“In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of three hundred dogs attended his obsequies—­no mean holocaust when their national value and the estimation in which they were held are considered.  The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while, were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final resting place is now lost.  There was a proverb current among the common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they vented their abhorrence of his memory in bitter execrations.”

The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it which does not mention or illustrate some by-gone custom of the country.  In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met with.  I will quote it entire: 

“When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable to cure him, they said:  ’Be of good courage and build a house for the god’ (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover.’  The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the evening.  They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of death, and concealed themselves in hiding places till the tabu [Tabu (pronounced tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or sacred.  The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred to the purpose for which it was set apart.  In the above case the victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice] in which destruction impended, was past.  It is doubtful whether Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to sacrifice men, as he was known to say, ’The men are sacred for the King;’ meaning that they were for the service of his successor.  This information was derived from Liholiho, his son.

“After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not strength to turn himself in his bed.  When another season, consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said to his son, Liholiho, ’Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.’  When his devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god, suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might be removed.  The name of this god was Pua; its body was made of a bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae.