to wear frigates, dolphins, and "big fish" patterns with annelids.

The tattoo of the arms, on the other side, was often substituted by a large number of "fishes" or icas facing each other on the outside of the arms. However, in many ways tattoos were much more richly worn by a woman than by a man, which is not astonishing, as it was given to them by the divine Luahina.

A small fishy and a small dyed fishy pattern on the cheek and these motives were also reproduced on the boob. Elaborate tattooing pattern of an Ontong Java woman, around 1880. From top to bottom on the back of the neck were tattoos of fishs and roundworms. The male mollusc pattern was repetitive between the breast and collar, followed by other molluscs.

The umbilicus was flanked by more roundworms, a row of direction-arrowed whitefish, and two very small M-shaped long-tail or Tahiti cuckoos. This tattoo, which is covering the hips and bottom, symbolises a net of bonitos, which also winds around the front and forms a shadowed trilog. Fishermen's net was also carried as tattoo motives on Tikopia.

A little outside the net on the hip bones is a zigzag design, which is a small cage for minnows. Both of the bottom damselfish were trapped in the net and the large zig-zags next to them replicate the handrail of a fishermarine. At the outside of the thighs (in front) there is an decorative row of sharks' tines, which lie next to a individual one.

Several hundred leagues south-east of Ontong Java lay Sikaiana or the Stewart Islands. Men and woman here were wearing a tattoo probably from Ontong or Nukumanu springs due to the similarities of patterns and language proof. The origins of such a tattoo are mentioned in a non-Sikaian tune written around 1850, on which Takuuu Atoll was used.

You can date the song because the tattoos on Takuu stopped around the middle of the nineteenth centuary and the wives were forced to go to Nukumanu. Sikaian lady with lavish breast tattoo. Embarrassment about your young girl, her tattoo isn't exactly. Shouldn't be easy to transport to Sikaiana for placing on his puppy, And so let my patterns be shown over the shoulders and humerus men were wearing a downgraded copy of the stunning "reef" tattoo that decorated him.

To sum up, the style resemblance, the recurrence of the four fish-like features above the hips and the large fishs above the breastbone indicate an intercultural interchange of different types of tattoos that probably took place in ancient times. Tattoos of female Sikaians are also similar to some extent to Ontong Java designs, but the middle line of tattoos that run between the breast along the breast is more similar to the net shapes of Sikaians.

Occasionally these motives are accompanied by a row of fishs, and the same fishy motives are also placed on the lower arms and the outers. There are tattoos on the inner legs with geometrical forms that may indicate the presence of mesh or net. Sikaian female with breast, arms and femur tattoo, 1900.

An interesting point was made around 1900 with regard to the "reef" pattern on the Ontong men's arm against the somewhat complimentary but different "Netz" tattoos of Sikaian men. Briefly, it is a question of geometry and I urge the readers to contrast the two sketches and the above descriptions regarding the Ontong "Riff" tattoo.

At Ontong the laguna is big and quite low on both sides of the reef: hence the long tattoo line on the arm. In Sikaiana, the altoll climbs very sharply out of the sea and almost surrounds its flat lagoon: therefore no long blacks are to be seen, but those with more "open" (white = flat) patterns at the rim.

So in such situations, the Sikaianese may have re-interpreted the geographic models of their lagoons and reefs by tattoos as an adjustment to their own locality in order to strengthen their feeling of identification and their place in the entire area. West-Oceanian tribes came from the same parts of the globe, had similar fundamental convictions and used similar instruments and material that they made from their surroundings, but when they moved into the isolated archipelago of the great South Seas, they began to evolve their own unmistakable civilizations and customs, such as tattoos in accordance with the vast terrain that surrounded them.

Whether under the requirements of indigenous landscape, stories and factors outside their home region, tattoo became a way to affect the requirements, needs and perils associated with living in and around the world' s biggest oceans; for tattoo was a collectively expressed embodiment of the culture symbols of the peoples of the Western Oceans.

Tatooed people of Kosrae Island, Micronesia, 1820. Most of the tattoo artworks presented here naturally date from a period in which traditionally held assets shifted to different ideas, but were still not separate from their pristine culture. However, the story of migration, colonization and the basic aesthetic philosophy and system help us to determine the place of tattoos in the West Pacific arts, as well as an explanatory note of the basic resemblances and distinctions that can be found between the different genres and cultures.

Tattoo the world: Pacifical designs in print & skin. Firm, R. "Tattooing in Tikopia. Isle of Stone Money: "p 28-31 in tattoo history: Melanesian of the Southeast Salomon Islands. The Marshall Islands legends and stories. Notices on the culture of Vaitupu, Ellice Islands. Tribal women's art of getting tattoos.

"On the ethnography of the Ontong Java and Tasman Islands, and more. Ticopic tattoo. "Tattoo odyssey: Never-ending days on Ontong Java. Marshall tattoos. The Marshall Islands Office for the Preservation of Monuments. It' a tattoo of the people of Bellona Island. "Autograph markings of Rennell Island. "11 Oceania: 202-204. Isle and its inhabitants. "A report on Sikaiana or Stewart's Island in the Protectorate of the British Solomon Islands.