Faces Were ‘Carved’

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 32

Faces Were ‘Carved’ These days tattooing is done by making lines of very small punctures in the skin with an instrument like a sharp needle, rubbing in the colouring matter as this is done. This is comparatively painless, even if a local anaesthetic is not used. But instead of puncturing the skin in this way, the old Maori tattooer carved it, using a small fine chisel made, usually, of bone. The chisel was hafted to a handle and was tapped with a light mallet, so that it cut a furrow in the patient's skin. This was of course a much more painful method than the modern way, and in those days there were no anaesthetics. The patient managed to endure it, though, because he knew that this was a test of his courage, and it would have been ignominious to cry out. And while the lines were being chiselled the tattooer, or the patient's relatives, would sing magic songs to make him brave.

The original of this Maori chief's ‘signature’ is in the Hocken Library, University of Otago. The patient's face soon became covered with blood, and the tattooer wiped this away as he worked, dipping his chisel in the pigment as he went along. (The colouring material was often burnt and powdered kauri gum, or else charcoal, mixed with oil or fat. After the pakehas came, gunpowder was sometimes used. When they were healed the lines looked not so much black as dark blue.) The most painful parts were the lips and the corners of the nose and eyes. When the skin around the eyes was tattooed, it swelled up so much that the patient was altogether blind for several days afterwards. For three or four days after the operation, both the artist and the patient were very tapu; they were not allowed to eat food with their hands, or to communicate with anyone except those in the same condition as themselves. The moko lines are so intricate and so exact that it is very difficult even to copy them in a drawing, or to carve them on a wooden statue. To carve them on someone's face is almost unimaginably difficult. Maori tattooing is among the most ambitious and skilful that the world has known, and it is very famous because of this. Before he started work, the artist drew the lines on his patient's face with charcoal. Certain lines were the same on every moko, while others were handed down from father to son, but there were some places where the artist put patterns of his own invention. The patient took a keen interest in this, and when the charcoal lines were drawn he would examine them carefully, using a gourd of water as a mirror, to make sure that his moko was the way he wanted it.