Wrapped in mystery and the mists of time, it’s a place where the ancient gods were summoned to witness a terrible deed. Approaching from the sea, it’s still a forbidding sight: the dark silhouette of Puukohola heiau, its stone walls massed along a hilltop, dominating Kawaihae Bay on Hawaii island.

In the late 18th century, the luakini (sacrificial) heiau above the beach would have been among the last sights seen by the young warrior-king Keouakuahuula, the legitimate heir to Hawaii island, as his canoe came in for a landing, before he was killed by the soldiers of his rival, Kamehameha.

There were rumors even then that, in the heiau, which he had just expanded and dedicated to his war god, Kukailimoku, Kamehameha’s priests practiced the dark art of sorcery. They had predicted that if Kamehameha restored Puukohola, his hitherto flagging fortunes would reverse and make him king of Hawaii.

Keoua’s corpse was borne up the hill to the heiau and sacrificed on an altar in dedication rites for the newly completed temple. His remains were purified in an imu before being deified, as befit an uppermost alii, then buried in a secret place.

To all that, most historians agree. But as to how and why Keoua was killed — and where he was buried — there are differences of opinion. Most have absolved Kamehameha of guilt, but in his new book, “Lord of the Haao Rain” ($100, Kalaiopua Publishing), local writer Irving Jenkins cries murder most foul.

“This is part of Big Island history that’s been suppressed: Kamehameha deliberately killed his younger cousin, who was the last ruling chief of the senior Keawe dynasty,” Jenkins said.

“It’s been covered up!” he added, his voice rising with emotion as if he were talking about the murder of a contemporary, someone he knew, in a political conspiracy.

The cover-up persists to this day, insists the Hilo-born author of the award-winning books “The Hawaiian Calabash” and “Hawaiian Furniture and Hawaii’s Cabinetmakers 1820-1940.”

“No one wants to talk about it. That’s why I decided to write a book,” said Jenkins, a boyish, bespectacled septuagenarian.

He also goes against consensus by setting Keoua’s date of death as 1789, not 1791.

That was when Keoua’s younger twin, Keouapeeale, was killed by Kamehameha, he maintains.

“Historians got confused because they were both called Keoua.”

HABEAS CORPUS

There is more mystery.

More than 100 years later, along that stark coast dominated by Puukohola, three explorers searched along a dry streambed known as Honokoa Gulch. Finding the partially sealed opening to a lava tube in a cliff, they entered and crawled through pitch-black tunnels into a chamber where, by wavering candlelight, they found an imposing mummified figure, wrapped in fine kapa cloth and lying in state on a stone platform in a canoe-coffin covered by a surfboard.

A resplendent red feather cloak lay nearby.

“We measured those mummy remains and found the body to be 6 feet, 7 inches in height,” wrote the leader of the 1905 expedition, David Forbes.

The identity of this personage has never been established, but Jenkins argues in his book that it is Keouakuahuula.

He was not buried entirely alone; other skeletons were found in an adjoining cave, as were dozens of priceless artifacts carved from wood and bone.

The Forbes party took the portable items — not the canoe, cape or surfboard — and several bundles of human remains from the Kawaihae Caves Complex, also called Forbes Caves.

Jenkins argues the arrangement of the burial chamber and the unmatched fineness of the artifacts are proof the corpse belonged to Keouakuahuula, the highest-ranking alii living on the Big Island at the time.

In a 1991 report filed after surveying the caves for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, Honolulu archaeologists Hallett Hammatt and David Shideler surmised the red feather cape could have belonged to Keoua. “It seems probable,” they wrote, “that (the artifacts) were all used in the rituals in which Keoua Kuahu‘ulu was effectively prayed to death.”

Ross Cordy, a professor of Hawaiian and Pacific Islands studies at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu, said he agrees with Jenkins’ argument.

“All those things point to a high chief,” said Cordy, who helped edit Jenkins’ book without pay. “These were amazing art objects made by master craftsmen, clearly for a super high-ranking person.”

Jenkins makes a convincing case that this person was Keoua and a murder victim, Cordy said. “Kamehameha was the usurper. Keoua was the rightful heir.”

But Roger Rose, a former ethnographer with Bishop Museum, disagrees.

“I think Irv jumped to conclusions. We can never know who is buried there,” he said.

Rose agrees, however, that the remains were not of a lesser chief. Others have suggested Mahi, a konohiki (steward) of Kawaihae, based on a 19th-century oral history and a Chinese fan and porcelain, found in the caves, that may date from Kamehameha’s sandalwood trade.

