Tattoo History - Marquesas Islands

Almost all pacific island cultures were familiar with the practice of tatauing but the natives on the Marquesas, the eastern group of the islands of Polynesia, brought the tatau to it's perfection. Already the Spanish seafarer Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra, who was the first European to head for the islands in the year 1595, mentioned at his return the tatauing patterns often similar to a checkerboard covering whole bodies. When James Cook came to the islands with his crew in the 18th century he first believed the natives would be wearing with laces decorated clothes.

One of the first who studied and wrote about the lives and most of all the complex tatauings of the Marquesas was the German doctor and botanist George Heinrich von Langsdorff (1773 - 1853) whose depiction again animated a young american named Herman Melville to visit the Marquesas Islands himself. In the year 1841 and with the age of 21 Melville set sail as an ordinary sailor on the american whale hunter Acushnet. When the ship stopped at the Marquesas to pick up provisions Melville deserted and ascertained the Islands for six months until he was taken home by an american warship. Melville's first two novels, Omoo and Taipi, where inspired through his experiences on the Marquesas and in both books he describes the on the Islands very common tatauings very detailed. Four more books, i.e. Moby Dick, followed between 1846 and 1865 and found many readers giving them an understanding of the south seas and the Polynesian art of tatauing.

The tatau was an important part of the Marquesas culture and close connected to aesthetic, economic, social and politic aspects. For men full body tataus were a sign of power and strength and the ability to bear pain. A tatau also showed it's wearers status in the community. In general chieftains and warriors had the most extensive tatauings. Men who wanted to get tataued had to undergo several strict purification rituals including fasting, sexual abstinence and even no contact to women at all. On the Marquesas women the patterns were mostly applied on ears, lips, arms and legs and were a social commitment. To even be allowed to prepare the food their right hand was engraved in the age of 12. If a woman had no tatau she wasn't even allowed to eat out of the same pot as a tataued comrade.

The black skin decorations, Marquesas never had colored tataus, were carried out by the Tuhuna, the ritual priests and tatauists who used similar equipment as the natives on the other islands of Polynesia. The tatauing comb called Au and the Iapalapa. Who ever showed the ability to tatau in early ages was sent as an apprentice to the Tuhuna and was then allowed to use poor people and women for their trials. Mostly the oldest sons of wealthy men went to the Tahuna for training since the apprentice ship was not cheap.

With the landing of the Missionaries tataus were considered heretical and a sinful worshiping of the flesh and prohibited by the church. In the middle of the 19th century tataus were almost extinct on the Marquesas Islands same as on almost all the other Polynesian Islands.

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