Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1884 — Tattooing Among Alaska Indians. [ARTICLE]

Tattooing Among Alaska Indians.

A man who had passed much time trapping and hunting in Alaska says: “Although tho Yukon Indians have abandoned many of their old customs, under the teaching of occasional missionaries, all of them still keep to the queer habit of tattooing. The way they do this is different from any I ever saw or heard of. Instead of pricking the stuff in with sharpened bones or needles, they make a paste out of charcoal and grease, soak a thread in it, punch a needle through the flesh so that it comes out at a different hole from the on e where it entered, and then draw the thread through under the skin. The operation is painful, for the flesh swells up and looks very much inflamed. Men tattoo only their hands and wrists with pictures of the nobler animals or fish, but the women tattoo their faces also. These latter begin the process when they are quite young, making“birds, turtles, or some other insignificant things on their hands and wrists, while they draw lines of different kinds on their chins and the lower part of their cheeks. As a rule this tattooing is done entirely in blue, but now and then there is an Indian who has dotted red spots through the blue.”