Skilled tattooers of Marquesas Islands a generation ago—Entire bodies
covered with intricate tattooed designs—The foreigner who had
himself tattooed to win the favor of a Marquesan beauty—The magic
that removed the markings when he was recalled to his former life in
England.
TATTOOING, the marking of designs on the human skin in life, is an art
so old that its beginnings are lost to records. It was practised when
the Neolithic brute went out to club his fellows and drag in his body to
the fire his mate kept ever burning. Its origin, perhaps, was
contemporaneous with vanity, and that was in the heart of man before he
branched from the missing limb of evolution. It perhaps followed in the
procession of art the rude scratchings on bone and daubing on rock. In
the caves of Europe with these childish distortions are found the
implements with which the savage whites who lived in the recesses of the
rocks tattooed their bodies. The Jews were forbidden by Moses to tattoo
themselves, and the Arabs, with whom they had much converse, yet
practise it. In 1066 William of Malmesbury said that the English
“adorned their skins with punctured designs.” Kingsley, with regard for
accuracy, makes _Hereward the Wake_, son of the _Lady Godiva_, have blue
tattooing marks on wrists, throat, and knee; a cross on his throat and a
bear on the back of his hand. The Romans found the Britons stained with
woad. The taste for such marks existing to-day is evidenced by the pain
and price paid by sailors and aristocrats of all white nations for them.
Tattooing has faded under clothing which covers it and a less personal
civilization which condemns it. In the Marquesas Islands it reached its
highest development, and here was the most beautiful form of art known
to the most perfect physical people on earth.
[Illustration:
From an old drawing
Te Ipu, an old Marquesan chief, showing tattooing
]
[Illustration:
The famous tattooed leg of Queen Vaikehu
]
Until the overthrow of Marquesan culture, the island of Fatuhiva was the
Florence of the South Seas. The most skillful workers at tattooing as
well as carving lived in its valleys of Oomoa and Hanavave. During the
weeks I have resided in them I delved into the history and curiosities
of this most intimate of fine arts, now expiring if not dead. Nataro,
the most learned Marquesan alive, took me into its intricacies and made
me know it for the proud, realistic performance it was, a dry-point
etching on a growing plate from which no prints were to be made.
Nataro’s wife had one hand that is as famous and as admired in Fatuhiva
as “Mona Lisa’s” portrait in Paris. A famous _tuhuka_ wrought its
design, a man equal in graphic genius, relatively, to Dürer or
Rembrandt. Age and work had faded and wrinkled the picture, but I can
believe her husband that, as a young woman, when the art was not cried
down, people came from far valleys to view it. I recalled the right leg
of the late Queen Vaekehu, the most notable piece of art in all the
Marquesas until it went with its possessor into the grave at Taiohae. In
late years the former queen of cannibals and last monarch of the
Marquesas would not show her limb—a modest attitude for a recluse who
lived with nuns and thought only of death. Stevenson confessed he never
saw it above the ankle, though the queen dined with him on the Casco. He
had a poet’s delicacy, an absolute lack of curiosity, and Mrs. Stevenson
was with him. But he expressed a real sympathy for the iconoclastic
ignorance that was destroying tattooing here.
The queen, who had been the prize of bloody feuds and had danced at the
feast of “long pig,” had gone to her reward after years of beseechment
of the Christian God for mercy, but I could almost see her once glorious
leg in the life because of the two of my Atuona mother, Titihuti, which
for months have passed my hut daily. They are replicas of the Queen’s,
said Nataro, with the difference that Titihuti’s, beginning at her toe
nails, reached a gorgeous cincture at her waist, while Vaekehu’s did not
reach her hip, being, indeed, a permanent stocking. Some of the Easter
Island women had an imitation of drawers delineated upon them, giving
weight to the theory that these perpetuated the idea of clothing they
wore in a colder clime, but of which they had preserved not even a
legend.
Women were seldom tattooed above the waist, except their hands, and fine
lines about the mouth and upon the insides of the lips. This
lip-coloring was, doubtless, the efforts of invaders to make the red
lips of the Caucasian women, the first Polynesian immigrants, conform to
the invaders’ inherited standards, as the Manchus put the queue on the
Chinese. The Marquesan men like dark men. The last conquerors here were
probably a darker race than the conquered, and they preserved their
ideals of color, but, having come without women and seized the women
they found, they let them preserve their own standards, except for red
lips, which they tattooed blue. These latest comers thought much pigment
meant strong bones, and after a battle they searched the field for the
darkest bodies to furnish fishhooks and tools for canoe-making and
carving. They thought the whites who first arrived were gods, and when
they found they were men, with their same passions, they thought they
were ill. That is the first impression one who lives long with
Polynesians has when he meets a group of whites. They look sickly,
sharp-faced, and worried. They pay dear for factories and wheeled
vehicles.
