Kakamora: Little People of the Solomon Islands

The Kakamora are small, human-like beings from the folklore of the Solomon Islands, said to live in caves and remote forest on Makira, Guadalcanal and Malaita. According to the tradition, they stand between half a metre and a metre tall, have long black hair and long fingernails, and never make fire. English Wikipedia has no article of its own on them. This guide gathers what the Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia, a reverend's 1924 book and a few later writers have recorded about the Kakamora, and says plainly where the record stops.

What's Actually Verifiable

No specimen, photograph or scientific survey confirms that the Kakamora exist. What can be checked is that the name appears in a printed encyclopaedia of Solomon Islands history and in a missionary's book from 1924, and that popular writers have repeated it since.

The Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia, 1893-1978, has an entry on the Kakamora. It calls them the legendary small humans of Makira, Guadalcanal and Malaita and likens them to fairies and goblins in European mythology. The entry does not name an author, and it cites several older sources, including Pacific Islands Monthly from 1950 and a book by Horton from 1965. Rev. Charles Fox wrote about the Kakamora in The Threshold of the Pacific in 1924 and later used the name as the title of his autobiography. Fox is the main early written source, and the encyclopaedia says he seemed to believe in them.

What Are the Kakamora?

The Kakamora are said to be a people apart: small, strong, secretive and not quite human. The Solomon Islands encyclopaedia gives their height as about half a metre to one metre, with long black hair and long fingernails. Popular articles give other figures. One says one and a half to three feet, and another says that on Makira they are especially small, only about 15 centimetres tall. The figures do not agree, which tells you the descriptions come from retelling, not measurement.

The name changes from island to island. According to the encyclopaedia, they are called mumu in southern Malaita, dodore in northern Malaita and kalibohibohi on Guadalcanal. Another local name given is tutulangi. In the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu, a similar being is known as nopitu. Spellings such as Kakangora also turn up in popular sources.

Where Do the Kakamora Live?

The tradition places them in the high bush, away from villages. The encyclopaedia says they are believed to hide in the mountains, live in caves and eat wild bush foods. Popular accounts add holes in the ground and banyan trees, and a diet of nuts, fruit and opossums.

Makira, once called San Cristoval, is the island most tied to the legend. A Makira tourism page describes remote caves in its inaccessible inland that are said to be inhabited by Kakamora, and a French encyclopedia entry notes that the most detailed legends are found there. The travel site Wondermondo, a popular source, lists the Kakamora Caves under other names, including Kakangora Caves, and gives only a rough guess for the location. It rates the site low as an attraction. No single cave has been identified in the sources used here, and visitors should not read the legend as a map.

Most of the Makira stories are said to come from the Arosi people of the west of the island. Wondermondo also says that locals are often reluctant to discuss the Kakamora or to show their habitats, and that this reluctance is treated as taboo. That is a claim from a popular site, but it fits a common pattern: people are slow to talk about beings they believe may be listening.

What Do the Kakamora Do?

The behaviour attributed to them is mixed. The encyclopaedia describes a mischievous reputation and says they turn aggressive when cornered. Other accounts are darker.

Several popular sources repeat the same stories:

• The baby's cry. The Kakamora are said to beat one of their own so it cries like a baby. A traveller who comes to help is captured. One version says the victim is killed and eaten.
• The lone traveller. They are reported to feed on anyone found wandering alone, whether a child or an adult.
• Fire thieves. Because they do not make fire, they are said to steal it from people.
• The white cloth. One blog says waving anything white frightens them off. Wondermondo repeats the same belief.
• Dancing. Wondermondo says they are thought to dance, and possibly sing, in moonlight or rain. A traditional Solomon Islands play or dance imitates a Kakamora dance to the sound of a conch shell, according to the Brickthology blog.

None of these stories comes with a named witness or a date. They are the kind of material that circulates by word of mouth and is picked up second-hand, so they should be read as the tradition and not as a record.

What Did Charles Fox Actually Write?

Fox is the source everyone cites, and the quote is short. The encyclopaedia reports that he wrote that the Kakamora “build no houses, have no tools, make no fires, but they are strong and live in holes or caves.” That is a description of a belief, not a claim that he met one.

Two popular sources add a story from the same book: a party travelling with Arosi people found half-eaten fish and small, wet footprints on a dry stone in a river. Wondermondo says Fox was told of this by a local traveller who went ahead of his group, and that no sighting by a European is documented. This detail comes from popular articles and could not be checked against Fox's text for this guide. Anyone who wants the original should read The Threshold of the Pacific directly.

What About the Sightings?

