8 
SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
the scarce yellow plumes of the Nectarina Niger or Uho*. 
The cloak is a long garment, not unlike the Spanish cloak, 
curiously woven of feathers like those of the helmet; red, 
yellow, and black, are the usual colours: a cloak entirely 
yellow could only be worn by the king. The war-god of 
each chief was solemnly removed from his family temple and 
carried before him to the field, where it was placed in the 
most conspicuous station and surrounded with the Kaheles 
or feather standards of state. The taking prisoner the war- 
god of a rival party usually terminated the war. Some few of 
the surviving enemy were always selected as sacrifices to the 
deities of the conquerors, but their blood was not shed; they 
were strangled without the doors of the temples, and then 
brought in and laid on their faces before the idols, sometimes 
alone, sometimes mingled with the carcasses of those domestic 
animals which furnished the ordinary offerings. Excepting 
these devoted persons, it does not appear that any kind of 
revenge or cruelty was indulged against the vanquished. 
Even the very chiefs were freely readmitted into social inter¬ 
course with their conquerors. 
The soil appears to have been regarded as the pro¬ 
perty of the Erie-Erie, for on the death of a chief his estates 
* Also called Merops Niger and Graeula Longirostra. 
