Tapa cloth
Based on Wikipedia: Tapa cloth
The Sound of a Village at Work
If you walked through a Tongan village on any given afternoon, you might hear it before you understood what it was: a rhythmic, wooden thonk-thonk-thonk echoing between the houses. It sounds almost like drumming, and in a way, it is. But these aren't musicians. These are women making cloth.
Not weaving it. Not spinning it. Beating it into existence from the bark of a tree.
This is tapa cloth, one of the oldest textile traditions in the Pacific Ocean, and one of the most ingenious solutions humans have ever devised for the problem of what to wear. Before cotton, before synthetic fibers, before global shipping made fabric cheap and abundant, Pacific Islanders figured out that if you stripped the inner bark from a paper mulberry tree and pounded it with wooden mallets for long enough, you could transform it into something soft, flexible, and beautiful enough to wrap around a body—or hang on a wall, or give to a bride, or present to a king.
A Cloth by Many Names
The word "tapa" itself comes from Tahiti and the Cook Islands, where Captain James Cook became the first European to collect samples and introduce them to the wider world. But this cloth exists across a vast swath of the Pacific, and almost everywhere it goes, it carries a different name.
In Tonga, they call it ngatu. In Samoa, siapo. In Hawaii, kapa. In Fiji, masi. On the tiny Polynesian island of Rotuma, it's known as 'uha. On Pitcairn Island—yes, the one where the Bounty mutineers ended up—it was called 'ahu. In New Zealand, the Māori knew it as aute.
These aren't just different words for the same thing. Each island developed its own techniques, its own patterns, its own cultural meanings. The geometric grids of Tongan ngatu look nothing like the bold freehand designs of modern Samoan siapo mamanu. Fijian masi often features black dye that Tongans never use. The diversity is remarkable, considering that all of these traditions trace back to the same plant, carried across thousands of miles of open ocean by voyagers in outrigger canoes.
The Tree That Traveled
The paper mulberry tree—Broussonetia papyrifera to botanists—didn't evolve in the Pacific. It's native to Southeast Asia, where it has been used for papermaking in China for over two thousand years. But sometime in the ancient past, Polynesian voyagers recognized its value and brought it along on their migrations, tucking cuttings into their canoes alongside the taro, breadfruit, and pigs that would sustain them in their new island homes.
By around 1000 CE, tapa cloth production was well established in Western Polynesia—Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. From there, it spread further as people continued their explorations, reaching Hawaii, New Zealand, and dozens of smaller islands scattered across the world's largest ocean.
The word "tapa" itself offers a clue to the technology's early history. In Polynesian languages, tapa means "border" or "strip." This suggests that before people figured out how to glue multiple pieces together into large sheets, they could only produce narrow strips of cloth. The innovation of combining strips into bigger pieces—using starchy pastes as adhesive—is what allowed tapa to become a practical material for clothing and ceremony.
From Bark to Fabric
The process of making tapa is labor-intensive, and that's putting it mildly. It begins with the paper mulberry tree, which must be grown specifically for this purpose. In Tonga, families often set aside portions of their vegetable gardens for hiapo trees, cultivating them alongside yams and other crops.
When a tree reaches the right age—usually about a year old, when the trunk is one to two inches in diameter—it's cut down. The bark is stripped off in lengths that can reach nearly two meters. But this outer bark isn't what you want. It's the inner layer, called tutu or loututu in Tongan, that will become cloth. The outer bark must be scraped or split away and discarded.
The inner bark is dried in the sun, then soaked in water to soften it. And then comes the beating.
The wooden anvil, called a tutua, is a substantial piece of equipment—in Samoa, it can be three to six feet long and eight inches wide. The mallet, known as an ike, has four sides: two smooth and two grooved. The beater starts with the coarse grooved sides, which help spread and thin the bark, then switches to progressively finer surfaces, finishing with the smooth side to create an even texture.
This is where that village drumming sound comes from. When several women work together on their tutua boards, they can coordinate their strikes into a kind of percussive performance, with one person beating the end of the anvil to set the rhythm. The continuous thonking can go on for hours as the bark is gradually transformed—spreading from a narrow strip about ten centimeters wide to a sheet roughly twenty-five centimeters across.
Making Something Bigger
A single strip of beaten bark isn't very useful by itself. To create fabric large enough for actual garments or ceremonial purposes, multiple strips must be combined. The technique varies by island, but the basic principle involves layering strips and beating them together until they fuse.
In Tonga, the resulting sheet is called fetaʻaki, and it typically consists of two layers of strips arranged at right angles to each other—one running lengthwise, the other crosswise. Where the strips are reluctant to bond, makers apply a paste made from sweet potato or cassava starch.
This is often a communal activity. The women of an entire village might work together on a single massive sheet of tapa, destined for donation to the church or presentation to a chief on an important occasion. These ceremonial pieces can be staggering in size: about three meters wide and fifteen, thirty, or even sixty meters long. That's potentially two hundred feet of handmade fabric, every inch beaten by hand.
