I believe it is not customary to tattoo the children until they are eight or ten years of age; indeed at an earlier period the operation would be attended with considerable danger, from the inflammation that would be excited: even later in life the effects are sometimes so severe as to produce a great degree of fever, and some cases have occur red where death has been the consequence.
The operation of tattooing, which the natives call amoco, is usually performed in the following manner.
The device being marked out with a piece of burnt stick, or red earth, the skin is punctured with the sharp point of a piece of bone, into which a vegetable fluid is inserted: as the pain is considerable, a portion only of the intended figure can be depicted at one time; as the inflammation abates they continue their work, but it is not without a great degree of suffering that they arrive at the honour of a complete tattooing: however, as honour is the reward, and this honour is bestowed chiefly upon those
