Tattooing Arts OF Tribal Women

Exactly ten years ago today, I was an anthropology graduate student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. On a crisp fall morning, a small aircraft carried me from Nome across the Bering Sea to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska (Sivuqaq). Landing on a gravel airstrip, I exited the plane to begin my first research project focusing on indigenous tattooing practices and the women who created them. Since then, the 2,000-year-old custom of Yupik tattooing on St. Lawrence Island has died along with its final two practitioners (2005). And in 1998, the last living Ainu woman in Japan with traditional tattooing passed away, and so too did an indelible custom that some scholars believe was 10,000 years old. Sadly throughout the indigenous world today, tribal tattooing practices and the gatekeepers of knowledge associated with them are largely on the decline. And for this reason, I have crisscrossed the globe to document this rapidly vanishing art form; one that, until recently, has traveled on living bodies for millennia.

 Of course, this book would have been impossible without the support and tutelage of numerous indigenous elders and historians I have worked with over the last decade. In fact, many of these individuals encouraged me to explore more deeply the complex symbolism of indigenous tattooing practices before it began to disappear from view. To these elders and their families, I extend my appreciation and deepest gratitude. Several archivists, librarians, professors, writers, editors, artists, anthropologists, translators, publishers, institutions, and academic mentors also offered invaluable support or inspiration during the completion of this research in the form of photographs, written documents and publications, archaeological collections, field contacts, permissions, personal communications, and simple suggestions. In this context, I would like to single out Dr. Molly C. Lee, Dr. Edmund Carpenter and the Rock Foundation, Dr. Igor Krupnik, Dr. Peter Schweitzer, Dr. Lydia Black, Dr. William Merrill, Dr. Marvin Allison, Dr. John T. J. Ho, Dr. Gen Suwa, Dr.arm) at eighteen years of age. Her tattoos were pricked-in with a thorn implement and were requisites for marriage; men would not marry a Sihan woman without them. Old Sihan women were the tattoo artists and they generally employed the same methods and motifs as the Kayan. The position of tattooist was hereditary, usually passed from mother to daughter. At death, the tattoo artist was buried with her equipment.116 The neighboring Lahanan also excelled in tattooing. Lahanan tattooists were always women and the profession was hereditary in the female line. One 65-year-old woman, Bangu, gave me a vivid account of her ca. 1950 tattoo experience and the price list for each tattoo in Sarawak dollars (SD). “Several women held me down, each took a limb, and another woman

stretched the skin for the tattooist who began working once I was calm. I wanted to get through it because I wouldn’t get a husband if I didn’t. It took four days to tattoo one arm (60 SD) and four for the other (60 SD); four days for one foot (3 SD) and four more for the other (3 SD). I was fifteen years old at the time and we did all the tattoos in those sixteen days!”117 Two Lahanan men, who were tattooed by women, mentioned that if you had no money, you paid for your tattoos with a gong or a parang (short sword). One of these men, 80-year-old Pugwun Bapai, told me he was tattooed for a 25 Sarawak dollar fee at the age of fifteen. A special party was held in his honor after the ritual because he was no longer a “boy,” but a “man.”For the Sinagoro, all sickness, no matter how serious, was attributed to

supernatural agency16 and this belief extended to most, if not all,

Austronesians living in coastal Papua.17 Even dead ancestors were believed

to “deal out sickness, or death, to anyone who may displease them.”18

Generally speaking different women were employed for tattooing specific

parts of the body.19 Among the Mailu, facial tattoo artists seem to have

been paid more as this work was the most painful and dangerous. Around

1900, a typical payment for facial work included: two strings (pairs) of arm

shells, quantities of cockatoo and parrot feathers, and a string bag. If other

parts of the body were tattooed, the tattooist may have only received a small

payment of cooked food.20

Hula women who had completed the final phase of their tattooing, namely

the receipt of marks below the navel, were celebrated at an initiation feast

called kapa that was held annually at the ceremonial house (dubu) in the village center.21 At the climax of this two-day ceremony, known as kuiriga, the

