r and less valuable forms. Practically all the old ornaments were given away or sold, and the present population can give no exact details about them. The following descriptions are largely based on Captain Cook's remarks on the inhabitants of Mangaia, Atiu, and Hervey Island (Manuae) and on specimens examined by me in various museums. W. Wyatt Gill also recorded valuable information concerning Mangaian ornaments.
The ears were pierced for the suspension of ear ornaments termed poe or poe taringa. This custom was reflected in the wooden images of Rarotonga and Aitutaki in which the ears were perforated for the suspension of feather ornaments.
Cook (20, p. 173) says of the Mangaians, "The lobe of their ears was pierced, or rather slit, and to such a length, that one of them stuck there a knife and some beads, which he received from us; …" But of the Atiuans Cook (20, p. 184), writes, "Their ears were bored but not slit: …"
Gill (32, p. 337), describing the Mangaians, says: "The ears of children were pierced with fish-bone, then enlarged with a twig of gardenia, so as to admit a fresh-plucked flower (the scarlet Hibiscus or the Gardenia)." However, he contradicts this statement in another reference (28, p. 126) where he says, "In those days ear-ornaments of a prodigious size were worn by men and women. To admit these clumsy adornments, the ears were slit in childhood and enlarged by constant pressure, until at last a small cocoa-nut (vāō) could be inserted."
The Mangaians were evidently the only people who wore large ornaments, such as small coconuts and wooden cylinders. It is probable that they made an initial slit in the ear lobes, whereas the other islanders pierced the ears.
The modern method in Rarotonga is to hold a lime or an orange against one side of the lobe and pierce it from the other side with the sharp thorn of an orange tree. On removing the thorn, the point of the central unopened leaf of ti is pushed through the hole and a short length left in position to keep the hole patent. The coiled central leaf is cylindrical and increases in thickness toward its base. Fresh leaves are substituted and pushed farther through to gradually dilate the hole to the required size.
The wearing of flowers in the ears was universal. Cook, speaking of the pierced ears of the Atiuans says, "… and in them they hung bits of the membraneous part of some plant, or stuck there an odoriferous flower, which seemed to be a species of gardenia." Cook was right about the flower, for the Gardenia, taitensis (tiare tahiti) had been carried to the various islands of the Cook group by ancestral voyagers, and it is still the favorite flower for wearing in the ear. When the ears are not pierced the flowers are held in position by placing the stem back of the ear.
Red feathers (Atiu)
Cook (20, p. 187) says of a chief in Atiu, "In his ears were large bunches of beautiful red feathers, which pointed forward. But he had no other mark, page 106or ornament, to distinguish him from the rest of the people. …" Two other chiefs wore similar ear ornaments, and a group of women dancers also wore red feathers in their ears (20, p. 188): "… we saw, at the distance of thirty yards, about twenty women, ornamented as the chiefs, with red feathers, engaged in a dance, …"
It is practically certain that the feather bunches were red parakeet feathers arranged in a rosette form by means of superimposed ring carriers. A beautiful single rosette of red parakeet feathers in the Vienna Museum (no. 2736) has no less than 30 coir cord holders bunched together like the red feather rosettes in the Aitutaki headdress (fig. 43). At first, I thought it had become detached from a headdress but after reading Cook's account, there can be little doubt that it is a feather ear ornament from Atiu.
Black feathers (Rarotonga)
A bunch of black feathers attached to the ear of a Rarotongan god (fig. 196, d) was composed of loop carriers (fig. 52). Each of the four holders of a carrier had four split feathers and six carriers were tied together with a strip of paper mulberry bast passed 