Cloth

In a culture where most daily habits are formed with thoughts of simplicity and ease, the making of the local cloth, called "tappa," seems to be one of the few things that requires sustained, focused labor. It involves stripping fiber from the cloth-tree, then pressing the fiber together, soaking it in the stream, hand-weaving it, and then hammering it flat. Observed Tommo: "I was often attracted by the noise of the mallet, which, when employed in the manufacture of the cloth produces at every stroke of its hard, heavy wood, a clear, ringing, and musical sound, capable of being heard at a great distance" (19.23).

This careful craftsmanship provides a material used in everything from religious ritual to storage sacks, and its omnipresence seems to point at something deeper. While Tommo may perceive the work as the merry task of a playful people, the tappa is a literal thread of labor and industriousness, which runs through the Typee culture.

Cloth As More Than Something To Wrap Around You

Tommo also makes an effort to grab some calico cloth from the ship before he leaves, knowing that he might be called on to give a gift or make a trade. When first the sailors venture onto Typee land, Tommo "unrolled the cotton cloth, and holding it in one hand picked with the other a twig from the bushes [...] waving the branch in token of peace" (10.10).

The tappa may also be transformed, as Tommo learns when he absent-mindedly picks up a piece of the material as a group of Typee female are working: "I was suddenly startled by a scream, like that of a whole boarding-school of young ladies just on the point of going into hysterics" (30.19). He's confused, dropping the tappa, and later learns that the cloth was "taboo," only to be touched by women. Because he has gone and touched it, they must start the process again. How rude.