Of course, the Ainu vehemently evaded these laws because tattoos were

traditionally a prerequisite to marriage and to the afterlife. One report from

the 1880s described that the Ainu were very much grieved and tormented

by the prohibition of tattooing: “They say the gods will be angry, and that

the women can’t marry unless they are tattooed. They are less apathetic on

this than on any subject, and repeat frequently, ‘It’s part of our religion.’ ”14

One Ainu woman stated in the 1970s, “I was twenty-one years old before I

had this little tattoo put on my lips. After it was done, my mother hid me

from the Japanese police for five days. I wish we could have retained at least

this one custom!”15

Ainu tattoos, girdles, and symbolic embroidery

Traditional Ainu tattooing instruments called makiri were knife-like in

form, and sometimes the sheaths and handles of these tools were intricately

carved with zoomorphic and apotropaic motifs.16 Before the advent of

steel tipped makiri, razor sharp obsidian points were used, which were wound

with fiber allowing only the tip of the point to protrude so as to control the

depth of the incisions.17 As the cutting intensified, the blood was wiped away

with a cloth saturated in a hot ash wood or spindlewood antiseptic called

130nire.18 Soot taken with the fingers

from the bottom of a kettle was

rubbed into the incisions, and th tattooist would then sing a yukar orportion of an epic poem that said:“Even without it, she’s so beautiful.The tattoo around her lips, howbrilliant it is. It can only be wondered at.”19 Afterward, the tattooistrecited a kind of spell or magic formula as more pigment was laid intothe skin: “pas ci-yay, roski, roski, pasren-ren,” meaning “soot enclosed remain, soot sink in, sink in.”20While this invocation may notseem important at first glance, itwas symbolically significantnonetheless. Every Ainu home was constructed according to plan with reference to the central hearth and a sacred window facing a stream.21Within the hearth was kindled fire,and within the fire was the home ofan important deity who served asmediator between all Ainu gods—Fuchi. The fire goddess Fuchi wasinvoked prior to all ceremonialsbecause communication with otherkamuy (deities and spirits) wasimpossible without her divine(750-1050 A.D.) culture ivory carvings from St. Lawrence Island. In the

Bering Strait region, the ethnologist George B. Gordon observed a

Diomede Island man with tattooed marks on either cheek, close to the

mouth, others on the temple and two more on the forehead.163 These three

sets of marks on his face were explained as “medicine” and their presence

was said to have directly benefited the wearer.

But tattoo medicine was not only confined to the simple placement of the

markings themselves, since traditional practices of tattoo and ritually

induced bleeding were oftentimes interrelated and may have even overlapped

to some extent. Around Bering Strait, shamans commonly performed

bloodletting to relieve aching or inflamed parts of the body. Nelson

watched a shaman “lancing the scalp of his little girl’s head, the long, thin

iron point of the instrument being thrust twelve to fifteen times between

the scalp and skull.”164 Similarly, the Alaskan Aleuts performed bloodletting

as remedies for numerous ailments attributed to “bad blood.”165 On St.

Lawrence Island, bleeding was resorted to in cases of severe migraine

headache or as one elder said, “to release anything with a high blood pressure

. . . the [ancestors] know that.”166 The Chugach Eskimo treated sore

eyes by bleeding at the root of the nose or at the temples. Then the patient

was made to swallow the blood, which affected the curethe actual Moche practice of tattooing the wrists,

forearms, and back of the hands. One rare,

remarkable example of such tattooing was discovered

on the mummified skin of an eighteen

year-old woman from the ancient city of

Pacatnamu.30 The figures, executed in pure

Mochica style, depict some of the anthropomorphic

creatures seen on the spatulas. Other examples

of tattooed Moche mummies have been

found in recent years at the archaeological site of

El Brujo, Peru’s “Temple of Doom.”31 Here an

elite Moche woman dubbed “The Lady of Cao”

was unearthed with intricate tattoos of supernatural

creatures (e.g. spiders and birds) and geometric

designs covering much of her forearms,

hands, and knuckles.32 Although similar tattoos have been found on mummies

of the later Tiwanaku and Chimú cultures of Peru, scientists are perplexed

by the context of this woman’s burial that dates to 450 A.D. Moche