From the hiding of the bones of Kamehameha the Great, to the half-mile-long funeral procession of King Kamehameha III, to the somber return of the embalmed remains of King Kalakaua from San Francisco, Hawaii experienced changing responses to the deaths of Hawaiian royalty. Missionary journals, government publications, and articles in Hawaiian and English language newspapers provide the source material for the first comprehensive look at the transformation of funerary practices following permanent contact with the West.
The documentary evidence tells the story of the adoption of new ways of honoring Hawaii royalty and the persistence of traditional practices. Although the funeral observances for British royalty provided an extravagant model for their Hawaii counterparts, indigenous practices survived. While mourners no longer knocked out their teeth or tattooed their tongues, other traditional forms-the mass wailing, feather standards, and composing of funeral dirges-continued well into the twentieth century. Besides the contemporaneous accounts, dozens of historic drawings and photographs provide rarely seen glimpses of the obsequies of the Kamehameha and Kalakaua dynasties.
Burial locations, too, saw transformation as secret burial caves and thatched structures housing ancient bones gave way to coral sepulchers, Gothic mausoleums and underground crypts. The description of the burial sites includes the locations of the final resting places of the royalty of Hawaii.