8 BRIG HAM ON HAWAIIAN FEATHER WORK. 



(Fig. 3) which may be numbered 11 in the list of Kukailimoku, has plain shell eyes 

 devoid of wooden pupil, which give the head a very peculiar expression. Once covered 

 with red feathers this specimen is now bare : the neck is large but not \&ry long. No 

 histor}' is attached to this very interesting head. 



I am somewhat puzzled at the considerable number of Kukailimoku in existence 

 (eleven), omitting all reckoning of those that ma^' have been hidden in caves, M'here 

 if not destroyed by time they are at all events unknown, as it was regarded as the private 

 deity of Kamehameha I. ; and hitherto I have not been able to learn from Hawaiians 

 whether members of the Moi's family or household, or his highest chiefs would be 

 likel}' to have replicas of the god's image. Certainly all those images attributed to 

 Cook or Vancouver, if their history be so far correct, were in existence before Kameha- 

 meha made Kukailimoku the state god," and may have been given to the voyagers 

 before the full apotheosis of the war god. It is unfortunate that so little history re- 

 mains, and there is no chance of an}- important additions to our knowledge of this 

 image from native sources. All the questions that naturally arise must remain un- 

 answered. It maj' be recalled that at the death of his foster father Kalaniopuu ( 1782), 

 the young Kamehameha was left as Pontifex maximus of the gods of Hawaii, an office 

 he had filled from early youth. It was not Kukailimoku alone that was entrusted to 

 his care, but all the gods and their maintenance devolved upon him. 



Besides the Kukailimoku other and more gigantic images were constructed with 

 wicker work in whole or in part, and Rev. S. E. Bishop, D.D., of the American Mission, has 

 told me that he remembered such in his childhood at Kailua, on the west coast of Hawaii. 

 This ancient place was the residence of many Moi, and here Kamehameha died. The 

 wicker heads were generally covered with kapa (bark cloth ) , often decorated with feathers, 

 and the eyes were formed of shell as in the portable images we have been considering. 

 One such eye decorated with feathers is shown in Fig. 4, of which the photograph was 

 sent to me by Miller Christy, Esq., of London, who gives the following account of it: 



" My friend Mr. James Backhouse, of the Nurseries, York, possesses one of these e^-es which 

 has a very interesting history. It was brought home by Captain Cook and given by his widow to a 

 certain Ann Gates of Doucaster in Yorkshire. It next passed into the hands of a certain Ann Smith, 

 who ga\e it about the year 1814 or 1815 to Jane Backhouse, of York, the grandmother or great- 

 grandmother of my friend. Of this eye I send you a photograph which Mr. Backhouse has kindly had 

 taken for me. The diameter of the eye is about six inches. The outermost feathers are yellow and the 

 innermost red. They are fastened on to a net base which is stretched on a frame of wickerwork. 

 The central piece is mother-of-pearl with a wooden button or pin in the centre. I fancy it must have 

 been the existence of these objects in Mr. Backhouse's museum which gave rise to the report that a 

 feather cloak was preser\red in York. Neither Mr. Backhouse nor myself knows an\-thing of a cloak 

 preserved there . ' ' 



In the British Musetim are a number of wicker disks of about the size of this 



specimen, of which the use was uncertain until Mr. Christy brought forward this e^^e, 



and now their purpose seems settled. No net nor feathers are about an^- of them, but 



2 It had, according to Fornander. been a chosen deity of a long line of Moi of Hawaii, from I.iloa to Kalaniopuu. 



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