Resurrecting the “Pintado” Tattoo

Paper delivered at the “TATU” Symposium, Leyte Heritage Festival 2008, Price
Mansion, May 18, 2008, Tacloban City
By: Dulce Cuna Anacion, M.A. Art History

There are many Ethno tribal motifs proliferating to this day because the art of tattooing
has became a popular, albeit lucrative endeavor. Tribal motifs like those gathered by
collector Lars Krutak and “Indiana-Jones”-like researchers Vince Hemingson and
Thomas Lockhart have been discovered and recreated, but none has ever delved into the
mystery of the vanished Leyte Pintado tattoo. Of course, since the local inhabitants’
practice of tattooing was abruptly stopped by the Jesuits in the 1600s with religion,
tattooing in the island of Leyte has extremely vanished and all we could do now is merely
speculate on the tattoo motifs and designs which were recorded by the Jesuit priest and
chronicler Francisco Ignacio Alzina, who also avers that the tattoo phenomena is a
universal experience. He had great misgivings on the practice and considered it as a
“work of the devil”:

“I am inclined to think that these people imitated the custom

from newcomers to the Islands; or that one of their braggarts
started the practice himself to give an appearance of greater
ferocity; or that one of their ancient priestesses instigated it.
These devil-women, to whom the devil appeared in a tattooed
body might have started the custom in imitation of him. (I am
told these women practice their calling even before Faith
reached these Islands). Whether this custom was started by the
people themselves or whether their common enemy taught it
to them for his own ends (none of which was good), it is a fact
that all Bisayan men tattooed themselves with the exception of
those they call Asog.”1

It was Alzina, in his monograph “Historias de las Islas el Indios de Bisaias…1668” who
termed tattooing as “paint”. But it is only one chronicler’s word against the others:

"The Bisayans are called Pintados because they are in fact so, not by nature although they are well-built,
well-featured and white, but by painting their entire bodies from head to foot as soon as they are young
men with strength and courage enough to endure the torture of painting. In the old days, they painted
themselves when they had performed some brave deed. They paint themselves by first drawing blood with
pricks from a very sharp point, following the design and lines previously marked by the craftsmen in the
art, and then over the fresh blood applying a black powder that can never again be erased. They do not paint
the whole body at one time, but part by part, so that the painting takes many days to complete. In the
former times they had to perform a new feat of bravery for each of the parts that were to be painted. The
paintings are very elegant, and well proportioned to the members and parts where they are located. I used to
say there, captivated and astonished by the appearance of one of these, that if they brought it to Europe a
great deal of money could be made by displaying it. Children are not painted. The women paint the whole
of one hand and a part of the other."2

1
Alzina, Francisco S.J., “Historias de las Islas y Indios de Bisaias…1668”
2
Ibid.,
Legaspi in 1565 made a similar observation when he set foot on Leyte. " The torsos,
thighs and arms of the men were tattooed with pigment deep in the flesh; most of them
wore only bahag to cover the loins; gold pendants hang from their ears; and the chiefs
also wore gold anklets."(Documentos Ineditos)

Despite this proselytization, Alzina described in text, rare motifs found in the Pintado
tattoo, but there were no exact illustrations of it as that found in the Boxer Codex, a
manuscript of written text and illustrations which Alfredo Roces suggests in “Boxer
Codex in Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation” “that the artist did not actually visit
the places mentioned from the text, but drew from imagination. Boxer notes that the
descriptions of these countries are not original. The account of China, for example, was
largely based on the narrative of Fray Martin de Rada. The technique of the paintings
suggests that artist may have been Chinese, as does the use of Chinese paper, ink and
paints.”3 However, those found in the Boxer Codex come close to evidence of how the
Pintado tattoo looked like.

Artists’ rendition of the Pintados in the Boxer Codex

In finding out the tattoo of Leyte, we formulate the following question:

3
Alfredo R. Roces, et al., eds., Boxer Codex in Filipino Heritage: the Making of a Nation, Philippines:
Lahing Pilipino Publishing, Inc., 1977, Vol. IV, p. 1003.
What were the shared traits and customs in tattooing found in neighboring cultures which
we could speculate the Pintado tattoo?

