Hoiv Were the Dyes tuffs Used? 173 



Tongans, Samoans and others with the upete often pass through the fabric and 

 appear on the other side, in which case there seems to be no strict distinction between 

 printing and dyeing. 



The most interesting question is how the bark, leaves, seeds, fruits, were 

 treated to make the potential color available. Most of the dyes here mentioned may 

 be extracted by infusion, and others by boiling, but did the old Hawaiians boil? 

 They had no potterj-, and no metal pots, and did not boil their food; but that was 

 rather a matter of taste than from a lack of either knowledge or utensils. Their 

 cooking by placing hot stones inside of birds, dogs or pigs would surely teach them 

 the process of "stone boiling" practised b}^ many other Pacific islanders, as the 

 Solomon Islanders, who had potter}' of fair quality, though not so large as the huge 

 cannibal pots of Fiji, and yet used this method in cooking their "long pig" in the 

 large elliptical wooden bowls reserved for that purpose. The Hawaiians had wooden 

 bowls {iifneke) of generous size, quite sufficient to boil with hot stones the largest 

 pig, dog or fish had they been so inclined. They also had stone bowls of perhaps 

 five gallons capacity which could have been used for preparing a hot dye, and smaller 

 stone cups were in universal use among them. 



Then the question of mordants to precipitate the coloring matter in the fibres and 

 so increase the permanency of the coloring. They used sea-water, urine and burned 

 coral lime for such purpose. Thej- recognized, if they did not understand the reaction 

 between tannin and salts of iron, as in the familiar ink-making; this we have seen in 

 the double dyeing with hili kolea, hili koa or hili kukui, and then with the iron-satu- 

 rated mud or water. I have repeated this process and found it easily workable. 



I do not intend to tire the reader with a recital of my many experiments with 

 these dj-es : I have pulverized them, infused them, steamed them (as we know the old 

 Hawaiians did \.\\& palaa) mixed with sea- water with or without lime, both the origi- 

 nal white kapa and the first dyed fabric ; I have tried bark of the stem and of the root, 

 leaves, fruit, seeds; but as I had not a single authentic recipe I cannot say that any 

 one of these processes was the one used in coloring an}' individual piece of kapa. The 

 experiments were interesting to me, and the results were sometimes good, but they 

 only showed that color could be obtained from the material known to have been used by 

 the Hawaiian kapa-makers, and not at all that they were used in that particular \\3.y. 



A practical dyer could perhaps unravel the probable method, and fix with toler- 

 able certainty the process used in certain cases; I cannot myself, and so rest contented 

 with giving a list of the materials with which any can experiment. The one thing 

 this list certainl}' teaches is the great amount of experimental research the men of 

 old must have undertaken before this considerable number could have been brought 



