At the beginning of the twentieth century, on Central Celebes (Sulawesi), only the elderly were tattooed. The locals explained that no one knew how to draw the figures anymore. Evidently their motto was ‘rather no tattoo than a bad tattoo’.
On Central Celebes, a ceremony requiring tattooing was the Ma’boea, which was abolished as it traditionally involved human sacrifice. A Ma’boea ceremony would be held to curry favour with the gods after successive crop failures or in times of sickness. The men of the village would travel to a distant settlement to buy a human to be sacrificed (tandasang), usually an old slave. Once back in the village, a period of rituals, during which everyone was tattooed, ensued. The tandasang was safe as long no misfortune befell the rice, the people, or the buffalo in the village. If crops failed, however, the Ma’boea ceremony was ended and with it the life of the tandasang. After the slave was killed, his head was cut off, cleaned, smoked over a fire and hung on the central pole of the village chief’s hut.