...
The use of paint, the Dakotas aver, was taught them by the
gods. Unkteh taught the first medicine men how to paint
themselves when they worshipped him and what colors to use.
Takushkanshkan (the moving god) whispers to his favorites
what colors to use. Heyoka hovers over them in dreams, and
informs them how many streaks to employ upon their bodies
and the tinge they must have. No ceremony of worship is
complete without the wakan, or sacred application of
paint."[74]
By the Tasmanians "the bones of relatives were worn around the neck,
less, perhaps, as ornaments than as charms."[75] The Ainos of Japan
and the Fijians held that tattooing was a custom introduced by the
gods. Fijian women believed "that to be tattooed is a passport to the
other world, where it prevents them from being persecuted by their own
sex."[76] An Australian custom ordained that every person must have
the septum of the nose pierced and must wear in it a piece of bone, a
reed, or the stalks of some grass. This was not done, however, with
the object of adorning the person, but for superstitious reasons: "the
old men used to predict to those who were averse to this mutilation
all kinds of evil." The sinner, they said, would suffer in the next
world by having to eat filth. "To avoid a punishment so horrible, each
one gladly submitted, and his or her nose was pierced accordingly.
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