Very probably the beginning of tattooing was the wish to frighten one’s
enemy, as masks were worn by many tribes, and as the American painted
his face with ocher. That state was followed by the natural desire of
the warrior, as evident yet as in Hector’s day, to look manly and
individualistic before the maidens of his tribe. And finally, as
heraldry became complicated, tattooing grew, at least in Polynesia, into
a record of sept and individual accomplishments and distinguishing
marks. Here it had, as an art, freed itself from the bonds of religion,
so that the artist had liberty to draw the Thing as he saw it, and had
not to conform to priest-craft, a rule which probably hurt Egyptian art
greatly.
In New Zealand, where the Polynesians went from Samoa, a sometime
rigorous climate demanded clothing, and the head became the _pièce de
résistance_ of the tattooer. There was a considerable trade among whites
in the preserved heads of New Zealanders until the supply ran out. White
dealers procured the raiding of villages to sell their victim’s visages.
Museums and collectors of such curios paid well for these tattooed
faces, but the demand exhausted the best efforts of the whites. After
the rarest examples were dead and smoked, there was no stimulating the
supply. The goods refused to be manufactured. The Solomon Islands now
supply smoked human heads, but they have no adornment.
Birds, fish, temples, trees, and plants—all the cosmos of the
Marquesan—was a model for the _tuhuka_. He often drew his designs in
charcoal on the skin, but sometimes proceeded with his inking _sans_
pattern. He never copied, but drew from memory, though the same lines
and tableaux might be repeated a thousand times; and always he bore in
mind the caste, tribe, and sex of the subject. Thus at a glance one
could tell the valley and rank of any one, much as in Japan the station,
age, moral standing, and other artificial qualities of women are
indicated by their coiffure and _obi_, or sash.
The craft did not require any elaborate tools. The _ama_ or candlenut
soot with water, a graduated set of bone-needles, of human and pig
origin, and a mallet were all the requirements. The paint or ink was of
but one color, black or brown, which on a dark skin looked bluish and on
a fair skin black. The marking of the parts most delicate and sensitive
to pain, as the eyelids, was a parcel of the endeavor to promote
stoicism and to show the foe the mettle of his opponent. Man did not
consent for thousands of years to share his ornamentation with women,
and then insisted that the _motif_ be beauty or the accentuation of sex.
The tattooers, in order to learn from one another, to have art chats, to
discuss prices and perhaps dead beats or slow payers, had societies or
unions, in which were degrees and offices, the most favored in ability
and by patronage being given the highest rank, though now and again a
white man, by his superior magic and force, though no _tuhuka_ at all,
held the supreme position.
A shark upon the forehead was the card of membership in the tattooers’
lodge, to which were admitted occasionally enthusiastic and discerning
patrons of art.
At festival times, when _tapus_ were to some degree suspended and the
intertribal enmities forgotten for the nonce, thousands of men, women,
and children gathered to eat, drink, and be merry, and to be tattooed,
as one at country fairs buys new dresses and trinkets. It was to these
_fêtes_ that the pot-boilers, fakers, and beginners among the talent
came; men who would make a sitter a scrawl for a heap of _pipi_, shells
and gewgaws, a few squealing pigs, a roll of tapa, or, most precious of
all, a whale’s tooth. Like our second- and third-class painters, our
wretched daubers who turn out canvases by the foot (though
hand-painted), these tramps, who, by a dispensation of the priests and a
mocking providence, were _tapu_, not to be attacked in any valley,
strolled from tribe to tribe, promising much and giving little. Some
worked largely on repair jobs, doing over spots where the skin had been
abraded by injuries in battles, or by rocks or fire. The man who was
well dressed in a suit of tattoo, or the lady who was clothed from toes
to waist in a washable _peau de femme_, kept these garments in as good
condition as possible, but when accident or the fortune of war injured
the _ensemble_ they hastened to have it touched up.
An artist of the first rank, one who in a Marquesan salon would have a
medal of honor, disdained such commissions, but dauber and South Sea Da
Vinci alike often had their work hung upon the line, when they were
taken by the enemy and suspended at the High Place before being dropped
into the pit for the banquets of the cannibal victors.
It was always of interest to me to wonder how men learned tattooing.
Painters, carvers, etchers, and sculptors have material ever available
for their lessons. They can waste an infinity of canvas, wood, copper,
or marble if they have the money to spend, but how about the apprentice
or student who must have live mediums even for practice?
Well, just as there are Chinese who, for a consideration, take the place
of persons condemned to death (though they do not, as alleged, make a
living out of it), and others who, though it exhaust and finally kill
them, enter deadly trades or hire out for war, there were Marquesans who
offered themselves as kit-cats for these students and sold their surface
at so much an inch for any vile design or miserable execution. I can see
these fellows, well covered with _tapa_, hiding whenever possible the
caricatures and travesties that made them a laughing show. These
Hessians had no pride in complexion. Their skins they wanted full of
food, nor cared at all for their outside if the inside man was replete.
There were others who, too poor to pay even the itinerant wall-painters,
let the students wreak their worst upon them, merely to be tattooed,
good or bad, and many of these, like our millionaire picture buyers,
were luckily denied any appreciation of art and did not know the
imperfections of the _skin_ pictures put upon them.
