Feather cloak

This sumptuous cloak is made of some half a million feathers from small Hawaiian birds. High-ranking specialists in the sacred practices of collecting and weaving feathers made this cloak for their chief. The feathers were bound into tiny bundles and knotted into a dense netting of vine fibre. Cloaks were handed down through generations, or given as gifts to secure political allegiances. Chiefs traced their lines of descent from the gods of creation, many of whom were linked to birds, which flew between and connected the realms of the living and the divine. The shape and wing-like designs of the cloaks made clear a chief’s close connection to feathered gods, while red and yellow feathers were seen to attract the gods’ positive attention.

Worn in battles, a cloak such as this proclaimed the chief’s presence, and gave spiritual as well as some physical protection from attack. This cloak is thought to have belonged to Kahekili, the chief of Maui. Records of the first visit of Europeans to Hawai’i in 1778 describe a respectful exchange between Kahekili and Captain Cook’s second-in-command, Charles Clerke, during which the chief presented two of these intensely potent cloaks.

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