Early Tattoo Patterns in Leyte

The first impression of the western man on the native in Leyte could be read in Pigafetta's
account in Limasawa when he described the brother of Rajah Siani of that island: He
"was the handsomest among these people. His hair was very black and of shoulder
length; he had a silk cloth on his head and two large gold rings hang from the ears. He
wore a cotton cloth, embroidered with silk to cover himself from waist down to the
knees. On his side, he wore a dagger with a long handle, all of gold, with its scabbard
made of carved wood. With this he wore upon him scents of storac and binoin (benzoin).
He was tanned and his face was all painted... The painted king was called Colambu and
the other Rajah Siani." (Blair & Robertson)4

Pigafetta described the garb on Siani as painted, although the markings were tattoos
which were shared by many peoples of the Islands upon the period of discovery by the
Spaniards. He was describing then the manner of grooming of Pintado men especially
those who belonged to the upper structure of society.

Before I go on to the discussions of early patterns, I would like to elucidate what

“TATU” means. The term is understandably generic. For lack or absence of a name aside
from “Pintados”, I choose the term “tatu” or “tatau” (Tahitian) meaning “to mark”, “to
strike”5 which is the act one native tattoo artist does to his model with the use of a tattoo
wand or stick with a long handle and a sharpened comb-like “tooth” at the end. The
Kalinga call it “patik” or “batik” or “patiktik”, but today it is referred more as the act of
tattooing, than the instrument alone. Together with a mallet the tattoo act is likened to
“tapping”, which is, hammering the sharp points directly to the skin or slightly wounding
it. To the wound, dark soot, or dark sap from a special plant is added and embedded to
the grooves, thus darkening the wound.

Why does man tattoo himself? Art historian Gene Weltfish answers the question by a
misconception on the origins of art—that it is natural for all people, especially the
“primitive” or early man, to personify objects.6 He describes that the tendency to accent
and underline special features of an object is a universal impulse. The human body is a
natural background for décor. People who wear less clothing often mark their bodies
with elaborate designs to make it appear as “haberdashery”7 or extensions of themselves.
However, Weltfish notes that this ethnographic custom indicates that people were
borrowing decorative techniques from objects instead of the other way around. Together
with tattooing, there was a large number of pendant decors, necklaces, anklets or head
nets.

4
Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands,
5
Allen, Tricia “Tattoo Traditions of Polynesia”
6
Weltfish, Gene, “Origins of Art”
7
Kennedy-Cabrera, Caroline “Tattoo Art” in The Filipino Heritage, Vol 1
Early motifs in the South East Asian archipelagic rim and the Micronesias noted various
crenulations and tattoo designs that John R. Swanton in his anthropological monograph
“Southern Cultures” noted that the tattooed body “published records of valorous acts
performed in war” or “social attributes” of the wearer (whether he was a hunter, farmer,
fisherman, pearl diver, basket maker, weaver, widow, widower, or had many wives). In
most cases, certain sentiments are expressed and are of importance to his tribe or society.

The following are typical of early Southeast Asian motifs:

Chest and leg motifs

These are, however ancient Bornean tattoos as recorded by Robert Heine Geldern in his
monograph of “Some Tribal Art Styles of Southeast Asia”. Typical is the motif called the
“Aso” or the “dog motif” which traces its roots to the Late Chou and Dongson period in
China. I would like to remind you a bit of our anthropological history that elucidates the
concept of Diffusion8 The central idea of this theory is that similar traits appearing in
separate cultures are proof of some kind of contact between the cultures, and is best
interpreted as due to a diffusion of influence from one to the other or from a parent
culture. Trade, borrowing, immigration, imitation are some of the probable mechanisms
of transmission.9

Another interesting motif to note in these tattoos are the spirals as seen in its singular
design or double, sometimes joined or interlocking:

Oftentimes, we do associate this spirals to sea waves and movement of the sea as in these
tattoo designs found in bamboo containers from Bahau, central Borneo.

8
Heine-Geldern, Robert, “Some Tribal Art Styles of Southeast Asia”, The Many Faces of Primitive Art,
9
Ibid.,
Likewise, however, we could also note that motifs such as these come from biomorphic
and nature forms like this particular pattern coming from the belly of a tadpole:

We are reminded of the “okir” or “okkil” which the Maranaws of our country use to
decorate their panolongs. All these indicate the close connection of that tattoo society to
the sea and water. The Pintado society of the 1600s were peoples whose livelihood and
folkways were close to the sea and traveled mostly to the neighboring islands. Since they
traveled a lot, they assimilated some traits from their neighbors. Perhaps thru the theory
of diffusion, I could make a probability that the close cousins of the Leyte tattoo was that
of the islands closely accessible like Mindano and Borneo.

