The islanders preferred to decorate their bodies by scarification or causing burn wounds by holding hot objects against the skin. Tattoos were a luxury only the wealthy could afford. By the close of the nineteenth century, however, only a few older men still had small vertical fish tattooed on their foreheads and cheeks. In the early twentieth century, young men were only tattooed on their inner arms. The designs were the same. Extremely simple, they consisted of areas or rows of vertical and zigzagging lines, representing the leaves of the coconut palm.

Girls tattooed each other, but men paid specialists for more elaborate designs. Like all Micronesians in the nineteenth century, they used a small mallet and a stick to which a number of bone (later metal) needles were secured. A Gilbert Islands legend maintains that ancient tattooists made incisions in the skin with their sharpened fingernails. Another story tells that it was customary for all relatives or friends attending the procedure to have a line tattooed on their chest as a memento.