This story is important for a
couple of reasons. It is dated from the
1880’s and recalls an event taking place in the 1830’s before either the
significant advent of Europeans or their rifles quite able to make any
intelligent animal wary. This is
possibly the earliest rep0ort of a bigfoot and it is told long before a mass of
reports shaped the story itself or even made such knowledge available.
More importantly, the observer is
a class A observer. I have read hundreds
of individual reports and can include only a half dozen or so class A observers. By this I mean the observer must have lived
years directly in the environment as part of his occupation and must depend on
his observation skills for his livelihood making error implausible. My list includes a grizzly hunter and guide who
bagged over 300 bears and made two separate observations and a senior guide in Yellowstone who made one observation.
Please note that these individuals
made at best two such observation in a lifetime of opportunity. That is the norm. In fact the best observations made by others
also occur when the observer surprises a creature. The creature is seen before he has a chance
to retire.
As may be deduced from this it is
hardly surprising that the creature was nearly legendary to the natives. This animal largely used the forest and
general cover as a matter of course to avoid contact and this continues into
the present were we now have thousands of individual reports.
The earliest reports show an
animal less shy of human contact than at present. This report shows us an animal angered by
intruders in his domain. It may well
have considered these strangers some form of competition and reacted
accordingly. Later reports have stone throwing
episodes, again possibly a result of intruding on home ground.
In the event, this report
conforms to our expectations and other similar reports. This observer’s good fortune was to be
interviewed by Teddy Roosevelt who was both sympathetic and a competent reporter
prepared to stare down naysayers. How
much has been lost for the lack of such?
POSTED BY ADMIN ON DECEMBER - 23 – 2010
Teddy Roosevelt during his time as a rancher.
Just 100 years ago, Theodore Roosevelt was the country’s chief
executive and favorite son. His personality was larger than life. His exploits
captured people’s imaginations worldwide. After the death of his first wife in
1884, Roosevelt spent two years as a rancher and hunter on his ranch in the
Badlands of Dakota Territory. He climbed down
from the saddle long enough to pen three books during this period. In 1893, he
published a lengthy and most entertaining narrative entitled The Wilderness
Hunter: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and Its Chase with
Horse, Hound, and Rifle, a memoir of sorts of his days in the territories.
Among the stories recorded here is what seems to have been a 19th-century
Bigfoot encounter.
The Frontiersman’s Tale
The report came to Roosevelt from the
lips of a grizzled old mountain man named Bauman, who had spent the entirety of
his very long life on the frontier. As he recollected the details of the event,
Bauman had difficulty controlling his emotions. The event was very real to him.
Bauman was a trapper as a young man. His strange encounter occurred
sometime between 1810 and 1840 when he and a partner were trapping in an area
around the forks of the Salmon and Wisdom rivers in the Bitteroot
Mountains, near the border of Idaho and Montana.
The trapping business was rather lean so the two frontiersmen decided to try
their skills in a remote area around a small mountain stream that seemed to
have a lot of beaver signs.
This area had a rather sinister reputation. A year earlier, a lone
hunter had wandered into the area and been slain by a wild beast. His
half-eaten remains were discovered by a prospector. People who knew of the
strange killing gave that area a wide berth, but this did not deter the two
adventuresome trappers.
Bauman and his partner rode to within a four-hour hike of the area
where they were going to trap. They hobbled their mountain ponies in a beaver
meadow and set off on foot into the underbrush of the Bitteroot Range.
The trappers hastily erected a lean-to where they stowed their
packs, then hurried upstream to set a few traps and explore for signs before
nightfall. When they returned to their makeshift camp at dusk, they made an
unpleasant discovery. Their packs had been vandalized, and their gear thrown in
every direction. Whatever attacked the camp had been vigorous in its assault,
churning up the ground and completely destroying the lean-to.
Such vandalism was completely out of place. Frontiersmen knew of the
hardship of survival. Lean-tos might stand for years as hunter after hunter
used them and passed on their way. Packs were far too valuable to be recklessly
strewn on the ground; they might be purloined by the unscrupulous, but never
vandalized. Bears and other creatures might be drawn to food, but this was
evidently not the case. It appeared someone was bent on destroying their packs.
As the unfortunate trappers gathered up their possessions, they noticed
footprints in the ground that were “quite plain.” The urgency of salvaging
their goods and rebuilding the lean-to required their immediate energies. The
footprints, plain or otherwise, would have to wait.