However, the following motifs were gathered as tattoo designs from Mindanao(still to be
verified):
From “The Vanishing Tattoo Museum”
http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/the_vanishing_tattoo.htm

These motifs are a typical of ridges and repeating calligraphic lines that symbolize or
associate itself to “access” or “climbing”, as in mountains and loftiness where one is
close to the sky or stars. Angled lines and pyramidal shapes could be said as reminiscent
of rice terraces or rough mountainous regions. Repeating or alternating patterns are
atypical of tribal tattoos or basic to primitive designs.

The particular Mindanao motif shares the same pattern with the Igorot, Kalinga in the
Northern tribes of the Philippines:

Above: Worcester/Jenks Photos

But what is most interesting are the criss-crossing, zig-zag and striped line patterns of
weaving found in the tattoos of women from the Iban tribes of Borneo. To the Iban
women of North Borneo, tattooing was a mark of high social standing10

“The Kayan believed that a tattoo is like a “torch” in the world of spirits and that without it they would be
engulfed in utter darkness. They believed that only tattooed women were able to bathe in the legendary
Julan river and collect the pearls that lay on its bed, while the Biajau were convinced that in paradise
tattoos turn into gold and take the place of clothing. There's no doubt that tattooing was thought to confer
great beauty. Young Kayan girls were probably comforted – while undergoing the torment of the tattooist's
needles – by the legend of the pheasant, which was believed to have been tattooed, at the dawn of time, by
a caucal (a tropical bird similar to a pheasant) and to have become the most beautiful bird in the forest,
instead of staying the dull, insignificant creature it originally was. The number of tattoos Kayan women had
depended on their standing. A young slave was only allowed a single line along her legs, drawn freehand
and called “Ida teloo” (three lines). A young girl, if free but of humble extraction, could wear a slightly
more elaborate tattoo, called an “Ida-pat” (four lines), whereas the daughter of a chief would have highly
elaborate tattoos on her forearms, on the backs of her hands, on her legs (from the top of the thighs down to
the knees) and on the tops of the feet.

The ninth day after new moon was considered a propitious time to start. The girl's brothers had to be in
attendance, taking turns, and special food was prepared every day for the girl and the tattooist. The work
was in pre-established stages, often with long intervals between one and another. The back and backs of the
hands were tattooed first, then the tops of the feet, the forearms and lastly the thighs to just below the
knees. The arms were divided into longitudinal sections, bands containing the following symbolic patterns:
concentric circles, spirals, two concentric circles representing two full moons joined together (the most
important motif), a series of horizontal zig-zags, entwined tree roots, a tuba, the ribs of a boat and the
“Kayan hook”, two linked spirals.

Tattoos could vary from person to person but certain figures were always put in the same position. The
symbol representing the roots of the tuba, for example, was always placed in the top half of the arm
(women used these poisonous roots to catch fish). The design considered most important was the two full
moons. Interestingly, each band always contained a small detail preventing it from being perfectly
symmetrical. The back of the thigh was usually decorated with a linear pattern, the number of lines making
up the pattern depending on the girl's social standing. The front and side parts were completely covered by
the patterns described above, often embellished or modified, including the following: Balalat lukut,
Tinggang, Hornbill, Silong, “Tailless dog” (only in the Rajang area). The final leg tattooing session –
decoration of the kneecap – was particularly solemn because considered the conclusion of the whole
operation.”11

10
Edwin H.Gomes, missionary amongst the Iban, Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A
Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean Jungles, from Man, Vol. 11, (1911)
11
Ibid.
Tattoos on the leg and thighs
of an Iban woman Tattooing in the Iban region is done by a woman
tattooist

In similar treatises, these repeating and “striped” lines were joined with motifs of birds,
scorpions, insects or flowers, depicting that tattoos were foremostly cosmetology and
marks of beauty. Also, older women displayed “weave” marks and criss-crossing lines
which could symbolize the order of their social status as weavers and basket makers.
 In Leyte, weaving (paglalara) has been an ancient and age-old craft. The history of
the Eastern Visayan is cross-cultured, embellished and influenced by the many cultures in
a manner of cross-currents (“Sungduan”) being geographically situated in the navel
(pusod) as the crossroad of the South East Asian belt. The womens’ motifs are likened to
the criss-crossing lines of the Leyte baskets, mats that they weave, and the cultures that
they assimilate. We then could speculate the intrinsicness of the vanished Pintado tattoo
to be as eclectic as the various patterns they have assimilated from the Iban, Dyak
Borneans, symmetrically arranged like that of the Kalinga, Igorot, Maoris and
Marquesans, yet speaking of the grace and fluidity of the Eastern Visayans, deeply rooted
in meanings of social folkways and self-identity.

(Videos)
“The Vanishing Tattoo” from http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/the_vanishing_tattoo.htm