“Tattooing in these islands,” said Nataro, “was usually begun upon those
able to pay for it at the age of puberty; but there were many exceptions
of tattooing commenced upon boys soon after their infancy or deferred
until mature manhood. Illness, poverty, or other obstacle might prevent,
and the desire of parents might cause early tattooing. The father or
other relative or protector of the youth or girl paid the _tuhuka_ but
at the festivals even the very poor orphans were given opportunities to
be tattooed by a general contribution, or the chief of the valley paid
the fee. Years were occupied at intervals in the covering of the entire
body of men, which was the aim; but many had to be content with having a
part pictured, and often elaborate designs were never finished. You see
many bare places, meant to be covered when the _tuhuka_ began his work.
Queen Vaekehu was converted to Christianity with but one leg done and
forewent further beautification to serve her new God. Though begun in
boyhood, the full adornment of a man could hardly be terminated before
his thirtieth year. During his lifetime of sixty years he might have it
renewed twice, and as each pore could not be duplicated exactly the
third coat would make him a solid mass of color, the goal of manly
beauty.
“Though men usually sought to look terrible so that when they faced
their enemies they would inspire fear, with women the sex _motif_ was
dominant,” said Nataro. “Girls with beautiful bodies and legs are much
more attractive when tattooed, and we selected the best formed for the
most elaborate designs. These were drawn so that, as the girls danced
naked, the whole patterns were obvious, and those who were the most
symmetrical won high honors in the great public exhibitions. If in the
wide circle that chanted a _utanui_, while the old folks watched, a
woman by exposing her beauty in a dance caused the voices of the young
men to falter, or some one of them to become so entranced as to leap
into the ring and seize her, she won a prize of acclamation for her
parents which no other equaled. The dance stopped and all united in
cheering the dancer. These beauties danced with their legs close
together, so as to keep the design intact, lifting the heels backward
and showing the shapeliness of figure and the fineness of tattooing.”
To analyze thoroughly the meanings of the different designs upon the
bodies of the Maoris, or upon the canoes, paddles, and bowls, was
impossible now. It might be compared to the study of heraldry. Tattooing
in the South Seas was a combination of art and heraldry, racial and
individual pride’s sole written or graven record.
In the Marquesas, the art reached its zenith. It was the Marquesans’
national expression, their art, their proof of Spartan courage, the
badge of the warrior, and the glory of sex. In the man it marked
ambition to meet the enemy and to win the most beautiful women. In the
weaker vessel it was a coquetry, highly developed among daughters of
chiefs and women of personal force; and it afforded those who had
submitted to the efforts of the best craftsmen opportunities to display
their charms in public to the most striking advantage.
Nataro said that when the law against tattooing was enforced here a few
years ago a number went to prison rather than obey it, but that when it
was abrogated the art was already dead. It is kept alive now, except in
a few cases, only by the placing of names upon the arms of the girls.
Many _tuhukas_ were still living, but there was little call for their
work.
“They were our highest class, next to the chiefs,” said Nataro. “We
looked up to them as you do to your great. They were fêted and made much
of, and their schools were our art centers, teaching besides tattooing,
the carving of wood, bowls, canoes, clubs, and paddles. Now we buy tin
cans and china plates. Von den Steinen, the German philologist,
connected with the Berlin museum, who was here ten years ago, copied
every tattoo pattern he saw, and in many he found a relation to Indian
or Asiatic and perhaps other hieroglyphics and figures of thousands of
years ago.”
With the ridiculing of it by the missionaries, who associated it with
heathenry, and the making of it a crime by the missionary-directed
chiefs of Tahiti, tattooing vanished there almost a hundred years ago,
but here the law against it was very recent. The law written by the
English Protestant missionaries in Tahiti was as follows:
No person shall mark with tatau, it shall be entirely
discontinued. It belongs to ancient evil customs. The man or
woman that shall mark with tatau, if it be clearly proved, shall
be tried and punished. The punishment shall be this—he shall
make a piece of road ten fathoms long for the first marking,
twenty for the second; or stone work four fathoms long and two
wide; if not this, he shall do some work for the king. This
shall be the woman’s punishment—she shall make two large mats,
one for the king and one for the governor; or four small mats,
for the king two, and for the governor two. If not this, native
cloth twenty fathoms long and two wide; ten fathoms for the king
and ten for the governor. The man and woman that persist in
tatauing themselves successively four or five times, the figures
marked shall be destroyed by blacking them over, and the
individuals shall be punished as above written.
To achieve a fairly complete picture upon one’s body meant many months
of intense suffering, the expenditure of wealth, and a decade of years
of very gradual progress toward the goal after manhood was attained; but
for a man in the former days to lack the Stripes of Terror upon his
face, to have a bare countenance, or one not yet marked by the initial
strokes of the hammer of the tattooer was to be a poltroon and despised
of his tribe.
