Missionaries from Princeton were actively working in Hawaii in the early 19th century. A chief of the Sandwich Islands (as Hawaii was then known) sent a gift to Princeton, a cane or walking-stick carved from whalebone, by way of one of those missionaries in the 1820's with instructions to "present it to your chief," that is, Dr. Archibald Alexander.
It was a treasured memento, which Alexander, on his death bed, bequeathed to Dr. Charles Hodge, who recorded the event afterwards thus: "He then, with a smile, handed me a white bone walking-stick, carved and presented to him by one of the chiefs of the Sandwich islands, and said, 'You must leave this to your successor in office, that it may be handed down as a kind of symbol of orthodoxy'" (J.W. Alexander, Life of Archibald Alexander, pp. 605-606).
The cane was passed "metaphorically" to A.A. Hodge by Charles and the Princeton trustees in 1878 when A.A. Hodge was appointed as his father's successor. It was again "symbolically" passed on to B.B. Warfield upon the death of A.A. Hodge in 1886 (Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy, pp. 378-380).
Today the cane resides in the Special Collections Department of the Princeton Theological Seminary library as a "kind of symbol of orthodoxy."