Two Long Nights
When the camp was restored, Bauman began cooking a meal while his
partner examined the footprints by torchlight. Returning for another firebrand,
he remarked that the attacker walked on two legs. Bauman broke into laughter at
the idea of a marauding bear walking upright as it demolished the camp. His
partner insisted the bear must have walked on its hind legs and took a larger
firebrand to examine the tracks in more detail. The prints clearly indicated
that they were made by a creature that walked upright, having been made by two
paws or feet.
Around midnight, Bauman was awakened by a noise. An awful stench filled
his nostrils, the strong odor of a wild beast. By the opening of the lean-to,
he saw the menacing shadow of a great body lurking in the darkness. He fired
his rifle. The shot either missed its intended mark or did little harm to the
towering form, but whatever it was ran off. The curtain of night could not
obscure the sounds of something very large forcing its way through the thick
underbrush surrounding the camp.
The second half of the night passed slowly as the trappers watchfully
tended the fire. Nothing more of the great thing was heard, seen, or smelled
that night.
When daylight came the two men set out to check their traps and make
additional sets. Both were experienced mountain men, but instead of separating
and covering twice as much area, they worked together all day. The events of
the previous night obviously impacted them enough to alter their behavior.
As the last light of the afternoon began to give way to the ensuing
night, the men reached their camp. It was déjà vu: again the camp had been
destroyed. All their possessions had been rummaged and tossed about. The earth
was churned up, indicating a great deal of furious activity. In the soft, damp
earth near the stream were found clear footprints as crisp as if made in snow.
The tracks were made by a creature that was obviously bipedal.
As darkness surrounded them, the trappers restored their camp as best
they could, concentrating their efforts on building a roaring fire. That night,
they could hear branches breaking in the underbrush, indicating that it was
near. Occasionally it emitted long, drawn-out groans and moans, sounds that
proved to be terrifying to the two men.
With the arrival of the new day came a decision. Although the area
showed signs of an abundance of game, very little had been taken so far.
Combined with the harassment of the unwelcome camp follower, the trappers
decided to leave.
As the two men collected the traps they had set the day before, they
felt the presence of someone or something watching them, dogging them. Their
awareness of this phantom seemed to intensify their resolve to leave the area.
A Fatal Decision
But the light of day began to work on their manhood. They felt
embarrassed about sticking so close together. Both men were experienced in
wilderness survival. Both had faced danger from man, beast, and the elements
before and had prevailed. Perhaps this reasoning influenced their next move.
They decided to separate. Bauman was to check the remaining traps while his
partner returned to camp and pack. They would meet at the camp and move
somewhere else.
Fortune blossomed at the wrong time: each of the three remaining sets
had caught a beaver. One of the poor creatures had fought with the trap and
tangled the chain in a beaver lodge, requiring extra time to untangle. By the
time Bauman had skinned the beaver carcasses and stretched the pelts, most of
the afternoon was gone. As the last moments of daylight were disappearing, he
neared the camp.
An eerie silence seemed to envelop the site. No birds could be heard.
Bauman’s steps were muted by the pine needles and even the perpetual breeze of
the mountains was still. He whistled, expecting a reply from his partner. No
acknowledgement was heard. All was silent.
Within sight of the camp, Bauman saw that the fire was out, a thin blue
smoke trailing from the dying embers. His partner’s lifeless body lay stretched
on the ground by the trunk of a fallen tree. The body was still warm. The poor
man’s neck had been broken. Four fang-like incisions marked the throat.
Footprints indicated the attack was from an animal that walked on two legs.
Upon completion of packing, the unfortunate trapper must have sat on
the tree trunk facing the fire waiting for Bauman to return. Reaching out from
behind the resting man, the unknown creature must have wrenched the trapper’s
neck. Evidence indicated that whatever killed the lone trapper had thrown the
body about and rolled on it.
Bauman abandoned the camp, taking only his rifle. He made his way down
the mountain pass to the hobbled ponies in the beaver meadow, then rode beyond
the point of pursuit.
Roosevelt noted that Bauman was of German ancestry,
and would have heard many a ghost and goblin story as a child. In his years on
the frontier he would have heard tales of the unexplained and of the magic of
the Indian medicine man. As a hunter and trapper he would have learned the
track of every animal in the area. Roosevelt did not doubt that an incident
took place, but he gives the impression that a psychological explanation would
account for the unexplainable part of the story.
According to this report, a large, foul-smelling creature that appeared
to be bipedal repeatedly attacked two young frontiersmen in the region of the Bitterroot Mountains. What was it? Roosevelt did not say. However, something about the story
of the old mountain man must have impressed the future president deeply for him
to include it in his great narrative of the frontier West.
Written by Gary W. Hemphill, a writer living in Greenville, Pennsylvania.
Story published in FATE Feb/Jan 2009.
