According to Jesuit documents, Iroquois and Mohican
tattoo designs were first stenciled on the skin and then pricked into the skin
with small awl-like bone tools until blood started to flow. Once the blood
began flowing, crushed charcoal (sometimes red cinnabar) was vigorously rubbed
into the open wounds.
Iroquois women were rarely tattooed, but if they did
get tattooed, it would have been for medicinal purposes. The Iroquois men were
tattooed to show their achievements on the battlefield. These tattoos included
crossed hatchets on the face to record successful military expeditions. On the
warriors thigh a small mark was made to indicate each enemy that the wearer had
dispatched. There were many other small markings whose meaning or function has been
lost in the sands of time, though many are believed to be totemic. Most tattoos
were distinctly the wearers, there were no flash walls then, and a man’s tattoo
was his tattoo alone.
Inuit, St. Lawrence Island Inupiaq, and other
circumpolar region natives, regarded living bodies as being inhabited by multiple
souls, each soul resided in a particular joint. Accordingly, all disease is
nothing but the loss of a little soul; if part of a man’s body is sick (i.e.
headache, flu, cancer…), it is because the little soul had left the living
body. From this perspective, it is not surprising that tattoos played an
important role in the funerary events; especially on St. Lawrence Island,
Alaska (St. Lawrence Island is the 6th largest island in the U.S.).
Funerary tattoos, called nafluq, consisted of small dots at the convergence of
various joints: shoulders, elbows, hip, wrists, knees, ankles, neck, and the
waist. For applying them, the artist (also performed by female artists as a
side bar: I have a Face Book friend that is an amazing female artist, Ana
McLean of Rat-a-Tat-Tat Tattoos) used a large sewing awl with whale sinew
dipped into a mixture of seal oil (for lubrication), urine that worked as an
antiseptic and it was believed to freeze evil spirits, and lampblack scraped
from the bottom of a cooking pot.
Lifting a fold of skin, the needle was then passed
through the fold, leaving two dots under the epidermis. By tattooing these dots
the artist was protecting pallbearers from a spiritual attack. Death was
characterized as a dangerous time when the living could be possessed by the
“shade” or malevolent spirit of the recently deceased. The spirit of the dead
was thought to hang around in the vicinity of its former village for some time.
The “shade” was conceived as an absolute material double of the dead. Because
pallbearers were in direct contact with the dead body, they were
ritualistically tattooed to repel an attack. Their joints became the focus of
tattoos because it was believed that the evil spirits entered the body of the
living, at a joint, because these were the seats of the souls. Urine and tattoo
pigments prevented evil spirits from entering the pallbearers.
A small circle under the lip, just below the corner of
the mouth was to protect a man who fell from his boat fairly often to protect
him from drowning. Aspects of myth suggest that labret-like tattoos recalled,
in symbolic form, the appearance of an orca (killer whale). Orcas are said to
have a white spot at the corners of the mouth like the labrets of the mainland
Siberian natives. The labrets were carved from walrus ivory. Adopting the
anatomical characteristics of the walrus’ tusks may have captured the essence
of its aggressive behavior or transformed the hunter into this animal. This
deceptive tattoo subverted the attention of the walrus (the walrus and killer
whales were aggressive and many a hunter never returned from their hunting trip
because they had been viciously attacked by one of these two hunters) and
safeguarded the hunter from malicious attacks.
Men and women were variably tattooed on the upper-arm
and below the lower-lip with circles, half-circles, or crosses to disguise the
wearer from disease-bearing spirits. Some families have the same types of
sickness that continues from generation to generation, and it was believed that
these marks should be put on the child so that the spirits may think the child
is of a different family. In this way, warding off the disease, specific tattoo
“remedies” varied from family to family.
In the women of the region, chin stripes were the most
common tattoos. They served multiple purposes in social context. Most notably,
they were tattooed to show that a woman had reached puberty. Thin lines on the
chin were variable indicators for choosing a wife. It was believed that a girl
who laughed or smiled too much would cause the lines to spread and get thick. A girl with a full set of lines on the chin
and all were thin lines was considered a good prospect for a wife, because it
was obvious that she was serious and hard-working.
The capture of a whale by a young girl’s father was
commemorated on her cheeks with whale flukes, which advertised her father’s
prowess to members of the Asiatic Eskimo society. Females also had their thighs
tattooed so that the first thing a baby sees at birth was a thing of beauty.
Tattoos on the hands and feet are used like the branches of their family tree.
Just thought I would share a little bit of tattoo
history from our beautiful Pacific Northwest.
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