Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [414]
Describing the Spokane Indians of the Pacific Northwest, Elkanah Walker, a missionary who lived among them for 9 years, wrote in 1840: “They believe in the existence of a race of giants which inhabit a certain mountain, off to the west of us. This mountain is covered with perpetual snow. They inhabit its top. . . . They hunt and do all their work in the night. They are men stealers. They come to people’s lodges in the night, when the people are asleep and take them and put them under their skins and take them to their place of abode without their even awakening. . . . They say their track is about a foot and a half long. . . . They frequently come in the night and steal their salmon from their nets and eat them raw. If the people are awake they always know when they are coming very near by the smell which is most intolerable” (Drury 1976, pp. 122–123).
Indians from the Columbia River region of the northwestern United States produced rock carvings that resembled the heads of apes. Anthropologist Grover Krantz (1982, p. 97) showed photographs of the heads to a number of scientists and noted: “Zoologists who did not know their source unanimously declared them to be representative of nonhuman, higher primates; those who knew the source insisted they must be something else!” Whatever the carvings may actually represent, Krantz’s findings are significant. Preconceptions seem to determine what scientists are prepared to see, and one thing most scientists are definitely not prepared to see is apelike creatures in the American Northwest.
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt included an intriguing wildman report in his book The Wilderness Hunter (1906, pp. 255 –261). The incident took place in the Bitterroot Mountains, between Idaho and Montana. Wildman reports still come out of this region.
In the early to middle 1800s, a trapper named Bauman and his partner were exploring a particularly wild and lonely pass, through which ran a stream said to have many beaver. The two trappers set up camp late one afternoon and went out to explore for a couple of hours. Returning at dusk, they found that something had scattered their belongings around and had in “sheer wantonness” destroyed their lean-to. They rebuilt their lean-to, made supper, and then studied the footprints left by the beast. They noticed, quite to their surprise, that the malicious intruder had apparently walked off on two feet (bears usually go on all fours). This was a bit unsettling, but at last they managed to fall asleep under the lean-to.
Around midnight, they were awakened by some noise and saw a huge body standing at the opening of the lean-to. Their nostrils were assailed by a “strong wild-beast odor.” Bauman fired a couple of shots at the creature. They figured he did not hit it, because they heard it move away through the woods.
The next day, the creature again ravaged the camp while Bauman and his partner were checking their traps. They found a trail of prints in the soft dirt, and these confirmed once more that their assailant, unlike a bear, had walked off on just two feet. That evening, they set up a roaring fire, which they kept going all night. Around midnight, the creature was heard moving through the woods, and it several times “uttered a harsh grating, long-drawn moan.”
The following morning, Bauman and his partner decided to leave, but first they wanted to check their traps. As they moved through the forest, they sensed they were being followed. Roosevelt (1906, p. 259) said, “In the high, bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were, through long years of lonely wandering in the wilderness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute, or element.” Bauman’s partner returned to the camp before he did. When Bauman finally arrived, he found his partner dead. Said Roosevelt (1906, p. 260): “The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed deep in the soft soil, told