A few months before Princeville Plantation owner Robert Crichton Wyllie died in 1865, he left his Kaua‘i estate to his nephew, Robert Crichton Cockrane of Illinois, provided that Cockrane change his last name to Wyllie, which he did. When Robert
A few months before Princeville Plantation owner Robert Crichton Wyllie died in 1865, he left his Kaua‘i estate to his nephew, Robert Crichton Cockrane of Illinois, provided that Cockrane change his last name to Wyllie, which he did.
When Robert Wyllie arrived on Kaua‘i some months later to take over his uncle’s properties, he learned that the plantation’s 100 head of longhorn cattle had hightailed it to the mountains. After his paniolos had rounded them up and put them in a well-fenced pasture, Wyllie then made an offer to rancher Valdemar Knudsen of Wa‘iawa, near Kekaha, to purchase the herd and drive it to the Westside.
Knudsen agreed and sent paniolos to Wailua to rendezvous with Robert Wyllie’s paniolos, who would drive the herd down from Hanalei.
The cattle were about 60 or 70 of the weakest and thinnest cattle Knudsen’s paniolos had ever seen and only 25 survived the 10-day drive to Wa‘iawa, where they were turned loose in a pasture and forgotten. Within six months, they’d all headed for the mountains and gone wild.
These cattle, never numbering more than a few hundred head, eventually became known as the wild cattle of the Alakai Swamp and acquired a fearsome reputation among hunters.
Marksmen needed to shoot to kill, for a wounded bull was a dangerous animal.
One hunter was pinned against a tree for the better part of a day after being chased by a wounded bull he’d shot. What saved him from being crushed by the bull’s weight were the bull’s horns, which touched the tree at both ends, leaving space in between for himself.
The famous wild cattle of the Alakai Swamp provided hunters with great sport until 1918, when the U. S. Government killed them all.
