2 Ka Hana Kapa. 



obtained todaj' from the few old natives who once practised the art. This is not told 

 to excuse the author's shortcomings, which are many and lamentable, but to explain, 

 in some measure, the absence of matters that might seem easy to bring together. 



The tools with which this work was done were doubtless, in the beginning, 

 simple and even rude. In the separation of the beautiful lace-bark of Jamaica from 

 the stem a club of no greater artificiality than a convenient length of a round stick of 

 hard wood was sufficient; and even to the present day in Africa, New Guinea and 

 elsewhere, such an improvised club or beater answers well enough to the demands of 

 a manufadlure that has never risen above the primitive level. On the islands of the 

 eastern Pacific, where the making of bark-cloth attained its highest development, 

 the primitive tools were at some unknown time replaced by a more complicated 

 apparatus (at least on the Hawaiian Islands), and this apparatus, which reached 

 its zenith in the earl}- part of the nineteenth centurj', we have in abundance in 

 this Museum. 



We may premise that earl}- in the second half of the last century foreign textiles 

 had largely replaced on these islands the choicer kapa, which was much more difficult 

 to make than the common sorts, and was the chosen work of the higher female chiefs 

 {Alii). Almost from the coming of the American Missionaries in 1820 these exalted 

 dames had generall}' ceased to beat or rather decorate kapa for amusement, and betaken 

 themselves to the more difficult task of learning to read and write with the new letters 

 brought b}' these foreign teachers. The early chroniclers of the Mission tell most 

 touching stories of the desire of the aged natives to master the mA'Ster}' before they 

 died. As is well known, the chiefs at first monopolized the new learning, and the 

 commoners, the i)iakaai)iaiia., still kept the echoes of the beating ringing in the remoter 

 vallej^s; but the democratic invaders soon persuaded the chiefs to admit to the schools 

 the whole people, over whom a wave of curiositj' had flowed. We who learned our 

 letters in childhood can hardlj- appreciate the feelings with which almost the entire 

 Hawaiian people were imbued, nor the eagerness with which they threw themselves 

 into the new studies and the consequent neglect of play and work alike, — except the 

 necessary task of food gathering, — to conquer the w^w palapala. If the critics who 

 unjustly blame the missionaries for discouraging the ancient athletic games oul}- could 

 have seen the devotion to study which exhausted not only the da3'light but as well the 

 desire to exertion bej-oud that of the school-room, they would have better imderstood 

 the situation, and have spared the teachers the anno3-ance of unkind blame from their 

 Christian brethren. Only the coarser kinds of kapa needed for the scant clothing 

 then in vogue were made, and the enterprising merchants who came to these shores 

 soon taught the superior durability of the foreign textiles. 



