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Hey all!
I used to have a copy of the book, ‘The Ways Of Our Grandmothers’. But I gave it away to a friend of mine years ago. She moved, I moved and we lost contact. I don’t have access to the book anymore. It was a book of cepia colored pictures of NA women, probably in the 1800’s or turn of the century.
I remember looking through the book and seeing a woman who was tattoed on her face. At the time I didn’t think much of it. But a few years after I gave the book away, my father told me about a female relative of ours who was tattooed on her face. He knew her when he was a very young boy.
I have searched and searched for information on Indian women being tattoed on the face and I can’t find any real information about it. You get thousands and thousands of ‘hits’ when you google for Indian Tattoo or face tattoo. Tattoos are really hot right now and there is tons of pics of contemporary tattooing.. But I haven’t been able to find anything out about a tradition of tattooing NA women on the face.
I read or heard somewhere that sometimes the Cherokee Holy Women were Tattooed? Anyone heard of this practice? Tom’s and my G. Grandmother was said to be a ‘Holy Woman’. She had psychic abilities and such. The women in our family have always been very powerful that way.
So I was wondering if anyone has this book, and if you do, would you mind looking through it to see if you can find a picture of a tattooed woman? And if so, what tribe she was from?
I know this is a long shot but I am very curious about this.
Thanks In Advance of anyone who will help me here. 🙂
Hi Rock Hound. Thanks. I’m not sure. But I think that is the right book, but it may be a different printing though because I don’t think that is the same front cover. But the Beverly Hungry Wolf name sounds right.
I’ll do a book search later on and see if I can find it. I didn’t want to buy the book again if I can help it, I was just hoping to see if someone had the book and would do a look the look-up for me.
I’ll get back to you on this. Thanks 🙂
Hi Barb,
The following link has historical information on NA women and facial tattoos:
http://www.cyberpowwow.net/nation2nation/tattoin.htm
Tattooing was done by a number of tribes for spiritual, medicinal and aesthetic purposes, both on the face and the body. The facial tattoo of a Cree woman was two vertical lines, reaching from the lip to the chin. Sometimes there were three lines instead of two. Cree women also sometimes had tattoos of round marks on the cheeks and forehead.
Southeastern Ojibwa and Inuit women also had tattoos on the chin and the cheeks.
The book, The Plains Cree by David G. Mandelbaum, shows illustrations of these tattoos.
Hey There, well I know many Cree peole and none wear tattoos these days, something from days gone by.
Hey Cousin are you thinking of getting a facial tattoo?
Just ASking!
Oh ps, the Grandmother term was often applied to the Grandmothers sisters aswell.
Thank you Gussie, I’ll go take a look 🙂
Our relative had tattoos going from the bottom lip down the chin, then also across the cheeks and across the forehead . According to my Daddy’s memories, all of the tattoos were lines of dots. The ones down the chin were straight lines of dots and the ones on the cheeks were curved, starting around the sides of the nose or mouth and then arching upward and outward across the cheeks to the temples. The one on the forehead was almost like a head band, but it had another design in the center of the forehead. He said the tattoos were not straight lines, but lines of dots. He remembers this from the early 1930’s. He said that you couldn’t see them until you got up close because she wore tons and tons of pancake makeup to cover them up. And it made her face look really white but when you got up close you could see them. But I’m sure her hands gave her away. LOL
Hello Tom! Of course! I forgot that many NA cultures called older women Grandmother too. Hmm. Now that gives me an idea about our ‘Grandmother Lenora’. Thanks. And great to see you post.
I found another Source for NA tattoos.
http://library.albany.edu/usered/wwwdex/sch/sch1.html
It has some of the same info. This is a very very long page, when you think you are finished, they have another article on the same page. So, if you are interested, just keep on going down the page. I found it all very interesting. 🙂
Hi Tom,
I think I’ll try some temporary tattoos first and then, who knows, I may go for it! Maybe I’ll start a trend!
You are lucky to have had such an interesting relative. Did anyone ever ask her why she had all these facial tattoos and who did them? Was she a Cree?
I have ordered the book I mentioned at our local library. They had to request it from a university library, but think they can get it. There is another link that shows the actual facial tattoos, which appear to be lines of dots, just like your relative. The link is:
http://www.school.net.ca/aboriginal/Plains_Cree/part7-e.html
I will also check out the link you mentioned. Thanks!
Hi again Gussie,
For some reason your last link you sent won’t work for me. Can you check to see if it is correct?
