A native of Lukunor being asked by Mertens what was the meaning of tattooing, answered:  “It has the same object as your clothes; that is, to please the women,” In reply to the question why he wore his ornaments, an Australian answered Bulmer:  “In order to look well and make himself agreeable to the women,” (Brough Smyth, I., 275.) To one who has studied savages not only anthropologically but psychologically, these stories have an obvious cock-and-bull aspect.  A native of the Caroline Islands would have been as incapable of originating that philosophical comparison between the object of our clothes and of his tattooing as he would have been of writing Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus.  Human beings in his stage of evolution never consciously reflect on the reasons of things, and considerations of comparative psychology or esthetics are as much beyond his mental powers as problems in algebra or trigonometry.  That such a sailor’s yarn could be accepted seriously in an anthropologic treatise shows that anthropology is still in its cradle.  The same is true of that Australian’s alleged answer.  The Australian is unequal to the mental effort of counting up to ten, and, like other savages, is easily fatigued by the simplest questions[99].  It is quite likely that Bulmer asked that native whether he ornamented himself “in order to look well and make himself agreeable to the women,” and that the native answered “yes” merely to gratify him or to get rid of the troublesome question.

The books of missionaries are full of such cases, and no end of confusion has been created in science by such false “facts.”  The answer given by that native is, moreover, utterly opposed to all the well-attested details I have given in the preceding pages regarding the real motives of Australians in “decorating” themselves; and to those facts I may now add this crushing testimony from Brough Smyth (I., 270): 

“The proper arrangement of their apparel, the ornamentation of their persons by painting, and attention to deportment, were important only when death struck down a warrior, when war was made, and when they assembled for a corroboree.  In ordinary life little attention was given to the ornamenting of the person.”

MISLEADING TESTIMONY OF VISITORS

“The Australians throughout the continent scar their persons, as Mr. Curr assures us, only as a means of decoration,” writes Westermarck (169), and in the pages preceding and following he cites other evidence of the same sort, such as Carver’s assertion that the Naudowessies paint their faces red and black, “which they esteem as greatly ornamental;” Tuckey’s assumption that the natives of the Congo file their teeth and raise scars on the skin for purposes of ornament and principally “with the idea of rendering themselves agreeable to the women;” Kiedel’s assertion, that in the Tenimber group the lads decorate their locks with leaves, flowers, and feathers, “only in order to please the women;” Taylor’s statement that in New Zealand it was the great ambition of the young to have fine tattooed faces, “both to render themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicuous in war,” etc.