Such a one must expect to have no apple of love thrown at him, to awaken
no passion in womankind, nor ever to find a wife to bear him children.
He was as the giaour among the Turks. He had no honor in life or death,
no foothold in the ranks of the warriors, or place among the shades of
Po.
So when white men were cast by shipwreck in those isles, or fled from
duty on whalers or warships, and sought to stay among the Marquesans,
they acceded to the honored customs of their hosts, and adopted their
facial adornment and often in the course of years their whole bizarre
garb. The courage that did not shrink from dwelling among cannibals
could not wilt at the blow of the _hama_.
The explorer in the far North, who lets his face become covered with a
great growth of hair, when he intends to return to civilization can with
a few strokes of a razor be again as before. But once the curious ink of
the tattooer has bitten into the skin, it is there forever. It is like
the pits of smallpox; it can never be erased. Through all his life, and
into the grave itself, the human canvas must bear the pictures painted
by the artist of the needles. It was a chain as strong as steel, riveted
on him, that fastened him to these lotus isles. So men of America or
Europe did not return to their native land from the Marquesas, but died
here. The whorls and lines in the _ama_ dye wrote exile forever from the
loved ones at home.
Is that wholly true? Had not science or sorcery nepenthe for the
afflicted by such a horror—horror if unwanted? Is there not one who has
escaped such a fate when life had become fearful under it?
I asked that question of all, and in the valley of Hanavave was
answered. I had rowed to Hanavave in the whaleboat of Grelet, and, when
he returned to Oomoa, stayed on a month for the fishing with Red Chicken
and discussions with _Père_ Olivier.
“There is a sorcerer in the hills near here,” said the old French
priest, thirty-five years there without leaving, “who was said to be the
best tattooer on Fatuhiva. He is still a pagan, and has a wonderful
memory. Take some tobacco and a pipe, and go to visit him. He may be in
league with the devil, but he is worthy an hour’s journey.”
Puhi Enata was still vigorous, though very old. The designs upon his
face and body were a strange green, the verde antique which the _ama_
ink becomes on the flesh of the confirmed _kava_ drinker. I greeted him
with “Kaoha!” and soon, with the chunk of tobacco beside him and the new
pipe lit, I led him to the subject. The story is not mine but his, and
it has all the weird flavor of these exotic gardens of mystery. It is
true without question, and I have often thought since of the American
concerned in it, and wondered at his after fate.
We were seated, Puhi Enata and I, upon the _paepae_ of his home, the
platform of huge stones on which all houses in the Land of the War Fleet
are built.
In the humid air of that tropic parallel he made pass before me a
panorama of fantastic tragedy as real as the life about me, but as
astounding and as vivid in its facts and its narration as the recital of
a drama of ancient Athens by a master of histrionics. I laughed or
shuddered with the incidents of the story. He spoke in his native
tongue, and I have given his words as they filtered through the screen
of my alien mind, not always exactly, but in consonance with the cast of
thought of that far-away and unknown land.
“We had no whites here when he came, this man of your islands. Other
valleys had them, but Hanavave, no. Few ships have come to this bay.
Taiohae, a day and a night and more distant, they sought for food and
water and now for copra, but Hanavave was, as always, lived in by us
only. Yet we ever welcomed the _haoe_, the stranger, for he had ways of
interest, and often magic greater than ours.
“He came one day on a ship from far, this white man I tell about, and of
whom even now I often meditate. He was not of the sea, but on the ship
as one who pays to move about over the waters, looking for something of
interest. That thing he found here. He brought ashore his guns and
powder, his other possessions of wonder, and let the ship go away
without him. He had seen Titihuti, and his _koekoe_, his spirit, was set
aflame.”
I needed no description by the _tuhuka_ to bring before me Titihuti, to
see that maddening, matchless child-woman, nor to know the desperate
plight of a white who fell in love with her. She must have been the
Helen of these Pacific Greeks, for men came from other islands to woo
her, fought over her, and embroiled tribes in bloody warfare at her
whim. Her affairs had been the history of her valley for a brief period,
and were immortalized in chants and in legends though she still lived.
Many had related to me stories of her beauty, her spell over men, and
her wicked pleasure in deceiving them.
She was the daughter of a chief, of a long line of _hakaiki_, of noble
mothers and of warriors, and an adept in the marvelous cult of beauty,
of sex expression, which to the Marquesan woman was the field of her
dearest ambition, the professional stage and the salon of society.
