2 B RICH AM ON HAWAIIAN FEATHER WORK. 



empire, where are seen in the glimpses we obtain of their remote history, so many 

 germs of what we fondly consider onr ow^n inventions, feather mosaics are even at the 

 present day made in abundance. I have seen in China the simple process of cement- 

 ing the bright-colored feathers to metal surfaces in a form of jewelrv most popular 

 with the middle classes. 



It was in the midst of the American continent that feather work in ancient times 

 reached its best estate. In Brazil along the banks of the Amazon, in Venezuela on the 

 Orinoco, where it is difficult to decide whether birds outnumber the flowers or the flowers 

 are brighter in color than the .birds that flv among them, the strings and plumes of 

 bright feathers were not merelv decorations: they were, and are, often symbols of 

 chieftainship, and feather sceptres are found in most large museums of Ethnology, 

 especiallv in Rome, Vienna and Berlin. 



In Central America the wonderful monoliths buried in the forests of Guatemala 

 and Honduras bear the feather plumes of Ouetzalcoatl, and at Quirigua I have seen 

 these plumes sculptured with rare fidelity. The Maya pic^itre writings that escaped 

 the destroving hand of the bigoted Spanish priests, show feather standards, head- 

 dresses and other ornaments, but when we follow the Conquistadores northward through 

 many a league of unbroken forest, we come in Mexico to the roval domain of the ^' Ars 

 pluiuaria.'" Here feather work was most admirable at the time of the Conquest and 

 we have still preserved the grand tiara of Montezuma and a superb fan of the same 

 period in the roval Museum at Vienna. These although differing from the class of 

 work we are at present to consider, deserve a passing notice for their wonderful beauty 

 not only of material but of artistic arrangement as well. Baron Ferdinand von Hoch- 

 stetter has well described the first', and Dr. Franz Heger' the second. The plumes of 

 the Quetzal {Pl/aroii/acins luon'i/i/o) and the vivid turquoise blue of the Xiuhtototl 

 (Cotinga ciiiFta or arr/ilca) are prominent among charming spoils of less known birds. 

 The Ara (Psittaciis luacao) furnished brilliant plumage as do scores of other parrots, 

 and the Mexican of todav continues the prettv art bequeathed him by remote ancestors. 

 Whichever way then the ancient inhabitants of the Polynesian groups entered 

 the Pacific Ocean thev must have brought some knowledge of feather decoration. 

 Central Asia has now little enough of this work, but the southern and eastern shores of 

 Asia furnished and still furnish abundant illustration. New Guinea, the halting 

 place for the east-bound, has among others the feathers of the Birds of Paradise and 

 the helmets and diadems are no mean objedls among the manufa(5lures of a remarkably 

 decorative people. If the immigrants came from the American shore and journeyed 

 with the "Trades" they had no inferior preceptor in the people of greater Mexico. 



On the comparativelv barren islands the new comers found few birds of brilliant 

 plumage. Two shades of j-ellow, two of red, a green, black and white exhausted the 



^Ut'bcr mcxicanischc Rdiqinru tins tit'r Zt'it Montezuma's in dtn -Allnit-xicanisc/n' ReUquien aits item Schlosst' Anibras in Tirnl. 



i. /,-. ,-inidrasrr Sammlnng in den Di'nkschriften dcr fikilosophisch- Annalfn des k. k. naturhistorischen Ho/museums, Wien, 1895. 

 histot'ischen Ctasse dcr kaisen'ii/t Aktldentic drr IVisst-nschaffen in 

 iVicn. Bd. XXXV. [1884.] 



