On the 22nd of September 1822, a man died amidst general indifference in Valenciennes, France. He used to earn his living as a freak in local fairs, alongside a three-headed calf and other natural oddities. His name was Joseph Kabris – or perhaps Jean-Baptiste, or perhaps Cabri, depending on the sources. He was born in Bordeaux around 1780. According to the sign which accompanied his show, Kabris was a ‘prince sauvage’: sauvage, in French, means both barbarian, savage and wild. Every afternoon, he stood half-naked, crowned with feathers, displaying his heavily tattooed body. For he was tattooed from the feet to the face, where half of his features seemed drowned in a large, inked rectangle.
Kabris’ road from Bordeaux to Valenciennes was a surprisingly long and winding one. When he was fifteen, he embarked on an English whaler. Then, in 1798, he escaped said whaler to settle in Nuku Hiva, one of the Marquesas islands. There, he was completely integrated into local society and transformed into a heavily tattooed man, a husband, and a father. However, in 1804, he joined Captain Krusenstern’s boat and left the island. Krusenstern was then attempting the very first Russian circumnavigation. Kabris was dropped on the Kamchatka Peninsula, from where he travelled to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. There, he met the tsar. Then he left for Kronstadt, where he somehow became a swimming instructor for the Russian navy. He had to wait until 1817 to find his way back to France. There, he met King Louis XVIII, then started to travel from fair to fair. Terminus: Valenciennes. No need to say that Joseph Kabris was, above anything else, a traveller. Writer Michel Caron portrayed him as such in a 1938 story entitled Joseph Kabris’ tragicomic adventure: how a sailor from Bordeaux became a king in Nouka-Hiva, Oceania. When the short novel was published in French newspaper Le Petit Marseillais, it included a description of Kabris as one of those ‘unknown adventurers who are like kings without a kingdom’.
Kabris’ road from Bordeaux to Valenciennes was a surprisingly long and winding one. When he was fifteen, he embarked on an English whaler. Then, in 1798, he escaped said whaler to settle in Nuku Hiva, one of the Marquesas islands. There, he was completely integrated into local society and transformed into a heavily tattooed man, a husband, and a father. However, in 1804, he joined Captain Krusenstern’s boat and left the island. Krusenstern was then attempting the very first Russian circumnavigation. Kabris was dropped on the Kamchatka Peninsula, from where he travelled to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. There, he met the tsar. Then he left for Kronstadt, where he somehow became a swimming instructor for the Russian navy. He had to wait until 1817 to find his way back to France. There, he met King Louis XVIII, then started to travel from fair to fair. Terminus: Valenciennes. No need to say that Joseph Kabris was, above anything else, a traveller. Writer Michel Caron portrayed him as such in a 1938 story entitled Joseph Kabris’ tragicomic adventure: how a sailor from Bordeaux became a king in Nouka-Hiva, Oceania. When the short novel was published in French newspaper Le Petit Marseillais, it included a description of Kabris as one of those ‘unknown adventurers who are like kings without a kingdom’.
And then, he came back to France to show the results of his life experience. In 1817, several newspapers published his life story to promote his appearances in fairs. Then, in 1817 and in 1820, A.-F. Dulys published two short pamphlets relating his life story; they seem inspired by then-popular travel stories. All those printed biographies promoted Kabris and his tattooed skin as the living embodiment of a contact between the ‘white world’ and the ‘primitive world’. While Europe was fairly used to seeing tattooed natives of all sorts (an Inuit woman was displayed in Antwerp in 1566; Omai, brought from Raiatea to London by James Cook in the 18th century was still a recent memory), Kabris’ skin was still troubling and new. It promised a thrill for audience members who probably never left the European continent and were invited to identify with this odd man from Bordeaux. As for the pamphlets, since they might have been sold alongside the shows, they probably doubled as an educational read. A thrilling story, a tattooed body: Kabris helped build the model that was then re-used by James F. O’Connell, the 1840s ‘tattooed man’, or the likes of the Capitaine Costentenus and the Belle Irène. Joseph Kabris was around forty-two when he died in Valenciennes. One after the other, he had been a sailor, a warrior, a father, a husband, a swimmer and a freak: that’s a unique trajectory for an early 19th-century man. At least one man noticed it while Kabris was still alive. It was a librarian from Valenciennes who, according to historian Christophe Granger, wished to write the life story of the tattooed man and deplored than ‘such an important man was walking among them without anybody noticing’. His assessment might have been a bit exaggerated, though. After all, when Kabris died, rumour says that some collector tried – and failed – to buy the tattooed man’s skin so he could stuff him with straw and keep it forever... Jeanne Barnicaud Sources des illustrations ‘Jean-Baptiste Cabri’ in Frederic Shoberl, South Sea Islands. Being a description of the manners, customs, character, religion, and state of society among the various tribes scattered over The Great Ocean, called the Pacific or the South Sea , London, R. Ackermann, 1824 (Wikimedia – Public Domain). Wilhelm Gottlieb von Tilesius von Tilenau and Ignaz Sebastian Klauber, « Darsellung eines Nukahiwers der sich tatuiren läst », in Atlas zur Reise um die Welt unternommen auf Befehl Seiner Kayserdichen Majestät Alexander der Ersten auf den Schiffen Nadeshda und Neva under dem Commando des Capitains von Krusenstern, Saint-Pétersbourg, 1824 (Archive.org – Public Domain). Précis historique et véritable du séjour de J. Kabris, natif de Bordeaux, dans les îles de Mendoça. Suivi de : Le départ de Joseph Kabris de l’île de Nou-Kaiva et ses douloureux adieux à son épouse, Genève, impr. J. J. L. Sestié, ca. 1820 (Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, BGE Cth 9006 (1) BGE T 16610 (1) – Public Domain) Pour aller plus loin « France », Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 9 août 1817. « The Life and Adventures of James F. O’Connell, the Tattooed Man (1845)”, The Public Domain Review, 2013, URL: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-life-and-adventures-of-james-f-o-connell-the-tattooed-man-1845/ Michel Caron, « Aventure tragi-comique de Joseph Kabris, matelot bordelais et roi de Nouka-Hiva Océanie », Le Petit Marseillais, à partir du 10 août 1938. Christophe Granger, Joseph Kabris ou les possibilités d’une vie, Paris, Anamosa, 2020. Nicholas Thomas, Océaniens. Histoire du Pacifique à l’âge des empires, Toulouse, Anacharsis, 2020.
