Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256Mallery, Garrick
History
Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256
Mallery, Garrick
Haida Indians; Picture-writing, Indian; Tattooing
How this latter writer, presuming he speaks from personal experience,
could have seen naked Haida men without noticing tattoo marks, I cannot
understand. On page 182 of the same volume of Bancroft, footnote, is
the following: “‘The habit of tattooing the legs and arms is common to
all the women of Vancouver’s Island; the men do not adopt it.’ Grant,
in Lond. Geog. Soc. Jour., Vol. XXVII, p. 307. ‘No such practice as
tattooing exists among these natives.’ Sproat’s Scenes, p. 27.”
What Grant says applies not to the women of Vancouver’s Island, but to
those of Queen Charlotte Islands. Sproat seems to have given more of
his attention to some fancied terminal in their language, upon which
he builds his theory of the “Aht” nation, than to the observance of
their personal peculiarities. I am of the opinion, judging from my own
observation of over twenty years among the coast tribes, that but few
females can be found among the Indians, not only on Vancouver’s Island,
but all along the coast to the Columbia River, and perhaps even to
California, that are _not_ marked with some device tattooed on their
hands, arms, or ankles, either dots or straight lines; but of all the
tribes mentioned, the Haidas stand pre-eminent for tattooing, and seem
to be excelled only by the natives of the Fiji Islands or the King’s
Mills Group in the South Seas. The tattoo marks of the Haidas are
heraldic designs or the family totem, or crests of the wearers, and are
similar to the carvings depicted on the pillars and monuments around
the homes of the chiefs, which casual observers have thought were idols.
In a memoir written by me on the Haida Indians, for the Smithsonian
Institution, and published as No. 267 of Contributions to Knowledge,
I have given illustrations of various tattoo designs and heraldic
carvings in wood and stone, but did not attempt to delineate the
position or appearance of those designs upon their bodies or limbs,
although all the tattoo marks represented in that memoir were copied
by me directly from the persons of the Haidas, as stated in the
illustrations.
The publication of this memoir, with its illustrations, which I showed
to the Haidas and Kaiganis in 1875, during my cruise to Alaska in the
United States revenue steamer Wolcott, gave them confidence in me that
I had not made the drawings from idle curiosity, and in February, 1879,
I was fortunate enough to meet a party of Haida men and women in Port
Townsend, Washington, who permitted me to copy their tattoo marks again.
These designs are invariably placed on the men between the shoulders,
just below the back of the neck, on the breast, on the front part of
both thighs, and on the legs below the knee. On the women they are
marked on the breast, on both shoulders, on both fore-arms, from the
elbow, down over the back of the hands, to the knuckles, and on both
legs below the knee to the ankle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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