Different sizes have specific names. A fifteen-meter piece (five "squares" in the traditional measuring system) is called launima. A thirty-meter piece is lautefuhi. The system reflects how integral these measurements were to social and ceremonial life—you didn't just make "a piece of tapa," you made a specific kind with a specific purpose.
The Art of Decoration
Undecorated tapa is beautiful in its own way—soft, off-white, with a subtle texture from the beating process. But most tapa is painted, and this is where individual island traditions really diverge.
Tongan ngatu begins with a fascinating technique. The plain fetaʻaki is draped over a large wooden drum covered with stencils called kupesi. These stencils are made from the midribs of coconut fronds—thin sticks arranged in geometric patterns. When the maker rubs a dye-soaked dabber across the cloth, more pigment adheres where it passes over the raised ribs of the stencil, less where it doesn't. The effect is similar to making a brass rubbing, but on a much larger scale.
The patterns themselves carry meaning. One traditional design represents "the pine road"—the ceremonial avenue from the royal palace to the cemetery. Another depicts the shield of Tonga. The "lion" pattern represents the king; the "dove" represents the king in his role as ruler. More abstract designs include the Manulua, or "two birds."
After the initial rubbing, the cloth is spread out and the patterns are accentuated by hand-painting with a brush made from Pandanus seeds. Tongan makers use two primary dyes, both brown: a lighter shade from the koka tree (Bischofia javanica) and a darker shade from the mangrove (Rhizophora mangle). Black dye is characteristic of Fiji but absent from Tongan tradition—a clear marker of regional identity.
As the painting progresses, the makers draw lines across the width of the cloth at regular intervals—typically about forty-five centimeters apart. These divisions, called langanga, are numbered and serve as cutting guides. When a smaller piece of ngatu is needed for a gift or garment, it's cut along these lines. Different numbers of langanga indicate different sizes with their own names: a four-to-six-section piece is folaʻosi; an eight-section piece is fātuua; a ten-section piece is toka hongofulu.
Samoan Siapo: Two Methods
Samoa developed its own distinctive approach to tapa, with two primary methods that produce quite different results.
The first, called siapo 'elei or siapo tasina, uses a rubbing technique similar to the Tongan approach. A wooden board called an upeti has designs carved into its surface. Originally, these upeti were painstakingly hand-sewn from leaves, fibers, and bamboo, but these fragile templates have been replaced by more durable carved wooden boards. The dried bark cloth is placed over the board and rubbed with dye-soaked pads to bring out the carved pattern. Red clay darkens the design further. A starchy adhesive—traditionally made from arrowroot—is applied, small holes are patched, and then a second layer of cloth is added on top. The whole process repeats, building up layers until the piece is complete.
The second method, siapo mamanu, is newer and represents a genuine artistic departure. Here, there's no upeti at all. The bark cloth is stretched and glued over a wooden board, and the artist paints whatever design they choose directly onto the surface by hand. The older technique involves removing the finished cloth from its backing; modern siapo mamanu often keeps the wood as part of the artwork, creating a hybrid form of fabric and sculpture.
Thirteen traditional design elements appear in Samoan siapo, though two have fallen out of use and another is now rare. These motifs represent plants, flowers, birds, trochus shells (large sea snails with distinctive spiral patterns), starfish, and fishing nets. Artists combine these elements in countless variations, creating new patterns from an established visual vocabulary.
Color from the Forest
The dyes used for tapa come from the natural world, and each color has its source. Brown—the most common color across the Pacific—comes from the blood tree (Bishofia javanica), which gets its name from the reddish sap it exudes. Black is made by burning candlenuts and using the resulting soot. Red comes from the pods of the lipstick tree, which also provides the annatto used in Latin American cooking and as a natural food coloring worldwide. Yellow comes from turmeric, the same spice that gives curry its golden hue.
Not all colors are equal across traditions. Red and yellow appear in Samoan siapo mamanu (the freehand style) but not in siapo 'elei (the rubbed style). Purple, once made from banana tree sap in Samoa, has fallen completely out of use.
The limitations of natural dyes partly explain why tapa tends toward earthy tones—browns, blacks, rust reds. These aren't arbitrary aesthetic choices but reflections of what the island environment provides. Every color in a traditional piece of tapa can be traced back to a specific plant that grows nearby.
More Than Just Fabric
To understand tapa's significance, you have to abandon modern assumptions about what cloth is for. Yes, tapa was worn as clothing. But calling it "clothing" doesn't capture its role in Pacific Island societies.
In Tonga, ngatu functions almost like a social currency. A family is considered poor—regardless of how much money they have—if they don't keep tapa in stock at home. The cloth must be available for life events: weddings, funerals, birthdays, formal presentations. Tapa given by a chief or the royal family carries special value; its worth derives partly from its craftsmanship and partly from the social relationships it represents.
This was true historically as well. When Herman Melville's ship arrived at Nukuheva in the Marquesas Islands (as recounted in his 1846 novel Typee), local women swam out to meet it wearing "a few loose folds of white tappa, in a modest cincture, around the waist." The cloth was simultaneously practical garment, status marker, and cultural identifier.
