Many people in Hawaii have heard stories of Kaluaiko‘olau, the Hawaiian cowboy who, diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, fought against confinement at Kalaupapa in 1893 and instead took his rifle and sought refuge in the depths of Kauai’s Kalalau Valley.

But none have heard his voice. Until now.

There is no historic record of the actual words of Kaluaiko‘olau, known as Ko‘olau; just a book recounting his actions that is based on an interview with his wife, Pi‘ilani.

Gary T. Kubota, a Hono­lulu Star-Advertiser reporter, has written a new play from the point of view of Ko‘olau, and despite the pain of Ko‘olau’s story, the voice is not an angry one. Kubota said "The Legend of Ko‘olau" instead focuses on his love for his family and his attempt to survive a period of turmoil when Native Hawaiians witnessed the decimation of their race. It portrays the main character as an upright, educated Christian man, a man of his faith and his word who when cornered chose to stand and fight.

"He was put in a position where he was just trying to die with a little dignity," Kubota said.

Kalaupapa was known to Hawaiians as "the living grave." No one wanted to go to the remote Molokai peninsula, never to return.

And so Ko‘olau went into the valley with wife and their son, Kalei, who also had contracted leprosy, to live his dying days in a remote community of others who suffered from the disease. When Kauai deputy sheriffLouis Stolz tried to arrest Ko‘olau, the lawman was killed, precipitating a gun battle between Ko‘olau and scores of soldiers and deputies. An expert marksman, Ko‘olau killed two more men before disappearing into the landscape with his family.

Ko‘olau died in 1896 as he wished, hidden in the cliffs overlooking the wild valley. He is said to be buried somewhere in the valley. (His son had died earlier of leprosy.)

Kubota said his goal in writing the play was to resist stereotypes used to describe minorities in Hawaii and portray Ko‘olau as a working man caught in a rising tide of political change. The 65-year-old writer, whose grandfather worked as a stevedore on the docks of Kauai, grew up in Kalihi and Pearl City and worked alongside Native Hawaiians, hefting sacks of flour at the Holsum Bakery, picking pineapple on Lanai, playing baseball. He said these experiences not only raised his consciousness, but gave him a sense of the ways of a Hawaiian man.

"There is a lack of the Hawaiian male presence in local literature; he had been eviscerated," he said. "All the other (works on Ko‘olau) are told from Pi‘ilani’s point of view."

But Kubota felt his experiences — not only doing manual labor and playing sports, but also crewing aboard the voyaging canoe Hoku­le‘a in 2007 — had left him with a good sense of Hawaiian intonation, humor and body language.

"And, frankly, a male voice is the only voice I can speak through. I would never write in a woman’s voice," he said.

The play’s language "is not pidgin," he notes. Hawaiians spoke their native tongue and missionary English, as does Ko‘olau in the play.

Kubota clearly has adopted one closely held Hawaiian principle: haa­haa, or humility, which is also dear to Japa­nese tradition. He gives credit to those who helped him produce two earlier public television documentaries. And he is grateful to the friend, Maui writer Paul Wood, who steered him to Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s Colleen Furu­kawa, who in turn suggested he apply for a grant from the National Performance Network and Art Works, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable Trust and the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon foundations.

"It’s a long shot," she told him.

"I’m a long-shot kind of guy," he answered, cheerfully.

The national support is making it possible for the play to be performed not only here, but on a West Coast tour that begins Sept. 6 in Seattle. Kubota said he hopes the work will both enlighten people about the Hawaiian experience and inspire others to be "long-shot" risk-takers in the arts.

"I’m accustomed to doing things on a shoestring," he said. "All it takes is getting the right people to collaborate with you, people who believe in the proj­ect, and everything comes out OK."

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ON THE NET:
» legendofkoolau.com