Word: tapa
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Another exhibit shows bark cloth (tapa). The Pacific islanders made it by pounding the fibrous inner bark of certain trees. So did Indians in Nicaragua and Mexico. The cloth of both hemispheres is the same papery stuff, and the wood and stone pounding tools the two peoples used (shown in the exhibit) are so similar that they might have been made by the same...
...Californian named Truman Bailey could take the commission's bows. Back in 1942 he had found that the only decent Peruvian artifacts were buried in museums. Most stores sold shoddy, cast silverware and tritely patterned blankets. Bailey, who had acquired a ripe background digging the best teakwood and tapa cloth out of Java and Oceania, knew exactly what to do: hit out for the sources of pre-Columbian handicrafts and discover the lost techniques...
...Venereal disease is unknown among the natives; the major commanding the force saw to it that only healthy soldiers went ashore. Life is pleasant, with plenty of tropical fruits and vegetables; wild pigs occasionally provide fresh meat. Love is taboo until after sundown, then the unattached girls doff their tapa-cloth shirts, shake out their grass skirts and smile fondly about them...