“The day he came to this beach,” said the sorcerer, “was the day she
first danced in the Grove of the Mei, at the annual gathering of the
tribe. All the people of the ship were invited, and not least he who had
no duties but his desires, and who brought from the vessel a barrel of
rum as his gift to the people. It was as rich as the full moon, as
strong as the surf in storm, and in every drop a dream of fortune. It
made that foreigner of note at once, and he was given a seat at the
_Hurahura_, the Dance of Passion, in which Titihuti for the first time
took her place as a woman and an equal of others. She was then thirteen
years old, a _moi kanahau_, her form as the bud of the _pahue_ flower,
her hair red-gold, like the fish of the lagoon, and her skin as the
fresh-opened breadfruit. The Grove of the Mei you have been in, but you
cannot imagine that scene. A hundred torches of candlenuts, strung on
the spine of the palm-leaf, lit the dancing mead. The grass had been cut
to a smoothness, and all the valley was there. As is usual in these
annual débuts of our girls, at the height of the breadfruit season, a
dozen were allowed to show their beauty and skill. These danced to the
music of drums and of hand-clapping and chanting before the entire tribe
seated on the grass.”
The old man lit the pipe, which had gone out, and puffed out the blue
clouds of smoke as if they were recollections of the past.
“Finally, as the custom is, the plaudits of the crowd narrowed the
contest to three. Each as she danced appealed for approval, and each had
followers. By the judgment of the throng all had retired but three after
a first effort. These began the formal _titii e te epo_. This is the
dance of love, the dance we Marquesans have ever made the test of the
female’s fascination.
“Before the first of the three danced, the rum was passed. It was drunk
from cups of leaves, and each in turn drew from the cask. It ran through
our veins like fire through the _pandanus_. The great drum then sounded
the call.
“Tahiatini came from the shadow of the trees. She wore a dress of
_tapa_, made from the pith of the mulberry-tree, and as the dance became
faster she tossed it off until she moved about quite nude. For this, of
course, is part of the test. A hundred men, mostly young, stood and
watched her, and watching them were the judges, the elders of the race,
men and women. For, Menike, in the expression, the heat, or the coolness
of those standing men was counted the success or failure of the dancer.
And they were taught by pride and by the rules of the event to conceal
every feeling, as did the warrior who faced the launched spear. They
were to be as the stones of the _paepae_.
“Tahiatini passed back into the trees, and Moeo succeeded her. She
seemed to feel that Tahiatini had not scored heavily. She danced
marvelously for one who had never before been in the Grove of Mei, and
the shrewd judges reckoned more than one of the silent hundred who could
not restrain from some mark of approval. There was, when she fell back,
a shout of praise from the crowd, and the judges conferred while the rum
was handed about for the second time.
“Then Titihuti was thrust out from the darkness, and from her first step
we realized that a new enchantress had come to torment the warriors. I
have lived long, and many of those dances in the Grove of Mei I have
seen. Never before or since that night have I known a girl to do what
she did. Her _kahu_ of _tapa_ was as red as the sun when the sea
swallows it, and hung over one shoulder, so that her bosom, as white as
the ripe cocoanut, gleamed in the light of the burning _ama_.
“Her hair was in two plaits of flame, and the glittering ghost flowers
were over her ears. You know she had for months been out of the day and
under the hands of those who prepare the dancers. Her body was as
rounded as the silken bamboo, and her skin shone with the gloss of
ceaseless care.
“She advanced before the silent hundred, moving as the slow waters of
the brook, and as she passed each one she looked into his eyes and
challenged him, as the fighting man his enemy. Only she looked love and
not hatred. Then she bounded into the center of the line and, casting
off her _kahu_, she stood before them, and for the first time bared her
beautiful body in the _titii e te epo_, the Dance of the Naked. She
fluttered as a bird a few moments, the bird that seeks a mate, the
_kuku_ of the valley. On her little saffroned feet she ran about, and
the light left her now in brilliancy and now in shadow. She was
searching for the way from childhood to womanhood.
“Then the great _pahu_, the war-drum of human skin, was struck by O
Nuku, the sea-shells blew loudly, and the _Hurahura_ was proclaimed. You
know that. Few are the men who resist. Titihuti was as one aided by
Veinehae, the Woman Demon. She flung herself into that dance with
madness. All her life she and her mother had awaited that moment. If she
could tear the hearts of those warriors so that their breasts heaved,
their limbs twitched, and their eyes fell before her, her honor was as
the winner of a battle. It was the supreme hour of a woman’s existence.
[Illustration:
Photo from Brown Bros.
Tattooing at the present day
]
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Easter Islander in head-dress and with dancing-wand
]
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
My tattooed Marquesan friend
]
“The judges seized the flambeaux and scrutinized closely the faces of
the men. First one yielded and then another. Try as they might to be as
the rocks of the High Place, they felt the heat and melted. A dozen were
told off in the first few minutes of Titihuti’s dance, though Tahiatini
and Moeo had won but two or three. Faster grew the music, and faster
spun about her hips the torso of Titihuti. The judges caught the rhythm.
They themselves were convulsed by the spell of the girl. The whole line
of the silent hundred was breaking when, as the breadfruit falls from
the tree, suddenly sprang upon the mead the foreigner who had come but
that day. Though others of the ship tried to hold him, he broke from
them, and, clasping Titihuti in his arms, declared that she was his, and
that he would defend his capture. The drums were quieted, the judges
rushed to the pair, and, for the time of a wave’s lapping the beach,
spears were seized.