My father was still a small boy when he knew this woman and when he tried to ask questions about anything concerning our Indian heritage he was told to shut up. In our branch of the family it was a ‘secret’ and not to be discussed. As I have said in other posts here, my Grandmother ‘spoke the language’. As my father put it. He heard her and her relatives as they spoke to each other as a child. But when he asked my grandmother about it she told him to shut up. My Daddy said that after he asked about the language the women would never speak it in front of him again except in whispers to each other. When he asked which tribe they belonged to she said Cherokee. But then later on when he asked she told him a different tribe. Now, my aunt, his sister, says that her mother always told her that they were Blackfoot.
Now, Tom is my 2nd cousin and in his branch of the family they were very open about it. I sure wish my grandmother had been as open.
The woman I speak of that had the tattoos was known to my father as ‘Grandmother Lenora’. We do not know her origins. And she is a ‘mystery’ woman to us. My father died last year and he didn’t know any more about her except to describe her to me. We often talked about her and it was still a mystery to him too since he was so young when he knew her. He said that she had tattoos on her face, that she wore braids and often wore a dress with NA beading on it.. He said that she lived “across the street’ from where he was living at the time. I do not know if my father’s parents were staying with relatives or if they had their own dwelling at the time.
The whole reason I started doing genealogy over 20 years ago was to find out what tribe of Indians they were. I tried, but my Daddy died without knowing for sure. It was something I could not give him before he, as he put it, ‘passed over the rainbow.’ Well, he is over on the other side now and I’m sure that he has all the answers. But I, being earthbound, keep searching because it is something that I want to do for him even though he is dead.
Ok..I’m sure that is way too mucn information. Anyway, that is why I am trying to narrow down the tattooing the face thing. I’m hoping that it will give me some kind of clue. I really do wish I could time travel. Don’t we all LOL I’d go back and ask our old Hardings and Groats tons and tons of questions!
Ok.. I’ll shut up now.
Hi Tom, LOL no, I’m not thinking of getting a facial tattoo. I am just trying to research NA tattoos so that I can get more information on our ‘mystery woman’ Grandmother Lenora. I keep adding up the clues and just keep hoping that someday all of them will fall into place. I know, there’s about as much chance of that as of dropping a 1,000 piece puzzel and all the pieces landing already put together LOL
However, my granddaughter, who wants to become a tattoo artist, is considering putting one on her back. Ouch! I have an aversion to needles so I don’t think I’ll ever get one. Nope, not this gal!. LOL
Hi Barb,
Thanks for your answer, which is not too long! This link does not work, but I will find a link that does. Both male and female Crees had tattoos. On women, the three lip-chin markings traced down from each corner of the lips and the middle of the lower lip to the curve of the chin. It looked like a triangle on the chin, with the peak of the triangle at the lips and the base of the triangle on the curve of the chin.
Each “stripe” of the tattoo consisted of one to four individual lines of dots. So a three-stripe chin tattoo might actually involve three four-line tattoos. This appeared as a very vivid triangle across the entire chin. As we mentioned, the tattoos were simple lines of dots, never human figures or animals.
I greatly appreciate all the information about your family background and share your strong interest in our ancestors. Once I find some better links (with illustrations) I will get back to you.
Hi Barb,
The best photos I could find of full-face tattoos of NA women are at the following link:
http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/st.lawrence_lasttattoos.htm
Anna Aghtuqaayak (Qayaghhaq), who died at 96 in 2002, had tattoos on her chin, nose, cheeks, hands and wrists. There are some beautiful shots of her full-face tattoos. She lived on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska.
Sadie Sepila was the last Yupik woman on St. Lawrence Island to wear chin stripes (called “tamlughun”) and hand tattoos (called “igag”). All her tattoos were done in the 1920s.
NA people on St. Lawrence Island born after 1915 stopped getting tattoos, because the practice had started to die out and people became embarrassed about facial tattoos. You mentioned, Barb, that your relative wore heavy pancake make-up in the 1930s to hide her face tattoos.
Another good site, showing NA men with facial tattoos, is the following:
http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattooed_indian_kings.htm
This site describes the four “Indian Kings” who traveled to England in April, 1710, representing the Five Nations Confederacy. Four portrait oil paintings survive in England, showing the facial and body tattoos of these Iroquois and Mahican Native Americans.
As early as 1593, Captain John Smith recorded in his diary that the NAs of Virginia and Florida had “their legs, hands, breasts and faces cunningly embroidered with diverse marks, such as beasts and serpents, artificially wrought into their flesh with black spots.”
Much more recently, National Geographic Magazine reported, in a 2003 issue, that NA women in the northwestern U.S. are getting chin tattoos again, in an attempt to revive this old tradition.
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