Describing these, Captain Cook wrote “The manner in which” they’re done “must certainly cause intollerable pain”

During Captain Cook’s voyages through the South Pacific, he discovered indigenous peoples from Tahiti and New Zealand with intricate tattoos on their bodies. In Captain Cook’s Journal During His First Voyage Round the World, he noted:

Many of the old and some of the Middle aged Men have their faces mark’d or tattow’d with black, and some few we have seen who have had their buttocks, thighs, and other parts of their bodies marked, but this is less common. The figures they mostly use are spirals, drawn and connected together with great nicety and judgement. They are so exact in the application of these Figures that no difference can be found between the one side of the face and the other, if the whole is marked, for some have only one side, and some a little on both sides; hardly any but the old Men have the whole tattow’d. From this I conclude that it takes up some time, perhaps Years, to finish the Operation, which all Who have begun may not have perseverance enough to go through, as the manner in which it must be done must certainly cause intollerable pain, and may be the reason why so few are Marked at all—at least I know no other.

The observations and meetings of Captain Cook with Polynesians provided the Western world with the first thorough accounts of their tattooing practises.