William F. Cogswell, Queen Liliʻuokalani, and Maria Kealaulaokalani Lane Ena, ʻAhu ʻula (The Kalākaua Cape)

0:00:05.0 Dr. Beth Harris: We’re in the National Portrait Gallery at an exhibition that focuses on the year 1898. We’re standing in front of two objects that I think capture the tensions around the momentous historical events that year.

0:00:22.6 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: Right now we’re standing in front of an ʻAhu ʻula, the Kalākaua Cape, which is a feather cape. Behind it is a large portrait of Queen Liliʻuokalani, and the two of them portray the power of monarchy. So you’re looking at a cape that was worn by someone very high born, in this case, David Kalākaua, who was the second to last reigning monarch of Hawaiʻi, the archipelago.

0:00:53.0 Dr. Beth Harris: So there is a monarchy in Hawaiʻi that begins in 1795, and this cape was made for the king who came just before the queen that we see in the portrait.

0:01:03.5 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: It’s made out of ʻiʻiwi red bird feathers and black and yellow ʻōʻō feathers as well as olonā fiber. And if you have ever seen the ʻōʻō bird, the yellow, are just very small tufts under its wings, at the top of its head, and right under the tail. So to have a mostly yellow ʻAhu ʻula represents real power. The Native Hawaiians, in this case, Maria Ena, in the late 19th century, would take the feathers and then bundle them together in little groups. And then they would attach them to the olonā fiber, which served as this armature. And the designs that you see are black and red crescents. The cape itself is in the semicircle. So at the edges, there are two halves of the black crescent so that when David Kalākaua tied the cape around his neck, the two crescents would come together. And Native Hawaiians understood the amount of work that went into this, the symbol of power, and the homage that it represented to the person.

0:02:11.7 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: And they felt that feather work was the most appropriate way to honor a monarch or a member of the aliʻi, which is the Hawaiian word for highborn. David Kalākaua names his sister Liliʻu the heir-apparent in the 1880s. She then takes on the name Liliʻuokalani. When David Kalākaua died in 1891, William Cogswell, an itinerant American painter, painted a posthumous portrait of David Kalākaua. And then he painted this as its pendant. He made this portrait after an 1887 photograph of Queen Liliʻuokalani that she posed for while attending Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Liliʻuokalani is wearing symbols of her sovereignty. The hair comb was a gift from Queen Victoria as a symbol of Victoria’s recognition of Liliʻuokalani as heir-apparent who would become the queen.

0:03:10.6 Dr. Beth Harris: So this portrait is in a long line of portraits of members of the European nobility, royalty, the full-length portrait, the red drapery, the landscape in the background. We look up at her, which gives her that sense of authority. We see the throne, and she’s so poised, her hands holding her silk opera gloves and her fan, this beautiful choker.

0:03:36.6 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: This is a dress that she had made in Paris, and she’s wearing the orders of Kalākaua. They symbolize that she is part of the royal family of Kalākaua. So she understood that her reign was under threat by a group of Anglo businessmen, most of whom were descendants from missionaries who had arrived in Hawaiʻi in the 1820s to Christianize the Archipelago. Little by little, they chipped away at Hawaiian political power by embedding themselves into the business community, but also the political community. So in 1891, Queen Liliʻuokalani had inherited a very troubled throne. And I see this portrait as an act of resistance in that Queen Liliʻuokalani is employing soft diplomacy in the form of a cultural artifact as a way to communicate that she is the sovereign of Hawaiʻi.

0:04:34.7 Dr. Beth Harris: So if we look back to the feather cape, this is a sign of power of sovereignty that would not have been recognized by the Western audiences that she was addressing.

0:04:45.3 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: And so when Cogswell presents her with this opportunity to communicate in a more clear way, of course she leapt at the chance. And so she purchases this painting as well as the pendant of David Kalākaua.

0:05:00.4 Dr. Beth Harris: All of this is playing out against a historical backdrop of the accumulation of land, of political power by Americans who are running plantations, often with imported Chinese or Japanese labor, and also, of course, the labor of Indigenous, of Native Hawaiians.

0:05:20.4 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: So the U.S. assisted these Anglo businessmen in an overthrow, arming them to the teeth. And the queen had no choice but to accept the terms of the overthrow. The architect of the overthrow was Lorrin Thurston. And with the ambassador, he was able to have the assistance of a detachment of Marines from the U.S.S. Boston, a naval ship of the United States that was then anchored in Pearl Harbor. So after the overthrow, Henry Cabot Lodge becomes senator of Massachusetts in 1893, and he immediately calls for the annexation of Hawaiʻi. And in 1897, the queen and her followers know that annexation is coming. And so when the 1898 moment comes along, where there’s an opportunity for the U.S. to build its power in Hawaiʻi, they don’t bat an eye. Native Hawaiians organized resistance through the Kūʻē Petitions. Several groups of Native Hawaiians that banded together and collected signatures. To this day, Native Hawaiians will tell you that the annexation remains illegal.

0:06:32.7 Dr. Beth Harris: Annexing Hawaiʻi was a way of protecting U.S. economic and political interests. It’s important for us to acknowledge that Anglo businessmen felt empowered to do what they did in Hawaiʻi because they believed in white supremacy. Not only did white people from the United States need to come and Christianize and teach the people of Hawaiʻi the “correct” religion, but they also needed to be governed “correctly” by white men.

0:07:00.0 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: It’s the first time that this portrait has ever left its home in the ʻIolani Palace, and Native Hawaiians believe that the queen’s mana, or her spirit, is imbued in this portrait. We’re really privileged to display the ʻAhu ʻula next to the portrait, because the ʻAhu ʻula stands in as a royal guardsman for the queen. Normally, the queen would have guardsmen holding a staff with feathers on top of it, which is called a kāhili. So the presence of feather work to protect her in this exhibition is something that we were happy to be able to do. And I think that because we were working with the Native Hawaiian community every step of the way, they, for the most part, have supported her presence in Washington because it symbolizes her return to Washington, which she did over and over throughout her life after the overthrow. So this is yet again another journey that the queen has made to Washington, D.C., to represent her people and to represent her story.

The Kalākaua Cape at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

Queen Liliʻuokalani on Google Arts & Culture

About iridescence from the National Museum of Asian Art

Taína Caragol and Kate Clarke Lemay, editors, 1898: Visual Culture and U.S. Imperialism in the Caribbean and the Pacific, exhibition catalogue (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 2023).