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Among the priceless relics destroyed in the fire at Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum on Sunday was the cloak of Kamehameha II, also known as King Liholiho. Read more

Among the priceless relics destroyed in the fire at Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum on Sunday was the cloak of Kamehameha II, also known as King Liholiho.

The feather cloak along with a lei po‘o (head garland) were gifts from Liholiho to Dom Pedro, the emperor of Brazil, in 1824 during the king’s visit to Rio de Janeiro on his way to England, according to Hardy Spoehr, a board member of the Hawaiian Historical Society.

“It looks like these items have now been lost to antiquity,” he wrote to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Spoehr said he hired a researcher in Rio to track down Liholiho’s cloak and lei po‘o about five years ago and contacted the same researcher to see if any of the Hawaiian artifacts were saved. He said he is still waiting to hear back.

“It’s very doubtful,” he said. “I think it’s really important because Kamehameha II was the first one of any monarch of Hawaii to leave the kingdom. He started to introduce the world to the fact that Hawaii was an independent nation with an active monarchy. He saw his first throne when he went to the palace in Rio.”

Liholiho had about four or five cloaks with him on his voyage and gave one to Queen Victoria in England, Spoehr said.

“A very similar cloak is at the Edinburgh museum in Scotland,” he said.

The Brazil museum housed other items from Hawaii and Polynesia, though it is unclear how many.

“You can’t calculate a loss like that. The value of it is in some ways sentimental. These items were actually in the hands of Liholiho and (his wife) Kamamalu so they retained a little bit of their mana,” he said.

“To me that’s where the real loss is.”