AY Honors/Tapa Cloth/Answer Key
1. What are the main uses of Tapa cloth?
In former times the cloth was primarily used for clothing, but now cotton and other textiles have replaced it. The major problem with tapa clothing is that the tissue is just like paper: it looses all its strength when wet and falls apart. Still it was better than grass-skirts, which usually are either heavier and harder or easily blown apart, but on the low coral atolls where the mulberry does not grow, people had no choice.
Nowadays tapa is still often worn on formal occasions such as weddings. Another use is as blanket at night. It is also highly prized for its decorative value and is often found used to hang on the walls as a decoration. In Tonga a family is considered poor, no matter how much money they have, if they do not have any tapa in stock at home to donate at life crises like marriages, funerals and so forth. If the tapa was ever donated to them by a chief or even the royal family, the more valuable it is.
2. Know three different ways that Tapa cloth is made in the Pacific Islands.
3. Know the trees used for making Tapa cloth in your area.
Originally, tapa cloth was most likely made from the bark of the Dye-fig (Ficus tinctoria), endemic to Oceania. Somewhere in history, during the voyages of migration the, the Paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera) was introduced from Southeast Asia. The bark of this tree is much better to use, and put the use of the Dye-fig into oblivion.