“But the ritual of the rum began, and in the crush about the cask the
judges awarded Titihuti the Orchid of the Bird, the reward of the First
Dancer. She stood in the light of the now dying torches, and when the
foreigner would embrace her and lead her away she turned her laughing
eyes toward him and called out so that many heard:
“‘You are without ornament, O Haoe. Cover your face as do Marquesan
lovers, or get you back to your island!’
“Then she hurried away to receive the praise and to taste the glory of
her achievement among her own family.”
The _Taua_ took his long knife and with repeated blows hacked off the
upper half of a cocoanut to make ready another drink. I had a very vivid
idea of the situation he had described. That handsome young man of
Europe, belike of wealth, seeking to surrender to his vagrant fancies in
this contrasting environment, and finding that among these savages he
had position only as his rum bought it with the men, and was without it
at all among the women. One could fancy him all afire after that dance
of abandon, ready on the instant to yield to the deepest of all
instincts, and surprised, astounded, almost unbelieving at his repulse.
He might have learned that such repulse was not even in the manner of
the Marquesans, but solely the whim of Titihuti, the beginning of that
career of whimsical passion and _insouciance_ which carried her fame
from island to island and fetched other proud whites from afar to know
her favor. He himself had come a long way to be the unwitting victim of
the most prankish girl and woman who ever danced a tribe to death and
destruction, but who withal was worth more than she who launched the
thousand ships to batter Ilium’s towers.
“And did he cover his face?” I demanded, hurrying to follow the windings
of fate.
“_E!_” said the sorcerer. “He gained the friendship of chiefs. He let
his ship sail away with but a paper with words to his tribe, and he
stayed on. He hunted, he swam, and he drank, but he could not touch his
nose to the nose of Titihuti, for his nose was naked. Weeks passed, but
not his passion. He hovered about her as the great moth seeks the
fireflies, but ever she was busied with her pomades and her massage, the
_ena_ unguent and the baths, the _omi omi_ and the combing of her
red-gold tresses. She had set him aflame, but had no alleviation for
him.
“And then when the moon was at its height she danced again, this time
alone, as the undisputed _vehine haka_ of Fatuhiva. The foreigner sat
and gazed, and when Titihuti glided to where he was and, planting her
feet a _metero_ away, addressed herself to him, he shook with longing.
She was perfumed with the jasmine, and about her breasts were rings of
those pink orchids of the mountains. The foreigner felt the warmth of
her presence as she posed in the attitudes of love. He bounded to his
feet and, clasping her for the second time to him, he shouted that he
would be tattooed, he would be a man among men in the Marquesas.
“There was no delay; I myself tattooed him. As always the custom, I took
him into the mountains and built the _patiki_, the house for the rite.
That is as it should be, for tattooing is of our gods and of our
religion before the whites destroyed it. I was and am the master of our
arts. I did not sketch out my design upon his skin with burned bamboo,
as do some, but struck home the _ama_ ink directly. My needles were the
bones of one whom I had slain, an enemy of the Oi tribe. I myself
gathered the candlenuts and, burning them to powder, mixed that with
water and made my color. My mallet, or _hama_, was the shin of another
whom I had eaten.”
Such a man as Leonardo, who painted “Mona Lisa” and designed a hundred
other beautiful things, or Cellini of the book and a vast creation of
intricate marvels, would have understood the exactness of that art of
tattooing in the Marquesas. Suppose “Mona Lisa” herself, an expanse of
her fair back, and not mere linen, bore her picture. What infinite
pains! Not more than took the _taua_ in such a task. In his mind his
plan, he dipped his needle in the _ama_ soot, and, placing the point
upon a pore of the flesh, he lightly tapped the other extremity of the
bone with his _hama_ of shin and impressed the sepia into the living
skin, for each point of flesh making a stroke.
Followed fever after several hours of frightful anguish. The dentist is
the ministrant of caresses, his the loved hand of pleasure, compared
with the suffering caused to the quivering body by the blows of those
needles. A séance of tattooing followed, and several days of sickness.
He had not the strength of the natives in the pain, and often he cried
out, but yet he signed that the tattooing should go on.
“Across his eyes upon the lids, and from ear to ear, I made a line as
wide as two of your teeth, and I crossed lines as wide from the corners
of his forehead to the corners of his chin. As he was to be admitted to
the Lodge of Tattooers, I put upon his brow the sacred shark as big as
Titihuti’s hand. I was four moons in all that, and all the time he must
lie within his hut, never leaving it or speaking. I handed him food and
nursed him between my work. Upon our darker skin the black candlenut ink
is, as you know, as blue as the deep waters of the sea, but on him it
was black as night, for his flesh was white.
“He was handsome as ever god of war in the High Place, that foreigner,
and terrible to behold. His eyes of blue in their black frames were as
threatening as the thunders of the ocean, and above the black shark
glistened his hair, as yellow as the sands of the shore. A breadfruit
season had passed when we descended the mountain, and he was received
into the tribe of Hanavave. We called him Tohiki for his splendor,
though his name was Villee, as we could say it.”
