Industrial Activity

Armlet of black wood and whale's tooth
Hawaii

What the axe of greenstone is as a production of male industry, the mat is in the case of the women. From flax alone they prepared twelve different mats. Besides this, rugs were made of, or trimmed with, the skins of dogs and birds. The only distinction of rank, other than tattooing, was shown by the mats. Every tribe had at one time some special pattern of these, the differences consisting in the preparation of the fibre and in the ornamentation.

The clothing of the Micronesians is less copious. In the northern Pelew Islands we find men going quite naked. On Nukuor any clothing beyond the absolute requirements of decency is allowed only at night and outside the reef.

Man of the Ruk Islands. (From the Godeffroy Album.)
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Ear-button made of ray's vertebra
Easter Island

The Mortlock and Ruk Islanders are at the other end of the scale with their poncho-like mantles woven of musa and hibiscus fibres and having the hole for the head bordered with shell ornament. On the other hand, on Ruk the boys do not obtain the mantle and therewith the privileges of male society until a later age than that at which the girls are clothed with the apron. Here the list of a chiefs wardrobe consists of mantle, belt, ear-ornaments, and rings of nutshell two necklaces, armlets, and breast-ornament.

Woman of Ponapé

Necklace of shell disks and whales's tooth - Nukuor

A Caroline Islander of the old style wears in the first place a shirt made out of narrow strips of coco-palm leaves reaching almost to the knee, over which the men on festive occasions put a second of a pretty yellow colour, broad in the fibre and longer. Sometimes Caroline Islanders who have become Europeanised, continue to wear the skirt under their shirts. Besides this it was formerly the custom with both sexes to wear a belt supporting a band made of banana fibres gaily coloured which passed between the legs. Among the inhabitants of Kushai this formed the only clothing. This product of Caroline industry was woven on a machine in which the weft was contrived by a laborious knotting together of various coloured threads, while partly the same threads, partly also red woollen yarn, were employed for the warp.

Bone comb from New Zealand - approx 200mm length.

On the Mortlock and Ruk Islands broader girdles of 15 to 25 strings were worn, with little disks of nutshell arranged on them. According to Kubary's reckoning, not less than 12,500 of these were required for a girdle of twenty strings so that among these islanders the girdle is among the most highly-prized articles of clothing. Equally valuable used to be the girdles made only to order by the people of Pelew, from opercula of a rare tridacna shell, and the chains known as klilt, made of sixty-four tortoiseshell plates.

Neck ornament - Friendly Islands

While the men have often remained faithful to tradition, the dress of the women has been altered much more owing to the intercourse with white people. They wear coloured cotton pocket-handkerchiefs both round the waist and also poncho-wise over breast and shoulders. The stuffs made of strips of palm leaf and bast have almost disappeared.