ISLAND HISTORY: A history of notable Kauai Hermits

Kauai’s most noteworthy hermit, Dr. Bernard Wheatley, was born in the Virgin Islands in 1919 and earned a medical degree.

When his wife and son died in an automobile accident, he abandoned medicine, gave away his possessions, and sought a place of solitude.

In 1957, he found Kauai, hiked into Kalalau Valley, and survived there alone, its only human inhabitant, for many years.

When hippies invaded Kalalau Valley in the late 1960s with their hallucinogens and lifestyles at odds with his own, he left his once solitary home.

Wheatley died on December 3, 1991, and his ashes were scattered in Kalalau Valley.

Another hermit, Carleton Banfill, came to Hawaii as a young man during the reign of Kamehameha III (1825-1854), and after shifting about Honolulu, he relocated to Kauai.

There, he built a tiny house on a secluded stretch of coast and spent his days fishing at sea in his little boat or gathering wild taro and fruits.

Later, during the 1880s, Banfill lived in a cavern within the uninhabited and scarcely accessible recesses of Mt. Waialeale.

Then he disappeared.

In 1922, Filipino immigrant Alejandro Abuan (1894-unknown) quit work in Wailua Homesteads and began living in the mountains above Hanalei.

For the next 15 years, he survived as a hermit residing in the unfrequented regions of Hanalei, Waialeale, Waimea, Kokee, and the Na Pali.

He wore clothes made from burlap sacks, ate wild goats and pigs he caught in snares and killed with his cane knife, caught fish in forest streams, and supplemented his diet with wild fruit.

He would sleep in caves or climb a tree at night, tie himself to its branches with vines, and sleep safely.

During his years as a hermit, he never spoke with the rare hunters he encountered but became friends with five Hawaiian hermits – three men and two women he found living in a cave.

Loneliness finally broke him in April 1937, and at age 43, he obtained a job with Lihue Plantation and settled in Lihue Camp.

Yet, within a month, he returned to the mountains and vanished.