Queen Kamamalu, Queen Consort of Hawaii and Princess of Hawaii, formally Victoria Kamāmalu 1802 – July 8, 1824 – served alongside her husband Liholiho (who reigned as Kamehameha II) had a tattoo applied to her tongue as an expression of her deep grief when her mother-in-law died in the 1820’s. Missionary William Ellis watched the procedure, commenting to the queen that she must be undergoing great pain. The queen replied, “He eha nui no, he nui roa ra ku‘u aroha.” Great pain indeed, greater is my affection.

Early explorers found that both men and women wore tattoos in old Hawai‘i for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the tattoos were purely decorative. Jacques Arago, who visited the Islands in 1819 as a draftsman with the Freycinet expedition, noted that some men were heavily tattooed on only one side of their bodies. He wrote, “they looked like men half burnt, or daubed with ink, from the top of the head to the sole of the foot.” Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau noted that this solid black tattooing was called pahupahu. It was commonly applied to warriors in the Marquesas as a disguise, and it is thought that such tattooing may have set apart Hawaiian warriors as well.

If that was painful for the queen, I cannot imagine what the pain factor was for the women pictured herein. Whew. Take a break, Okay? Umm, guess you have to – there isn’t any skin left.