The Curator of the Museum, Dr. William T. Brigham, spends his learned years in the absorbing work of sustaining and adding to the excellence of his charge.
Of all the treasures of this passing race, we lingered most enchanted before the superb feather cloaks, or capes, long and short, of almost unbelievable workmanship; as well as helmets, fashioned of wicker and covered with the same tiny feathers, yellow or scarlet, of the oo, mamo, iiwi, and akakani, birds now practically extinct, and modeled on a combined Attic and Corinthian pattern. The cloaks, robes of state, called mamo, were the costly insignia of high rank; a wondrous surface of feathers, black, red, red-and-black, yellow, yellow-and-black, upon a netting of olona, native hemp. Some notion of the value of these kingly garments may be gained by the statement that nine generations of kings lapsed during the construction of one single mantle, the greatest of all these in the Bishop Museum, that fell upon the godlike shoulders of the first Kamehameha. Among the others, remarkable though they be, this woof of mamo, of indescribable flame-yellow, like Etruscan gold, stands out “like a ruby amidst carrots.”
All this royal regalia, blood-inherited by Mrs. Pauahi Bishop, together with the kahilis, formed the starting point for the Museum. And the kahilis! Their handles are inlaid cunningly with turtle shell and ivory and pearl, some of them ten to thirty feet in height, topped by brilliant black or colored feather cylinders fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter. In 1822, one of the second party of missionaries went into ecstacies over these feather devices of Hawaii royalty:
“So far as the feather mantles, helmets, coronets and kahilis had an effect, I am not fearful of extravagance in the use of the epithet (splendid). I doubt whether there is a nation in Christendom which at the time letters and Christianity were introduced, could have presented a court dress and insignia of rank so magnificent as these; and they were found here, in all their richness, when the islands were discovered by Cook. There is something approaching the sublime in the lofty noddings of the kahilis of state as they tower far above the heads of the group whose distinction they proclaim; something conveying to the mind impressions of greater majesty than the gleamings of the most splendid banners I ever saw unfurled.”
Dr. Brigham comments upon the foregoing:
“Not in the least does the excellent missionary exaggerate in his eulogy on the grand kahilis. Those of us who, in these latter days of the degeneration of all good native works and customs, have seen the kahilis wave above royalty, however faded—the finely built and naked bronze statues that bore the kahilis replaced by clumsy, ill-dressed, commonplace bearers of neither rank nor dignity—even the withered rose, most of its fragrance gone, has yet appealed strongly to our admiration and sympathy. The powerfully built chiefs, head and shoulders above the common crowd, free from all sartorial disfigurements, sustained easily the great weight of these towering plumes; but the modern bearer, stranger alike to the strength and virtue of his predecessors, has to call in the aid of stout straps of imported leather to bear the much smaller kahilis of the modern civilized days.”
A bit of heraldry would not be out of place here. I borrow Mary S. Lawrence’s description of the Royal Hawaiian coat-of-arms. The device is extensively reproduced in jewelry, its colors pricked up in enamel, and is a handsome souvenir of these islands.
“It is divided into quarters. The first and fourth quarters of the shield contain the eight red, white and blue stripes which represent the inhabited islands.
“Upon the yellow background of the second and third quarters are the puloulou, or tabu sticks—white balls with black staffs. These were a sign of protection, as well as of tabu.
“In the center is found a triangular flag, the puela, lying across two alia, or spears. This also was a sign of tabu and protection.