From the woman who was tattooed as part of a Native American religious rite to the upper class Victorian society women who went crazy for tattoos, getting inked has been part of subversive subculture for centuries.
And while covering your body with tattoos has become part of a popular trend for body decoration, for Olive Oatman, one of the first white women ever to be given a tattoo, it wasn't a matter of choice.
Oatman's story began when she was kidnapped aged 13 by a group of Yavapais Indians, along with her sister Mary Ann, 10. Apart from her brother Lorenzo who was clubbed and left for dead, the rest of her family were murdered by their attackers in what came to be known as the 'Oatman massacre'.
The girls remained with their by Yavapais captors for a year, during which time they were treated as little more than slaves and endured repeated beatings.
But their luck changed when a group of Mohave Indians arrived in their kidnapper's village and persuaded the Yavapais to give up the girls in exchange for two horses and some blankets.
The pair were swiftly moved to a Mojave village on the Colorado River, where they were taken in by one of the village families and treated as full members of the tribe.
Although both girls were tattooed by the Mojave, Mary-Ann sadly didn't live long enough to be photographed - dying of starvation during a famine that hit the region a year after their arrival.
'She [Olive] was raised by Mojave Indians after her family was killed on a trip from Western Illinois,' recounts Margot Mifflin, author of Bodies Of Subversion. 'The tribe tattooed lines on her chin because they believed it would ensure her passage to the afterlife.'
Oatman remained with the Mojave until she was 19, when the authorities at nearby Fort Yuma belatedly found out that a white girl was living with the tribesmen.
A messenger from the Yuma tribe was sent to negotiate with the Mojave for her release and eventually, they agreed to part with her in exchange for horses and blankets.
At Fort Yuma, Oatman was reunited with her brother Lorenzo. Although she later married, to cattleman John B. Fairchild, she never had children although the couple did adopt a daughter, Marnie, in 1877.
After she died aged 65 in 1903, rumours surfaced of a previous marriage to a Mojave chieftain which was said to have produced two sons. But romantic as it sounds, the rumours were never substantiated.
Since Olive was given her tattoos in 1858, body art has become an ubiquitous part of modern life in the UK, with an estimated 20 million Brits believed to have one.
Tattooing has long been part of Polynesian culture, while body art has also been found on the mummified remains of Ancient Egyptian priests and priestesses.
Although tattoos first made an appearance in the woad etchings of Iron Age Britons, they didn't reappear in Western culture until the 19th century and the first recorded body art craze which originated in Victorian high society.
Popularised by 19th century explorers returning home to the UK full of tales about the weird and wonderful tattooed women they saw on their travels, tattoos swiftly became the accessory of choice for upper class women.
Such was the intensity of the craze for body art during the Victorian period, even Queen Victoria is believed to have had one in the form of a Bengal tiger fighting with a python.
Wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill's mother Jennie also had a serpent tattoo, although hers was rebelliously visible and inked bracelet style around her wrist.
'Upper class women were making a feminist gesture,' explains Mifflin. 'They were taking control of their bodies when they had little power elsewhere.'
Sadly, tattoos didn't equal control for many Victorian women, some of whom were tattoed against their will and press-ganged into work as circus attractions.
According to Bodies of Subversion, several women claimed to have been abducted and forcibly tattooed before being made to pose for paying punters visiting the period's popular travelling freak shows.
Other tattoo tales chronicled in the book include the story of Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship and the story of the first British female tattooist - one Justine Knight who opened her London business in 1921.
Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoos by Margot Mifflin (£15.20, Powerhouse Books) is available from amazon.co.uk
source: dailymail
0 comments:
Post a Comment