K auai sugar pioneer, Kekaha Sugar Company manager, and Waimea Sugar Company owner H. P. (Hans Peter) Faye (1859-1928) played a part in a true Kauai story that was later fictionalized and made famous by writer Jack London in “Koolau
K
auai sugar pioneer, Kekaha Sugar Company manager, and Waimea Sugar Company owner H. P. (Hans Peter) Faye (1859-1928) played a part in a true Kauai story that was later fictionalized and made famous by writer Jack London in “Koolau The Leper.”
In 1892, a Kauai cowboy named Koolau had refused to be sent to the isolated leper settlement on Molokai after he’d contracted Hansen’s disease, unless his wife, Piilani, who would never be afflicted, and their son, Kaleimanu, who would later become afflicted, could accompany him.
Piilani likewise wished to remain with her husband, but the authorities refused, and Koolau, Piilani and their son fled into Kalalau Valley.
A year later, when Deputy Sheriff Louis Stolz set out to bring Koolau in, he stopped by H. P. Faye’s house in Mana on his way to Polihale.
There, H. P. warned Stolz that Koolau was a great hunter and a crack shot with a rifle, and he advised Stolz to be careful.
Before Stolz left H. P., Stolz joked that if he was killed, he would send his ghost to tell H. P.
Stolz never took Koolau’s threat seriously — that he would kill anyone trying to take him to Molokai — and Stolz did not heed H. P.’s advice.
When Stolz confronted Koolau in Kalalau Valley, Koolau shot and killed him.
Later, one of the men who went with Stolz came by H. P.’s house at night to tell him what had happened to Stolz.
H. P.’s dogs began barking like crazy, and H. P. heard a voice saying: “E Paia, Ua make O Lui,” which in English meant “Faye, Louis is dead.”
Due to the cloudiness of the sky and the darkness, H. P. could not see anybody under the trees where the voice sounded from and — for an eerie moment — it seemed to H. P. as if Stolz had carried out his promise.
