Up the airy
mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men;
William Allingham –
The Fairies
Whereas most people will know of North America's giant mystery man-beast, the bigfoot, far fewer will
be familiar with this continent's diverse array of mysterious mini-humanoids, colloquially labelled ‘littlefeet’
or 'babyfeet'. This is a great tragedy, because these diminutive denizens, which appear to have been particularly abundant
in the Pacific Northwest, may conceivably be something more than primitive pygmies or physiological dwarves, as they sometimes
exhibit characteristics variously associated with the Little People and extraterrestrial visitors.
THE BABYFEET
OF OREGON
Take, for instance, the still-unexplained events featuring Bud Darcor and his younger brother that occurred
during a weekend in 1944 while they were deer hunting near the Bly Mountain Lookout in Oregon. They had been gazing out over
the surrounding forest from the lofty lookout tower when a bright ball of light suddenly appeared in the sky and flew towards
a tableland close by, apparently descending upon a mountain about two miles away. Very curious to learn more about this unheralded
skyborne visitor, during the following day the two brothers trekked to the location where the object seemed to have landed,
and there in a clearing they discovered a burnt patch of ground measuring roughly 30 ft in diameter.
After examining
this patch, they began to journey back to the lookout tower, but during their trek they were very surprised to espy some extraordinary
footprints in the pumice dust of the road. These tracks crossed the road, progressed up the roadcut bank, and then paused,
at which point the unmistakable impression left by someone sitting down in the dust could be readily discerned. What made
these tracks so unusual, however, was their size, each measuring no more than 4.5 in long, with the 'buttocks' impression
about 6 in across.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this curious case, however, was still to come. After they had
preserved the tracks for future inspection by placing a wooden board over them, the Darcor brothers sought the opinion of
a local Forest Service officer and also a government representative. Yet according to the Darcors, the forestry officer preferred
to pretend that nothing had been found, whereas the government representative suggested that the tracks' unseen creator may
have been a monkey that had fallen out of an aeroplane!
In fact, these tracks were merely another series in a long
list of similar discoveries made over many years in Oregon, and which, in the firm belief of this U.S. State's native American
tribes, are left behind by an ancient race of dwarf-like beings with supernatural powers. Needless to say, this all sounds
like just another version of the worldwide legends appertaining to the existence of fairies or Little People - were it not
for the undeniable if inexplicable reality of what are popularly referred to in Oregon as 'babyfoot' tracks.
Indeed,
these mysterious entities have even inspired the naming of Baby Rock in Oregon's Lane County, as well as Babyfoot Creek and
Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, Curry County, Oregon. As recently as 12 February 1992, The Track
Record published an account documenting Thomas C. Pitka's discovery of many babyfoot tracks, each a mere 6 in long and bare-footed,
around the Green Point Upper Reservoir, southwest of Oregon's Hood River, and others will no doubt continue to be recorded
in the future.
Different native tribes in Oregon have different names for the elusive babyfeet, but it is evident that
they are referring to the same entities - and often associate them with lights in the sky (including, in some instances, the
northern lights). One of the most significant sources of information concerning them is Henry James Franzoni's fascinating
book Legends Beyond Psychology, which documents the babyfoot lore of several tribes in this State.
The Tenino (Warm
Springs Sahaptin) Indians, for instance, who inhabited part of the Columbia River's south bank in northern central Oregon,
have longstanding traditions regarding the mountain-inhabiting 'ground people' or Pah-ho-ho-klah. The Tenino claim that these
beings are themselves Indians, wearing buckskin clothes and braided hair, but are much smaller in size, hunt at night with
bow and arrows, and call to one other using birdsong. They also possess the formidable power to drive any human crazy who
answers or pursues them, and humans who encounter them often discover afterwards that they have unaccountably 'lost' several
days. Sounds familiar?
Diminutive, nocturnal dwarves communicating via birdsong, inducing madness in those who behold
them, and linked with lost periods of time also feature in the lore of the Yakama Indians from Oregon's Cascade Mountains.
Here they are termed the Te-chum' mah, and are said to inhabit these mountains' more heavily-timbered summits and peaks -
particularly in the region bordering Lake Keechelas, about 35 miles north-northeast of Mount Rainier in the Mount Baker Snoqualmie
National Forest. They are also claimed to live around Fish Lake, which lies roughly 4 miles southwest of the Goat Rocks Wilderness's
southeast boundary, in the Wenatchee National Forest, and is contained within the Yakama Indian Reservation.
Among
Oregon's most intriguing iconographical enigmas are the rock-paintings known to the Yakama Indians as Schop-tash and Puh-tuh
num (this latter is now destroyed), depicted on high cliff faces in the Naches Gap near Yakama itself, and which this region's
eponymous native tribe claim were there long before they themselves first arrived here. According to the Yakama, these pictographs
are the work of a mysterious, cliff-inhabiting race of dwarf-like beings, only 2 ft high and wearing rabbit-skin robes, which
they call the Wah'-tee-tas (translated as 'animal people' or 'ancient people'), and are seen only at twilight or dawn.
Oregon's
Klamath Indians, who formerly occupied the Klamath Lake and River region speak of several different types of mini-humanoid,
which, like so many accounts of Little People, seem to inhabit an intermediate reality that periodically impinges upon our
own. The Teakiak'k resemble young boys but are no bigger than babies, with long hair that hangs down their back to waist level.
