Handbook to the ethnographical collections (1910) (14783355345)

Identifier: handbooktoethnog00brit (find matches)
Title: Handbook to the ethnographical collections
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: British Museum. Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography Joyce, Thomas Athol, 1878-1942 Dalton, O. M. (Ormonde Maddock), 1866-1945
Subjects:
Publisher: (London) : Printed by order of the Trustees
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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tes ofpearl-shell, to which are addedlarge wooden pupils, and thehead is often adorned withhuman hair. The helmets, whichwere worn only by chiefs, aremade in much the same wayas the idols (see also fig. 36)though in several examples thefeathers have entirely disap-peared. Their curious resem-blance to antique forms hasgiven rise to the improbabletheory that their shapes mayhave been suggested by the hel-mets of early Spanish visitors tothe Islands. It is safer to con-clude that these crested helmetsare developments of elaboratefashions of dressing the hairsuch as are familiar to ethno-logists in vjirious parts of tlieworld. The cloaks, both the large and small, were worn by chiefs, thefeathers being fixed to a ground of netwoik. Similar cloaksseem to have been worn by the Kings of Tahiti, but none havebeen preserved. The colours principally used are red and yellow,the red usually forming the background, on which variousgeometrical designs were woi ked in y.llow and Idack. In most E. M
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Fig. J42.—Ceremonial dress wornat burial ritea by the chief mourner.Tahiti. 162 OCEANIA cases the feathers were obtained from two kinds of birds, the iiwi(vesfiaria coccinea) and the oo (acrulocercus nohilis), the formersupplying the red, the latter the yellow feathers. Of the twocolours, the yellow was considered superior, and no one but theking was permitted to wear a cloak entirely of yellow. But inthe case of the king, the yellow feathers were procured fromanother bird, the JIamo (drcpanis pacijka) now extinct, and wereof a richer colour, with something of an orange tint. There isonly one royal yellow cloak now known to exist, and that is inthe Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum at Honolulu, and the small tippet * in the centre of the case is made of these feathers, and