There is a curious quibble in the recital of the Polynesian. He arrives
at a crisis of his tale, and avoids it for a piece of wit or an idle
remark. Perhaps it is to pique the listener’s interest, to deepen his
attention, or it is but the etiquette of the bard.
“Titihuti?” I interposed.
“_Tuitui!_” he ejaculated. “You put weeds in my mouth. That girl, that
Titihuti, had left her _paepae_ and vanished. Some said she dwelt with a
lover in another valley. Others that she had been captured at night by
the men of Oi Valley. It was always our effort to seize the women of
other tribes. They made the race stronger. But Titihuti was not in Oi or
with a lover. Her love was her beauty, and soon we learned that she was
gone into the hills herself to be tattooed. You, American, have seen her
legs, and know the full year she gave to those. They are even to-day the
_hana metai oko_, the loveliest and most perfect of all living things.”
“And Willie, the splendid Tokihi, what said he?”
“_Aue!_ He dashed up and down the valleys seeking her. He offered gifts
for her return. He cried and he drank. But the tattooing is _tabu_, and
it would have been death to have entered the hut where she was against
the wish of the artist. Then he turned on me and cursed me, and often he
sat and looked at himself in the pool in the brook by his own _paepae_.
That foreigner lost his good heart. No longer was he kind and gentle. It
was he who led us against the valley of Oomoa, and with his gun wrought
great harm to those people. It was he who was ready to fight at but the
drop of a cocoanut upon his roof. He took no women, and he became the
fiercest man of Hanavave. When the year had gone, and Titihuti came
back, he would not see her in the dance, though in it she showed her
decorative legs for the first time. He cursed her, too, and said she was
a sister of the _feki_, the devilfish. He dwelt among us for several
years as one who leads the tribe, but is not of it. Often he but missed
death by the breadth of a grain of sand, for he flung himself on the
spears, he fought the sea when it was angered, and he drank each night
of the _namu_, the wine of the cocoanut flower grown old, until he
reeled to his mat as a canoe tossing at the fishing.
“Then one day came a canoe from Taiohae, with words on paper for him
from his own people. A ship from his island was there and had sent on
the paper. That was a day to remember. There were with the paper _tiki_,
those faces of people you make on paper. Villee seized those things,
and, running to his _paepae_, he sat him down and began to look them
over. He eyed the words, and he put the _tiki_ to his lips. Then he lay
down upon his mat and wept. For much time he was like a child. He rolled
about as if he had been struck in the body by a war-club, and at last he
called me. I went to him with a shell of _namu_.
“‘Drink!’ I said. ‘It will lift you up.’
“He knocked the shell from my hand.
“‘I will drink no more,’ he cried. ‘My father is dead, and my brother. I
am the chief of my tribe. I have land and houses and everything good in
my own island, but, alas! I have this!’
“He pointed to the black shark upon his forehead, and then he shouted
out harsh words in his own language. I left him, for he was like one
from whom the spirit has gone, but who still lives. I thought of the
strangeness of tribes. In ours he was a noble and honored man for that
shark, and yet in his own as hateful as the barefaced man here. Man is,
as the wind cloud, but a shifting vapor.
“Often, a hundred times, I saw him sitting by the pool and gazing into
it as though to wash out by his glances the marks on his countenance. He
was as deep in the mire of despair as the victim awaiting the oven.
Nature’s mirror showed him why he could not leave for his land and his
chieftaincy. And, American, for a woman, too. I saw him many times look
at that _tiki_ and read the words. Maybe he had fled from her in anger.
Now he was great among his people, and she called him. Maybe. My own
heart was heavy for him when he fixed his eyes on that still water.
“After weeks of melancholy he summoned me one day.
“‘_Taua_,’ he said, ‘is there no magic, no other ink, no bones, that
will quit me of this?’
“He swept his hand over his face.
“‘I will give you my gun, my canoe, my coats, and I will send you by the
ship barrels of rum and many things of wonder.’
“He took my hand, and the tears followed the lines of the tattooing down
his cheeks.
“‘Tokihi,’ I replied, ‘no man in the Marquesas has ever wanted to take
from his skin that which made him great to his race, yet there is a
legend that wanders through my stomach. I will consult the lodge. It
would be magic, and it may be _tapu_.’
“The next day I found him lying on his _paepae_, his face down. He was a
leaf that slowly withers.
“‘Villee,’ I said, and rubbed his back, ‘there is for you perhaps
happiness yet. I have talked with the wise old men of the lodge.’
“He raised himself, and fixed his dull eyes on me.
“‘One Kihiputona says that the milk of a woman will work the magic. I
can not say, for it is with the gods.’
“The foreigner sprang to his feet.
“‘Come, let us lose no time!’ he cried. ‘It is that or the _eva_.’
“Marquesans, when tired of life, eat the _eva_ fruit. I made all ready,
and, taking my daughter and her babe, with food, and the things of the
tattooing, we again went to the hut in the mountains. Together we built
it over, and made all ready for the trial.
