Nose Piercing

The author of the following article has read a book by Tony Horowitz. In that book, Horowitz makes only an oblique reference to nose piercing. Still, he also includes a fair number of quotes from journals written by Captain James Cook, and by his on-board botanist. From those journals, one can tell that nose piercing enjoyed acceptance among inhabitants of the South Sea Islands. Based on those quotes and on other information in Horowitz’ book (Blue Latitudes) the writer of the following article has composed a commentary, a commentary about the role of women in the Europe of the 18th Century.

Westerners might suspect that the art of nose piercing created a major difference between the natives of the South Pacific and the explorers/traders who landed there. Still, the fact that some natives had pierced noses, while none of the western visitors wore such adornments, might not have been the primary difference between the island natives and the white-skinned arrivals. The gender composition of the arriving party might have overshadowed the fact that no one in that party had any knowledge of nose piercing.

The explorers who sailed from Europe, before landing on the islands of the South Pacific came from a male-dominated society. The society on the islands allowed women to rise, in some cases, to a leadership position. Both Hawaii and Tahiti had female leaders when explorers first landed on their shores.

A reading of the journal kept by Captain James Cook, as well as the journal kept by his botanist, showed the confusion that the islanders experienced, upon the arrival of the all-male sailing party from a land far across the seas. The islanders could not understand why there were no women on board the ship. In fact, some natives even tried touching the sailors, to make sure that they were not women.

Questions about gender issues seemed to dominate during many of the first meetings between island natives and European explorers. There is no evidence that someone from the group of native islanders stepped forward and offered to perform a nose piercing on one of the sailors. The sailors, of course, did not seek such a piercing.

There is a story in one journal about a sailor who bartered with natives for a sex partner. After he had made the agreed upon payment, the natives brought him a young boy. The natives appear to have assumed that the European sailors had homosexual tendencies. When the sailor objected to the offered lad, the natives brought him a different male youth.

Perhaps the natives wondered what sort of standards the European men used, for judging the desirability of a sex partner. Perhaps they wondered why their skillful use of nose piercing did not make them seem more attractive to their visitors. The natives had three types of pierced noses.

Some of the men had a stone in their nostril. Some had a pierced septum, and others had a pierced nose bridge. There is no clear reference in Cook’s journal to the sighting of a native with a nose plug.

It is hard to imagine what went through the minds of the native islanders, when the white sailors disembarked on their homeland. One can only try to guess how the public would react, if a UFO from outer space brought to earth a crew in which every member had the same basic physical characteristics. Would someone not ask “Where are their sex partners?”