Introduction. -i 



When in 1864 the writer came to these islands kapa was worn onl}- in the out- 

 lying districts, and only the plainer forms were made: in Honolulu, when only the 

 vialo (waist-cloth) was worn, it was of cotton cloth and not of kapa. The noise, — a 

 rather pleasant one, — of the beating was common enough on Hawaii, in the valleys 

 of Kauai, on Molokai and in a few other places, although on Oahu foreign cloth was 

 almost universally worn. A few kapa makers could be found on the windward side 

 of the island, for there was, and still is, a superstition that the ancient cloth makes 

 the most suitable pall or even shroud for the dead while no longer fashionable for the 

 living, but the old beaters were largely used by the native washerwomen to beat the 

 clothes of the foreigners to a more or less pulpy condition on the flat stones by the 

 brookside, and it was in this debased use that I first saw an Hawaiian kapa beater. 

 This excited my curiosity, and it was not long before I had gathered the names of 

 the various patterns cut on them, and had also seen their legitimate use. These 

 beaters seemed at the time over-abundant and the}- could often be bought for a 

 /iapaiivu\ the Hawaiian dime. 



In 1890, when the Bishop Museum was opened, the manufadlure and use (with 

 such exceptions as we shall find later) had ceased ; kapa-making on Hawaii, where it 

 had excelled, was taking its place with the lost arts, and this was true in man}^ other 

 Polynesian groups. Samoa still continues its rather coarse si'apo making, but it is 

 mainly for exportation as a curiosity. Everywhere the product of the loom (which 

 the old Polynesians did not know) has driven out the product of the beater; only in 

 museums can the relics now be studied, and as the products and tools of other groups 

 have been added to the rich collecftions of Hawaiian origin in the Bishop Museum, it 

 has seemed well to the Trustees of the Museum that such facts regarding kapa as 

 may be gathered should now be put into permanent form. Recognizing the perishable 

 nature of this delicate and beautiful fabric, they have made generous provision for 

 fac simile representations of many of the rarest specimens, that the colors and their 

 arrangement ma}- testify to those who come after us to what remarkable perfection 

 this art in the hands of the old Hawaiian Alii had attained. They have called on me 

 to put into the following pages what I have learned about these specimens, which 

 alone would place the Hawaiians high among their Poljmesian brethren. 



Imperfectly as I have done this work, I assure my readers that I have ap- 

 proached it with the deepest interest. I have tracked the remains in many museums 

 of the world, and I had previously gathered what I then thought enough from the 

 aged women who had made kapa on these islands, and also I had talked with the 

 kapa makers of Samoa and Fiji. But the search began too late to save all, and 

 when it began anthropology was more interested in the empty skulls of a race 



