“many of the higher classes have small figures of stars, beasts, or birds on various parts of their body, chiefly the arms, distinctive of rank.  The highest mark is that of having the back of the hands colored or tattooed, which is only conferred on the brave in battle.”

St. John says that “a man is supposed to tattoo one finger only, if he has been present when an enemy has been killed, but tattoos hand and fingers if he has taken an enemy’s head.”  Among the Ida’an a man makes a mark on his arm for each enemy slain.  One man was seen with thirty-seven such stripes on the arm.  A successful head-hunter is also allowed to “decorate” his ears with the canine teeth of a Bornean leopard.  “In some cases tatu marks appear to be used as a means of communicating a fact,” writes Roth (II., 291).  Among the Kayan it indicates rank.  Slaughter of an enemy, or mere murder of a slave, are other reasons for tattooing.  “A Murut, having run away from the enemy, was tatued on his back.  So that we may justly conclude that tatuing among the natives of Borneo is one method of writing.”  Among the Dusun the men that took heads generally had a tattoo mark for each one on the arm, and were looked upon as very brave, though their victim might have been only a woman or a child (159).

In the fifth volume of Waitz-Gerland’s Anthropologie (Pt.  II., 64-67), a number of authors are cited testifying that in the Micronesian Archipelago the natives of each island had special kinds of tattoo marks on different parts of the body, to distinguish them from others.  These marks were named after the islands.  The Micronesians themselves attached also a religious significance to these marks.  The natives of Tobi believed that their island would be destroyed if the English visitors who came among them were not at once tattooed.  Only those completely marked could enter the temple.  The men were more tattooed than the women, who were regarded as inferiors.

In the sixth volume of Waitz-Gerland (30-40) is gathered a large mass of evidence, all of which shows that on the Polynesian islands, too, tattooing was indulged in, not for aesthetic and amorous but for religious and practical reasons.  In Tonga it was a mark of rank, not permitted to common people or to slaves.  Not to be tattooed was considered improper.  In the Marquesas the older and more distinguished a man, the more he was tattooed.  Married women were distinguished by having marks on the right hand and left foot.  In some cases tattoo marks were used as signs to call to mind certain battles or festivals.  A woman in Ponape had marks for all her successive husbands made on her arm—­everything and anything, in fact, except the purpose of decorating for the sake of attracting the other sex.  Gerland (33-40) makes out a very strong case for the religions origin of tattooing, which he aptly compares to our confirmation.

In Samoa the principal motive of tattooing seems to have been licentiousness.  It was prohibited by the chiefs on account of the obscene practices always connected with it, and there is a legend of the incestuous designs of two divine brothers on their sister which was successful.