The uncivilized races of men in all countries of the world; vol. 2 of 2: Being a comprehensive account of their manners and customs, and of their physical, social, mental, moral and religious characteristicsWood, J. G. (John George)
History
The uncivilized races of men in all countries of the world; vol. 2 of 2: Being a comprehensive account of their manners and customs, and of their physical, social, mental, moral and religious characteristics
Wood, J. G. (John George)
Anthropology; Ethnology; Manners and customs
On gala days a much handsomer petticoat is worn. This consists of much
finer leaf strips than those which constitute the ordinary dress, and
it is dyed of various colors. Some of them which were seen by Mr.
M’Gillivray were red and green, with bands of pale yellow and pure
white. The tufts of which they were composed were extremely light and
soft, and looked like very fine-twisted grass blades. Several of the
women, by way of finishing their toilet, had blackened their faces.
This process, if it did not add to their beauty, certainly did not
detract from it, as their faces were originally so plain that the black
covering could not make them more ugly. The young men and lads formed
a curious contrast to the women in this respect, many of them being
remarkable for their good looks.
The women usually, though not invariably, divide their hair into a vast
number of little tresses, and twist them up like the thrums of a mop,
while the men tease out their stiff and wiry locks as much as possible,
and fix in them a slender stick, some two feet in length, decorated
with a little plume at the top, the base being cut into teeth and so
used as a comb.
The inhabitants of Redscar Bay use a more elaborate system of tattooing
than that which has been described above. The men generally restrict
themselves to certain portions of the body, such as the breast,
cheeks, forehead, and arms, and even on those spots the tattooing is
comparatively slight. But the women are so covered with blue patterns,
that there is hardly a portion of their bodies which has not been thus
decorated. They have various patterns, but the usual type is formed
by double parallel lines, the intervals between which are filled with
smaller patterns, or with zigzag lines. As the dress of the women
consists merely of the leaf-strip petticoat, the patterns of the
tattooing are very fully displayed.
The hair of the men is dressed here after a rather singular fashion. It
is shaved from the forehead for some three inches, and the remainder
is combed backward to its full length. A string is then tied round
it, so as to confine it as closely as possible to the head, leaving
rather more than half its length to be frizzed into a mop-like bundle
projecting from the crown.
Those who are especially careful of their personal appearance add
an ornament which is not unlike the pigtail of the last century. A
tolerably large bunch of hair is gathered together and tied into a long
and straight tail, the end of which is decorated with some ornament.
In one case, a man had attached to his pigtail a bunch of dogs’ teeth.
The mouths, naturally wide, are disfigured with the universal custom of
chewing the betel-leaf mixed with lime, which stains the lips of a dull
brick-red, and makes the whole mouth look as if it had been bleeding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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