Most reports are old and second-hand. The encyclopaedia says very short people were seen by District Officer Dick Horton in the 1930s at Veramakuru village on Guadalcanal. It gives no details of what he saw, and the entry sits among the legend material, not apart from it.

Wondermondo adds two further claims. The first is that Makira islanders noticed fewer sightings in the early twentieth century, when many people obtained firearms, and that sightings resumed within months after firearms were banned around 1920. The second is that Arosi people described a Kakamora caught by hunters in the mid-1970s that escaped after several days. Both appear on a popular travel site without a named witness, and neither is backed by an academic source in the material used here. Treat them as stories about sightings, not evidence of them.

Could the Legend Be Based on a Real People?

This is the question most readers ask, and the honest answer is that no one knows. The encyclopaedia says that a 2000s archaeological discovery on Flores Island in Indonesia, where the remains of a small, pre-modern human relative were found, “has restored some plausibility” to the Kakamora myth. Popular articles, including one credited to ComicBook.com, go further and mention the Liang Bua Cave skeleton and a very small arm bone from Mata Menge dated to about 700,000 years ago.

The leap needs care. Flores is in Indonesia, far from the Solomon Islands, and the sources do not claim any fossil has been found in the Solomon Islands. Wondermondo says the legends tell of Kakamora living on Makira before Melanesians arrived and then retreating to the mountains, and suggests the stories may preserve memory of a small-statured people. That is a hypothesis from a travel site. The encyclopaedia words its own comment more carefully, as a matter of plausibility. Wondermondo itself says that most researchers and many locals regard the Kakamora as a fairy-tale character.

How Is the Disney Version Different?

Many readers meet the name through the 2016 film Moana, where the Kakamora are coconut-armoured pirates who work as comic relief. Several writers point out that this is far from the folklore. The Brickthology blog says the film gets their small size right but little else. The ComicBook.com piece, republished in November 2024 during the release of Moana 2, describes the traditional beings as mysterious, potentially dangerous and aggressive when cornered. The film has made the name widely known, and that is probably why more people now search for the original.

How Do the Kakamora Compare With Other Little People?

The idea of small, hidden forest people appears in many parts of the world. Wondermondo notes similar stories on other Melanesian islands. Within the Pacific, Fiji has the Veli, the hairy little people of Fiji, and New Zealand has the Patupaiarehe, the fair-skinned forest people of Maori tradition. Ghana has its own forest dwarfs, covered in the Mmoatia guide. The Solomon Islands also have a sea-side spirit, described in the Adaro guide.

What sets the Kakamora apart is the cave setting and the claim of a lost people, not a spirit. Most folklore little people are fairies or ghosts. The Kakamora are described as flesh and blood, which is why they keep getting compared to cryptids, and why the legend sits between folklore and rumour.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Kakamora?

The Kakamora are legendary small humans from the folklore of the Solomon Islands, found in stories from Makira, Guadalcanal and Malaita. The Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia describes them as half a metre to one metre tall, with long black hair and long fingernails. They are said to live in caves, eat wild foods and never make fire.

Are the Kakamora real?

No evidence shows that they are. No specimen, photograph or scientific survey has confirmed a Kakamora, and most researchers and many locals treat them as a folktale, according to the travel site Wondermondo. The encyclopaedia mentions a 2000s Flores Island find as lending some plausibility to the myth, but no fossil from the Solomon Islands is cited.

Where do the Kakamora live?

According to the tradition, they live in caves, holes in the ground and banyan trees in the mountainous interior. Makira has the most detailed stories, especially in the west among the Arosi people. Guadalcanal and Malaita also have them. No single cave is verified in the sources used here, and the location given by popular sites is a rough guess.

What do the Kakamora look like?

The encyclopaedia says they have long black hair and long fingernails and stand about half a metre to a metre tall. Popular sources add that they are naked, strong and possibly hairy, and one says Makira's Kakamora are only about 15 centimetres tall. The heights disagree, so the descriptions come from retelling, not measurement.

Are the Kakamora in Moana the same as the legend?

Only in name and in small size. In the 2016 film Moana, the Kakamora are coconut-armoured pirates played for comedy. In the folklore they are mysterious cave dwellers who are said to be aggressive when cornered. Writers at Brickthology and ComicBook.com both say the film departs from the traditional beings.

Does the Kakamora have an English Wikipedia article?

No. Title and full-text searches of English Wikipedia made on 8 October 2026 found no dedicated article. The best printed source found is the Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia, 1893-1978, which has an entry on the Kakamora and cites Rev. Charles Fox's 1924 book The Threshold of the Pacific.