In the highly stratified society of the islands before their discovery by Captain James Cook in 1788, the cloaks were visual symbols of power and prestige, worn only by ranking male chiefs on state occasions and in battle. They were never very numerous, but powerful chiefs often acquired several through inheritance or as battle prizes. Although the feathers were gathered by the common people to defray part of their taxes and women were permitted to clean and sort them, only men of high rank, surrounded by sacred taboos, were allowed to make the cloaks. The manufacturing process involved tying small bunches of red, yellow, green, or black feathers with olona fiber. Large cloaks like the royal robe worn by Kamehameha I, the first king of all the islands, required some half-million feathers. Today these cloaks are ethnological treasures, but to the early ship captain they were little more than seemingly plentiful curiosities that the Hawaiians highly valued but gave away or traded for such trifles as iron knives. In turn, the Europeans traded these curiosities. This practice began with Cook’s officers, who traded the cloak in Leningrad in exchange for provisions. In 1825, Lord Byron, commander of the British ship Blonde, predicted that “the splendid war-cloak” would soon be more easily found in Europe than in Hawaii. Brigham found only five in Hawaii when he made his featherwork survey in 1899. Today twenty of the fifty known cloaks are still in the British Isles.