Jenkins’ book does not touch on the modern-day disputes over classification of the artifacts and their disposition. (See story, right.)

KEOUA’S STORY

As the author writes in “Lord of the Haao Rain,” Keoua was a son of Kalaniopuu, king of Hawaii island. He was “born a warrior and famous for the beauty of his features and physique,” Jenkins quotes from historian Stephen Desha. After the deaths of his father and elder brother, the heir to the throne, the young Keoua became chief of Kau, Puna, Hamakua and Hilo.

His full name means “the raining cloud.” In his ancestral kingdom of Kau, where there were no natural streams to irrigate crops, rain was truly life-giving. In his book, Jenkins cites a fragment of a kanikau, a mourning chant, for Keoua that was published by Mary Kawena Pukui, a Kau native and foremost authority on Hawaiian culture and language, in 1949:

“My Lord of the Haao Rain/ The rains fly on the wind/ Over the plain of flying rains … Tears for my chief/ Drop down on the people.”

Kamehameha was from a junior Keawe line, a nephew who grew up in the king’s household. After the deaths of the king and Keoua’s older brother, he attacked Keoua in Puna and Kau. Although Kamehameha’s warriors used Western firearms and a cannon — a first in Hawaiian warfare — they were defeated by Keoua’s forces.

The humiliated Kamehameha sued for peace, inviting Keoua to meet him at Kawaihae.

While approaching Pelekane Beach in his double-hulled canoe, Keoua caught and hurled back spears thrown at him by Kamehameha’s men in the traditional kalii rite. However, during this game he was killed by a stone to his head from a slingshot and/or by being stabbed by Kamehameha’s men.

Kamehameha then eliminated the remaining legitimate claimants by killing Keoua’s younger twin and capturing Keopuolani, Keoua’s niece and heir to the throne. She bore several children fathered by Kamehameha, starting with Liholiho (Kamehameha II).

STARTING A CONVERSATION

History has been kinder to Kamehameha than he deserves, Jenkins writes. Most historians report that Keoua was killed by rogue warriors acting without their chief’s knowledge and against his will.

At least one historian, Abraham Fornander, saw things differently.

“It is impossible to acquit Kamehameha in the cruel death of Keoua,” he wrote in “Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I.,” first published in 1877. “The deed was a cruel wrong and foul murder, and posterity will so designate it.”

In the end, whether it was Keoua’s corpse in the caves or not, it almost doesn’t matter. The tale’s the thing, and Jenkins has turned a long-dead, nearly forgotten prince into the dashing hero of a thrilling saga that recasts a chapter of Hawaiian history.

What he wanted was to start a conversation, Jenkins said.

“Lord of the Haao Rain” should do that, at the very least.

—

ROYAL RANSOM

The artifacts retrieved from the Kawaihae caves — objects of wood, shell, stone and bone, and fragments of featherwork, fiber and cloth — are shown in photographs and discussed in detail in Irving Jenkins’ new book, “Lord of the Haao Rain.” They include two carved wooden figures standing on staves; bowls shaped with human features; a bowl inlaid with marine ivory and human teeth; a game board supported by two kneeling human figures; and two female statuettes, crowned with human hair.

The latter are “probably the best carving of all Hawaiian objects,” according to Roger Rose, former curator for the ethnology collection at Bishop Museum, where he worked for 29 years.

Eighty-three of the artifacts are stored at Bishop Museum, which originally acquired them, along with some associated human remains, from members of the Forbes party in the early 20th century.

In 2000, a Bishop Museum official turned over 83 artifacts and human remains to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai‘i Nei, a nonprofit organization dedicated to repatriation of Native Hawaiian remains and burial items. Hui Malama reburied the artifacts and remains in the Kawaihae caves.

A 2005 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu by Na Lei Alii Kawananakoa, founded by Campbell Estate heiress Abigail Kawananakoa, and the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts sought the return of the artifacts to the museum.

The federal court ordered Hui Malama to return the objects, but the remains were allowed to stay in the caves.

Bishop Museum is safeguarding the artifacts until claimants under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act come to an agreement regarding their classification and where they should be placed, museum management confirmed in an email.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is holding five artifacts, including a female figure and the game board, that were donated by the daughter of David Forbes in 1956.

The park has classified them as “unassociated funerary objects” under the federal law, meaning the park doesn’t possess the associated human remains and the objects are in the process of being repatriated, said Laura Schuster, division chief for cultural resources at HVNP.