The Morioris carved images into trees, and since the first line in my novel is "I wanted to carve a map of the stars into the trees," I thought I should show you kind of what Rohana meant in the following line, "The others had always carved faces of the dead, or of fur seals, slicing into the bark with sharpened seal bones." (It feels weird to put quotes around something I wrote, but I wasn't sure how else to separate blog from novel. Also, I bet the first few lines will be completely different by the time I'm done!)
Isn't it beautiful? It makes me think of a dancing Chieftain (or "Ieriki," in Moriori).
This image's source is from the New Zealand National Library.
2 comments:
I love details like this -- and I have a way of getting completely lost on the research trail and forgetting to write. Does that happen to you? I'm not saying I'm a good or thorough researcher, I just sort of skim the surface of things, especially weirdly wonderful things, like Maori Moko. The Maori seemed to have done to their own faces what the Moriori did to trees! Did the Moriori tattoo, too? Anyway, good luck with the writing!
No, the Moriori didn't do any tattoos, and in the scene where the Maoris arrive on the island, Rohana thinks their faces are painted. She's shocked when she realizes it's their SKIN that is blue.
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