30 



BRIGHAM ON HAWAIIAN FEATHER WORK. 



our side of the valley, we set out to visit that. The moment we got to it we saw that it stood in a 

 burying ground or moral: the resemblance of which in many respects to those we were so well ac- 

 quainted with at other islands in this ocean, and particularly Otaheite [Tahiti], could not but strike 

 us, and we also soon found that the several parts that compose it were called by the same names. It 

 was an oblong space, of considerable extent, surrounded by a wall of stone about four feet high. The 

 space enclosed was loosely paved with smaller stones: and at one end of it stood what I called the 

 pyramid, but in the language of the island, is named hanananoo \^lie anuu~\, which appeared evidently 



to be an exact model of the larger one obsen'ed by us from the ships. 

 It was about four feet square at the base and about twenty feet 

 high. The four sides were composed of small poles interwoven 

 with twigs and branches, thus forming an indifferent wickenvork 

 hollow or open within from bottom to top. It seemed to be in rather 

 a ruinous .state, but there were sufficient remaining marks to show 

 that it had originally been covered with a thin light gra>- cloth [kapa] 

 which these people, it would seem, consecrate to religious purposes; 

 as we could see a good deal of it hanging in different parts of the 

 morai, and some of it had been forced upon me when I first landed. 

 On each side of the pyramid were long pieces of wickerwork."'*' 



Thi,s obelisk-like strii^ltire wa.s an important part of 

 all large heiaus, although not fonnd in small private temples 

 dedicated to personal gods, and was generally bnilt of 

 bambn to a height of twenty feet or more and co\ered with 

 kapa. Its plan was a rectangle but not a sqtiare. A single 

 door in one of the longer sides, closed with a curtain, admitted 

 the priest or chief to the interior where the voice of the god 

 of the temple ( luakini ) was supposed to be atidible. Cook 

 entered one of these and with the priest climbed some dis- 

 tance tip the frail staging. The priests of Cook's heian 

 ( at Kealakekua on Hawaii ) were well-to-do and influential 

 men, were his friends to the last, although he destroyed their 

 houses and goods and wantonly- pillaged the temple, — in his 

 desire for fire-wood removing the sacred fence, — and it is 

 probable that thej- had made for him this unique model of 

 We have no other history of this model before it arrived in 

 Europe. It was sold with other of the curiosities brought home by the expedition and 

 passed to Austria, finally finding a home in the beautiful Hofmitseum. 



It is neatly made of basket work covered with red feathers of the iiwi and trim- 

 med on the vertical edges with the yellow oo. The doorway on one of the wider sides 

 is cased with tortoise-shell to which time has given the coloration of rusty iron. The 

 total height is twenty-three and a half inches. In the picture given by Cook's artist, 

 Waber, of a temple on Kauai the frame of a similar struAure is shown. As the cov- 

 ering was very perishable, it is probable that it was renewed whenever the oracle was con- 

 sulted, generally at the time of human sacrifices. With the Hawaiian colledlion at Vienna 

 is a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat of European form, once covered with feathers. 



^^Cook^s Third Voyagr, 1784: II., 200. 



FIG. 20. 



MODEL OF AN 



the abode of the god-head. 