In the Cook Islands, tapa was used to wrap sacred objects like "God staffs"—carved wooden poles representing deities. In Papua New Guinea and parts of the Cook Islands, it formed the basis of ceremonial masks. It served as bedding, room dividers, curtains, burial shrouds. In Hawaii, certain patterns of kapa were restricted to royalty; wearing the wrong design could be a capital offense.
The Problem of Water
Despite its importance, tapa has a fundamental weakness: it falls apart when wet. The same plant fibers that make it soft and flexible also absorb water and lose their structural integrity. A garment that serves perfectly well on a sunny day becomes useless in the rain.
This limitation helps explain why tapa never completely replaced other clothing options and why it was eventually displaced by woven textiles. When European traders brought cotton and wool to the Pacific, islanders quickly recognized the advantages. These fabrics could be washed, dried, and worn again indefinitely. They survived storms and ocean spray. They didn't require the enormous labor investment that tapa demanded.
Still, tapa did have advantages over the other pre-contact option: grass skirts, which were either heavy and stiff or prone to falling apart at the slightest provocation. For occasions that didn't involve getting wet, tapa was clearly superior.
A Tradition Nearly Lost
By the mid-twentieth century, tapa production was in serious decline across much of the Pacific. Western clothing was cheaper, more durable, and—thanks to colonialism and globalization—increasingly available. Young people migrated to cities or overseas. Traditional skills weren't being passed down.
In American Samoa after World War Two, entire villages emptied as residents left for Hawaii and the mainland United States. The elaborate knowledge of tree cultivation, bark preparation, dye-making, and pattern design began to disappear. By the 1960s, a siapo dealer and artist named Mary Pritchard worried that the craft would die out entirely.
Pritchard began teaching classes in the 1970s, part of a broader cultural revival movement across the Pacific. Her efforts helped, but the recovery has been partial. In the twenty-first century, only a handful of people in American Samoa still produce siapo, along with some families in Samoa proper—particularly on the island of Savai'i, where Palauli village has maintained a reputation for high-quality work.
French Polynesia tells an even more dramatic story. Tapa production has nearly vanished there, surviving only in a few villages in the Marquesas Islands. What was once a universal technology across the Polynesian world has become a rare specialty.
Fiji's Masi: A Living Tradition
In Fiji, the situation is more hopeful. Masi (as tapa is known there) continues to be made regularly, though production is concentrated in a few locations—particularly the island of Moce in the eastern Lau province and Vatulele in western Nadroga province.
Fijian masi-making is exclusively women's work, with one interesting exception: at Navatusila, men participate in the decoration process. The basic technique follows the familiar pattern—paper mulberry trees cultivated in family gardens, bark stripped and beaten, layers felted together with cassava or arrowroot paste. Chiefs receive a special single-layer cloth called seavu, made from young trees to achieve a fine, thin, white texture that marks their status.
The uses remain largely traditional: clothing, bedding, curtains, ceremonial gifts, and the presentation cloths that accompany weddings or the conferring of chiefly titles. But masi has also adapted to modern economics. Tourist items now supplement ceremonial production, and large pieces of masi are given as gifts that demonstrate a family's or clan's "cultural strength"—a tangible representation of their ability to maintain traditional skills and mobilize communal labor.
Modern Interpretations
Across the Pacific, a new generation of artists has begun to engage with tapa not just as cultural preservation but as contemporary art. They experiment with non-traditional techniques, incorporate new materials, and create pieces intended primarily for gallery walls rather than ceremonial use.
This represents a genuine tension. Some see modern tapa art as a vital evolution that keeps the tradition relevant. Others worry that separating tapa from its ceremonial and social functions reduces it to mere decoration, stripping away the relationships and meanings that gave it significance.
Meanwhile, the tourist market has created its own demands. Samoan siapo mamanu—the freehand painted style—emerged largely in response to visitors seeking distinctive souvenirs. Modern uses of siapo include jewelry, handbags, placemats, and wall hangings, many designed specifically for non-Pacific buyers. In Tonga, traditional sizing rules have loosened to accommodate tourist preferences.
Whether this commercial adaptation represents survival or dilution depends on your perspective. What's certain is that tapa in the twenty-first century exists in a different world from the one that created it.
The Sound Continues
And yet, in some villages, the rhythmic thonking continues. Women gather around their tutua boards, mallets in hand, transforming bark into fabric the same way their grandmothers did, and their grandmothers before them.
The paper mulberry trees still grow in family gardens. The natural dyes still come from the koka tree and the mangrove and the lipstick plant. The patterns still carry names that connect to ancestors, to royalty, to stories passed down through generations.
In Tonga, families still measure their wealth partly in ngatu stored at home, ready for the weddings and funerals and gifts that bind communities together. A piece of tapa given at a wedding isn't just fabric—it's labor, it's skill, it's history, it's relationship made tangible.
The technology is ancient. The material is fragile. The labor is immense. And still, somehow, people keep doing it—beating bark into cloth, painting patterns that their ancestors would recognize, maintaining a tradition that spans thousands of miles of ocean and thousands of years of human ingenuity.
That persistent thonk-thonk-thonk from the village isn't just the sound of cloth being made. It's the sound of a culture refusing to fall silent.