Tapa Cloth
date: label: Accession Date
content: 17 Apr 1900
label: Collection Date
content: 1899 to 1900
name: label: Collector
content: Charles H. Townsend
label: Collector
content: H. F. Moore
label: Donor Name
content: U.S. Commission of Fish & Fisheries
label: Expedition
content: Albatross Expedition / U.S. Fish Commission
label: Vessel
content: U.S. Fish Commission Steamer "Albatross"
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Plain sheet brown, coarse water-mark. Very coarse brown texture showing mallet marks. Sample taken by K.P. Emory. June 24, 1941."
label: Notes
content: Plain brown tapa with no adornments, stiff and textured with visible groove marks from ike or rue (beater). Tapa has an unpleasant odor (which lessened after conservation treatment) and was mottled in parts. Piecing seams not visible, except for the one at the 'cut' end, shorter end of the tapa, 13 inches from the end. Beater marks are 2-3 mm apart and the beater appears to have been used in multiple direction. Under a microscope the brown coloring is located in between teh white grooves left by the beater. When pulled in both directions the tapa is uniformly strong. The two corners on one end of tapa with the 'uncut', natural edge appears to have been tied at some point. The other end was cut off. Adrienne Kaeppler, curator for Oceania Ethnology, says it is made from breadfruit (kuru). For Cook Island Community Scholars, Jean Chapman-Mason and Nancy Moeauri, it is nothing like the breadfruit tapa they are used to (which is light-colored, with loose fibers) but that may be due to a different type of manufacture, the age of the fiber used (from the source), or waterproofing which makes the tapa stiffer and darker in color; the coarser type is intended for some purpose other than clothing, say a funeral shroud, room divider (arai), or shade cloth (kaka'u tamarumaru) for outdoors where a communal activity (e.g. food preparation for a community event, takurua) is taking place. According to Buck, this cloth, where the grooves (ngao) of the beater show up well, is called inaina in Aitutaki. Inaina means gray hair in Cook Islands maori which corresponds with the white grooves visible through the dark dye on the cloth. The tapa may have been treated with oil (from coconut, or tuitui - candlenut kernel), or other substance, such as mud, to make it waterproof. Buck 1944 gives a detailed description of cloth immersion in swamps in Aitutaki (page 72), which was preceded by soaking in candlenut juice (vai'iri) then drying in the sun, then soaking in ironwood juice, drying in the sun again, then baking it in an earth oven (umu), drying it in the sun, then pressing into mud, and finally, washing and drying it. This could also explain the smell on the present tapa (swamp mud smells foul). Present day preference for breadfruit tapa type is creamy in appearance and light in texture, although it's been recorded by ethnographers that the fine breadfruit tapa of yesteryear had vanished by the 1920s to be replaced by a coarser, grayish brown variety (Buck 1944; Linton 1974). Jean Chapman-Mason and Nancy Moeauri have not seen this coarse type made in their lifetimes. Jean Chapman-Mason has seen the lighter variety made only three times in her lifetime (on Rarotonga) for cultural demonstrations and understands it is still made on Atiu for making flowers to decorate handicrafts. Jean has been told by tapa-makers that breadfruit was considered the best tapa, and was highly valued by Rarotongans, Aitutakians, Maukeans and Atiuans in the past and was the only tapa fit to be worn by, or given as gifts to chiefs. Having said this, it has been reported (Cox & Banack 1991) that in the Cook Islands tapa manufacture all but disappeared as the islanders stopped growing aute (Broussonetia); when cloth was needed for rituals they had to resort to making common breadfruit or banyan cloth.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 31 Jul 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Aitutaki Island, Cook Islands, Polynesia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 036365
label: USNM Number
content: E205161-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Barkcloth
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 307 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 170 cm