page_title: Tattoo
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Tattoo / History / Europe
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Omai, a South Sea Islander who travelled to England with the second expedition of captain Cook
context_page_description: A tattoo is a form of body modification where a design is made by inserting ink, dyes and pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. The art of making tattoos is tattooing.
  Tattoos fall into three broad categories: purely decorative; symbolic; and pictorial. In addition, tattoos can be used for identification such as ear tattoos on livestock as a form of branding.
context_section_description: In 1565, French sailors abducted from Canada an Inuit woman with facial tattoos and her daughter. They put them on public display in Antwerp, the Netherlands, drawing crowds for money. Sir Martin Frobisher, an English privateer, also abducted an Inuit man from Baffin Island, putting him on display in London before he died from European diseases. Frobisher returned to Baffin Island and abducted a man, a woman, and a child, also taking them back to London for public display. They also died from illness shortly afterwards.
  Perhaps the most famous tattooed "curiosity" in Europe prior to the voyages of Captain Cook, was the "Painted Prince" - a slave named "Jeoly" from Mindanao, Philippines. He was initially bought with his mother (who died shortly afterwards) from a slave trader in Miangas Island in 1690 by the English explorer William Dampier. Dampier described Jeoly's intricate tattoos in his journals:
  He was painted all down the Breast, between his Shoulders behind; on his Thighs (mostly) before; and the Form of several broad Rings, or Bracelets around his Arms and Legs. I cannot liken the Drawings to any Figure of Animals, or the like; but they were very curious, full of great variety of Lines, Flourishes, Chequered-Work, &c. keeping a very graceful Proportion, and appearing very artificial, even to Wonder, especially that upon and between his Shoulder-blades […] I understood that the Painting was done in the same manner, as the Jerusalem Cross is made in Mens Arms, by pricking the Skin, and rubbing in a Pigment.
  — William Dampier, A New Voyage Around the World (1697)
  Jeoly told Dampier that he was the son of a rajah in Mindanao, and told him that gold (bullawan) abounded in his island. These were likely embellishments told by Jeoly in an effort to convince Dampier to free him. He also mentions that the men and women of Mindanao were also tattooed similarly, and that his tattoos were done by one of his five wives. He is believed to be a Visayan pintado, if he indeed came from Mindanao. Other authors have also identified him as Palauan due to the pattern of his tattoos and his account that he was tattooed by women (Visayan tattooists were male from the few surviving records; while Palauan tattooists were female), although this would conflict with his own admission that he originally came from Mindanao.
  Dampier brought Jeoly with him to London, intending him to be a puppet prince for the British venture into the Spice Islands. He promised Jeoly that he would be paid well and allowed to return home. He invented a fictional backstory for him, renaming him "Prince Giolo" and claiming that he was the son and heir of the "King of Gilolo." Instead of being from Mindanao, Dampier now claimed that he was only shipwrecked in Mindanao with his mother and sister, whereupon he was captured and sold to slavery. Dampier also claimed that Jeoly's tattoos were created from an "herbal paint" that rendered him invulnerable to snake venom, and that the "royal" tattooing process was done naked in a room of venomous snakes.
  Dampier initially toured around with Jeoly, showing his tattoos to crowds. Despite pretending to care for the "prince", Dampier eventually sold Jeoly to the Blue Boar Inn in Fleet Street. Jeoly was displayed as a sideshow by the inn, with his likeness printed on playbills and flyers advertising his "exquisitely painted" body. By this time, Jeoly had contracted smallpox and was very ill.  He was later brought to the University of Oxford for examination, but he died shortly afterwards at around thirty years of age in the summer of 1692. His tattooed skin was preserved and was displayed in the Anatomy School of Oxford for a time, although it was lost prior to the 20th century.
  It is commonly held that the modern popularity of tattooing stems from Captain James Cook's three voyages to the South Pacific in the late 18th century. Certainly, Cook's voyages and the dissemination of the texts and images from them brought more awareness about tattooing (and, as noted above, imported the word "tattow" into Western languages). On Cook'
caption: A portrait of Omai, a tattooed Raiatean man brought back to Europe by James Cook
exif: {}