Tattoo History - Missionaries

The leaders of the church who followed the colonists to the new world were outraged over the assumed self deformation of the natives. "You shall not carry marks on your bodies nor etch letters on yourselves, for I am the lord" (3. Moses, 19, 28). Under this dictum, which Pope Hadrian I. already used in the 8th century for his prohibition on skin decoration, the protestant missionaries traveled to the new discovered south American continent in the 18th century and to the south seas in the 19th century to dispose one of the most damnable ritual of heathendom, the tatau.

During the conquest of South America the Missionaries treated the natives, who failed to see and believe in the one and only real religion, merciless. It is reported that the Mayas were hung with stones on their feet, flogged and if they still didn't forswear their skin art they were doused with burning wax. The few who survived this torture and still didn't convert to Christendom were openly burned.

With the Indians of North America the missionaries didn't even bother trying a conversion. The tribes were slaughtered right away.

Also with the natives of Polynesia the outraged conversationalists from the London Missionary Society tried to prevent the tatauing of the arms, legs, faces and anywhere else by all means. Work seemed for the Missionaries to be the one medium to raise the moral under the natives. William Ellis (1794 - 1842) printed in 1823 in the missionary print office of Huahine a "Code Of Laws" whose 27th paragraph says:

"Nobody shall further mark themselves with a tatau because it shall stop entirely. It belongs to the old and evil customs. The man or the woman who tatau them newly shall be convicted and punished. The punishment for the men shall be: He shall build a path of ten fathoms in length if it is the first time, 20 fathoms in length if it is the second time; or he shall place stones, four fathoms in length and 2 fathoms wide... (punishments for woman were added later on, like braiding mats and crafting rind bast fibers) The man or the woman who continuous to tatau them, four or five times, shall also be punished as stated above and in addition the tataued figures and ornaments shall be destroyed by blackening them entirely."

The missionary work yield fruit as we all know. The Folks Carrier Swiss Calender documented in 1874 the antithetic wood engraving "Two portraits from New Zealand and what it looks like", which showed one portrait of a savage before the conversion and one after it, with the following words:

"And now my friend watch (...) the both Maori heads. Is it not for the transformation, which is expressed in both, something great! On the left the savage with the gruesome signature of heathendom, eyes with glowing wrath in them and veiled greed. Feet who hastened to shed blood and hands covered with blood. On the right the young Maori, also a face full of strength but the old is forgotten and it all has become new. It is not a change of a fatherly kind; a heart inflamed by the love of Jesus Christ and a mouth delivering the of peace.

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