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Samoan Material Culture

[introduction]

The Samoans are the one branch of the Polynesians who have retained the full tattoo designs of the past as a necessary form of decoration in the present. Tattooing is actively carried on throughout the group with the exception of Manua. As an expression of religious zeal, the chiefs prohibited the operation from being performed in that group. Though literally obeyed, a fair percentage of the youth of Manua go to Tutuila to be adorned there with the decoration which symbolizes the approach of manhood. The males are tattooed from waist to knee, sometimes on the hands and wrists, but never on the face. The demand for tattooing created a body of skilled craftsmen who followed or developed a form of masculine design, common in the arrangement of its main units but differing in the enhancement and detailed treatment of those units. The actual tattooed lines are termed tatau, the operation page 636ta tatau, and the expert craftsman tufunga ta tatau. Females are tattooed on the legs with sparser lines and on the wrists and hands. Female decoration is not called tatau, but is termed malu.