“‘Remember, foreigner,’ I said, ‘this is all before the _Etuá_, the
rulers of each one’s good and evil. I have never done this, nor even the
wisest of us has ought but a faint memory of a memory that once a white
man thus was freed to go back to his kin.’
“‘_E aha a_—no matter,’ he said. ‘There is no choice. Begin!’
“I warned him not to utter a word until I released the _tapu_. I made
all ready. Then I had him lie down, his head fixed in a bamboo section,
and I began the long task.”
The sorcerer sighed, and spat through his fingers.
“Two moons he was there, silent. I worked faster than before, because I
had no designs to make. I only traced those of the years before. But the
suffering was even greater, and when I struck the bone-needles upon his
eyelids he groaned through his closed mouth. Every day I worked as long
as he could endure. Sometimes he all but died away, but the _omi omi_,
the rubbing, made him again aware, and as I went on I gained hope
myself. His own skin was by nature as that of the white orchid, and the
weeks in the _patiki_ out of the sunlight, with the oil and the saffron,
made it as when he was child. The milk was driven into a thousand little
holes in the flesh, and by magic it changed the black of _ama_ to white.
I think some wonder made it do so, but you should know such things. I
left the shark until the last, but long before I came to it the gods had
spoken. Faded slowly the candlenut soot, and crept out, as the
silver-fish in the caves of Hana Hevane, the bright color of that
foreigner.
“Many times his eyes, when I let loose the lids, lifted to mine in
inquiry, but I was without answer. Yet nearer I felt the day when I
would possess that gun and canoe and the barrels of rum.
“It came. A week had gone since I had touched with the needles his face,
and most of it he had slept. Now he was round with sleep and food, and
one morning when he awoke, I seized him by the hand and said, ‘_Kaoha!_’
The _tapu_ was ended; the task was done.”
“And he?” I said greedily.
“He was as a man who wakes from a dream of horror. He said not a word,
but went with me and with my daughter and the babe down the trail to
this village. Here he stole silently to his pool, and, lying down, he
looked long into it. Then he made a wild cry as if he had come to a
precipice in the dark and been kept from falling to death by the mere
gleam of fungus on a tree. He fell back, and for a little while was
without mind. Awake again, he rushed about the village clasping each one
he met in his arms, rubbing noses with the girls, and singing queer
songs—_himenes to e aave_—of his island. His laughter rang in the
groves. Now he was as when he had come to us, gay, kind, and without
deep thought.
“The gods had for that moon made him theirs, for soon came a canoe with
news that a ship of his country was at Taiohae. Never did a man act more
quickly. He made a feast, and to it he invited the village. A day it
took to prepare it, the pigs in the earth, the _popoi_, the fish cooked
on the coral stones, the fruits, and the nuts. To it he gave all his
rum, and he handed me his gun, the paddles of his canoe, and his coats.
“But Po, the devil of night, crouched for him. The canoe to take him to
Taiohae was in the water, waiting but the end of the _koina kai_.
Plentifully all drank the rich rum, but Tokihi most. Titihuti even he
had greeted, and she sat beside him. She was now loath to have him go;
you know woman. She leaned against him, and her eyes promised him aught
that he would. She was more beautiful than on that night when she had
spurned him, and she struck from him a spark of her own willful fancy.
He took her a moment to his bosom, held her as the wave holds the rock
before it recedes, and then, as the madness she ever made crept upon
him, he drew back from her, held her again a fierce moment, and, dashing
his cup to the earth, he turned upon her in fury.
“It was the evil noon. The eye of the sun was straight upon him, and as
he cursed her, and shouted that now he was free from her, the blood
rushed into his face, and painted there scarlet as the hibiscus the
marks of the tattooing. The black _ama_ the magic had erased now shone
red. The stripes across his eyes and face were like the scars a burning
brand leaves, and the shark of the lodge was a leper’s sign upon his
brow.
“‘_Mutu!_’ I cried, for I saw death in the air if he knew, and all the
gifts lost to me. ‘Silence!’ And the tribe heeded. No quiver, no glance
showed the foreigner that one had seen what he himself had not. Titihuti
fastened her gaze on him a fleeting second, and then began the dance of
leave-taking.
“We raised the chant:
‘_Apae!
Kaoha! te Haoe.
Mau oti oe anao nei._’
“To the canoe we bore him, and thrusting it into the breakers, we called
the last words, ‘_E avei atu!_’
“He was gone forever from Fatuhiva. And thus I got this latter name I
have, Puhi Enata, the Man with the Gun.”
The old sorcerer rolled a leaf of _pandanus_ about a few grains of
tobacco.
“And you never had word of him?”
“_Aoe_, no,” he said meditatively. “He went upon that ship at Taiohae.
But, American, I think often that when that man who was Tokihi came to
dance in his own island, to sit at his own tribe’s feasts, or when the
ardor of love would seize him, always he tried to be calm.”
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