Modes of Wearing the Hair

Dress and ornament - Tattooing - Deformations of the body - Feather ornaments - Modes of wearing the hair - Objects used for ornament - Bark cloth - Tapa - Mats - Weapons and implements - Lack of iron - Working in stone - Manufacture of weapons from wood - Spears - Clubs - Limits of diffusion of bow and arrow - Slings - Industrial activity.

The mode of wearing the hair is suited to its stiff growth, and is simple accordingly. It is either worn unfastened and falling, or is cut off. The latter course seems, in the Society Islands and their neighbourhood, to have been enjoined upon all women except those of the royal family. In the Friendly Islands men and women wear the hair cut short and combed upwards in bristles. By powdering with lime the tips are reddened, while turmeric gives a golden gloss.

Samoan lady with hair dressed high. (From the Godeffroy Album.)

The fashion of wearing the hair tied in a top-knot may perhaps be an imitation: on the very first day of Cook's visit a Tahitian chief copied his bag-wig. With the imperfect cutting-tools at their disposal, the shaving of the head was no light matter; and there were few among the achievements of civilization which the Polynesians had cause to prize so highly as scissors and razors.

In Micronesia the head-ornament consists almost everywhere of a long narrow wooden comb, with ten or twelve teeth, decorated about the handle, and at times furnished with a rich feather-ornament. The long hairpins serve also to allay the irritation of frequent insect-bites. The curly hair of the Gilbert Islanders is frizzed up with a stick till it stands out in a crown. On Mortlock Island the head-ring is covered with fibres after the manner of a brush; while on Nukuor the head-dress is formed of a long plate of wood, broadening towards the top. This sort of thing, however, must no doubt be regarded as a dance-ornament or a religious emblem. The ancestral statues often carry a similar adornment.

Wooden fillet for the head - Society Islands

Actual head-coverings are not usual, or are permitted only at night, or out of the country. In the Carolines, as formerly in Hawaii, European hats are directly imitated. On Fakaafo in the Tokelau Islands, Hale saw boat-men wearing eye-shades of closely-plaited material bound on to their foreheads, just as weak-sighted people wear them with us.

A man of Ponapé in the Carolines. (From a photograph in the Godeffroy Album.)
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See also Men of Ponapé in the Carolines

Feather Ornaments

As with tattooing, so feather ornaments extend back from the domain of secular fashion to that of religion. Birds are among the sacred animals, and this is especially the case with that bird which in its red tail-feathers affords the article most sought for ornamental purposes among the Polynesians, the Tropic-bird (Phaethon). At one time no article of commerce was in such demand in the Society Islands. The feathers were stuck on to banana-leaves, which were bound on the forehead; and even on the coco-nut fibre aprons of the dancing-girls.

Man of the Ruk Islands. (From the Godeffroy Album.)
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Necklace - Society Islands

The most valuable head-dresses were made of feathers. Other objects of wide distribution were the supple necklaces of twisted string, in which coloured feathers were twined. In the Marquesas and on Easter Island feather-diadems were also worn. But it was in Hawaii that feather-ornament reached its greatest development and its highest value. The feathers of Melithreptes Pacifica were luxuries which forty years ago were permitted only to the most distinguished people. Helmet-shaped head-dresses were decorated with yellow feathers, quite reminding one in their shape and colour of the headgear worn by Buddhist priests.