Breast Ornaments of Teeth

The teeth of sperm whales were used singly as breast ornaments in the Marquesas and Mangareva. This natural form was also used by the early settlers of New Zealand, as revealed by its presence with moa-hunter remains in Wairau (Fig. 81a)and also in the Chatham Islands. Copies in soapstone and bone have also been excavated in New Zealand.

The rei puta (rei, whale ivory; puta, hole) was a valuable ornament made by cutting away a portion of the tooth to form a flat surface extending to the root end. Three holes usually were pierced at the root or upper end for attachment to a neck cord. The free lower end or crown formed a knob which was embellished by incising two oblique eyes on its upper part and, more rarely, adding a nose and mouth (Pig. 81b).The neck cord in most neck ornaments was fashioned into a loop at one end and a section of bird bone was attached to the other to act as a toggle to pass through the loop. Skinner (74, vol. 43, p. 114) has drawn attention to the

Fig. 81. Breast ornaments.
a, whale tooth, after Duff (30, pl. VIIA); b, rei puta, after Skinner (74, fig. 117); c, "whale-tooth" pendant, after Duff (30, pl. IX, A); d, bone hook (Bishop Mus., C9146); e, Hawaiian lei palaoa (Bishop Mus., 4938); f, g, spool ornament, after Duff (30, pl. VIII, A, H).

resemblance of the rei puta to the pearl-shell shank of the Polynesian bonito hook, from which he thinks it is descended. However, as the rei putaform is not described for the Chatham Islands or moa-hunter deposits, it would have to be a late development from bonito hooks brought in by members of the Fleet, for the older stone shanks do not have the scooped-out flat surface to serve as a pattern for the rei puta. From illustrations, the rei puta appears to have been popular at the time of Cook's voyages.

Whale-tooth pendant is a term applied by Archey (6) to a curious ornament forming a conventional tooth with a thick rectangular root and a slender curved crown. The roots are pierced from side to side for suspen-page 289sion, with the concave curve of the crown to the front. Archey described a bracelet with the teeth made of whale ivory, but Duff (30, p. 14) described a number of necklaces from the Wairau finds in which one necklace contained 21 units in whale ivory while a number of others contained 70 units made of moa bone. Thus the term whale-ivory pendant is a misnomer, but Duff kept it for want of a better term (Fig. 81c). Skinner (74, vol. 43, p. 112) has shown its resemblance in form to the Hawaiian hooked whale-tooth pendant (lei niho palaoa) and a specimen he sent to the Bishop Museum (No. C. 9146) is compared in Figure 81dto one of the smaller Hawaiian ornaments (Fig. 81e).The possibility that the idea of the curved crown in both the New Zealand and Hawaiian ornaments was obtained from the recurved crowns of the teeth of killer whales (Orca gladiator) independently should not be overlooked. The New Zealand ornament is pierced at the upper end for suspension by a cord, and the Hawaiian ornament is pierced midway down to hang between two coils of human hair plaited in a fine eight-ply square braid (Pl. XXI).

Coils of finely braided hair have been recorded for the Society and Cook Islands, Marquesas, Penryhn, and Hawaii where they were used for suspending breast ornaments; and similar coils, in Samoa and Niue for girdles. The use of human hair coils was evidently avoided in New Zealand and the belts (tu) consisting of many strands of three-ply braid were made of karetu grass or flax fibre. Probably the intense tapu of the Maori heads induced this conservative attitude.