They do not wear clothes, but wooden images of these entities carved by Klamath shamans are decorated with red feathers (from
the red-shafted flicker woodpecker) around their neck. There are also the Goga'ne, which are male dwarves with baby-sized
footprints, and are allegedly most common amid the Cascade Mountains. These snow-clad slopes are home too to the Na'hnias,
once again leaving tiny footprints.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN DWARVES
Another valuable source of data concerning New World pygmies is Ella E. Clark's Indian Legends From the Rockies
(1977), documenting lore from several Rocky Mountain tribes.
According to the Flathead Indians, the first inhabitants
of their territory in northern Montana were a race of 3-ft-tall dwarves, with very dark skin, and a well-developed civilization.
After the Flatheads' arrival, however, the dwarves retreated ever further into the mountains, where they largely died out.
Those few that survived became primarily nocturnal, sleeping in old mountain craters during the day. Eventually they became
somewhat mythicised by the Flatheads, who began to attribute supernatural powers to these diminutive beings.
The Coeur
d'Alenes and the Spokane Indians of Washington State share traditions of dwarf-like entities, many of whom reputedly once
lived in the extremely dense forests and undergrowth that formerly encircled Rosebud Lake. Dressed in brown or red apparel
with pointed caps, they were very adept at clambering up and down trees, always climbing head first. At night, their wailing
cries would sometimes awaken their Indian neighbours, and like Little People everywhere they delighted in playing mischievous
tricks upon unwary humans. A different race of dwarves indigenous to this region once lived in great numbers in cliffs and
rocky mountainous retreats, and dressed in squirrel skins. The size of small boys, they hunted with bows and arrows, and enjoyed
luring Indian hunters onto the wrong paths.
The Nez Percé‚ Indians of the North West still speak of a race of
dwarves known to them as the Its'te-ya-ha or Stick Indians. Dressed in deerskin, with long hair, small eyes, and wrinkled
skin, these gnome-like entities inhabited the deep woodlands. They were said to be disproportionately strong relative to their
small stature, and were reputedly fond of abducting calves and other livestock of Indians and white settlers alike. According
to Lucy Armstrong Isaac, one of Ella Clark's sources of information regarding these beings, her great grandfather once found
a dead Stick Indian, resembling a tiny boy, lying on a flat rock.
SHOSHONE TRADITIONS
The Shoshone Indians
formerly frequenting western Wyoming, central and southern Idaho, northeastern Nevada, and western Utah have many traditions
of dwarf-like humanoids.
The strong, fearless Ninnimbe or Nimerigar of Wyoming, for instance, were claimed to be 2-3
ft tall, garbed in goatskin clothes, and very adroit hunters. They always carried a large quiver of poisoned arrows on their
back, which claimed the lives of many Shoshones when they first entered these dwarves' territory. However, the Ninnimbe were
themselves vulnerable, as they were frequently preyed upon by eagles, which could easily snatch up these small beings off
the ground and carry them away. Like the Wah'-tee-tas in Oregon, the Ninnimbe were deemed responsible for the pictographs
on the rocks in Wind River County. Similar beings were also believed in by the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and the Dakota Sioux.
According
to the Shoshone, the cave-inhabiting dwarves that supposedly existed at one time in the mountains of Salmon River County and
parts of the Owyhee Range in Idaho were cannibals, who thought nothing of abducting and devouring the babies of unwary Indian
mothers, then substituting themselves in best changeling tradition. Despite standing a mere 2 ft high, these dwarves were
said to be very strong, and wore no clothes, even in the winter; their women, conversely, dressed themselves in skins obtained
from deer or mountain sheep killed by the male dwarves using their bows and arrows. Primarily nocturnal, these beings could
often be heard singing loudly at night, on cliffs and rocky peaks.
White buffaloes - i.e. albino bison - are held in
very high esteem by many Amerindian tribes throughout North America, who venerate them as the sacred property of the sun,
and value their creamy pelts as exceedingly potent symbols of power. Having said that, although white buffaloes are therefore
linked intimately with the magical and mystical facets of humanity, there is one little-known incident on record that even
by these animals' standards is decidedly mystifying. As publicized in Coral E. Lorenzen's book The Shadow of the Unknown (1970),
it features a party of Shoshone braves who encountered a herd of buffaloes and killed four of them - one of which was a pure-white
calf.
Suddenly, without any prior warning, a troupe of extraordinary little men appeared, surrounding the astonished
braves and screaming loudly at them. Unnerved by their antagonists' unexpected appearance (in every sense of the word!), the
braves decided to flee to a nearby rocky promontory to use as cover, but their plan was not necessary. One of the braves picked
up the carcase of the young white buffalo, swinging it around his head as he did so - at which point the tiny men screamed
with fear and raced away.
Recognizing its potential, the braves skinned the carcass and stuffed its skin to make it
look as if it were still a living calf. Ever afterwards, they took this strange artifact with them on their hunting trips,
and although they sometimes saw these mysterious little people, they were never attacked again. For as soon as they appeared,
one of the braves would swing the stuffed skin over his head, and the pygmies would flee in terror.
Herewith the second part of my survey
of North America’s mysterious babyfeet and other littlefeet. If anyone out there has details of further examples, or
additional information regarding any of those documented here (especially news regarding the Wyoming mini-mummy’s current
whereabouts), I’d be very interested in receiving them.
THE GEOW-LUD-MO-SIS-EG
OF NEW BRUNSWICK
Proving that Little People are not a Northwest idiosyncrasy, however,
Amerindian traditions regarding such entities are also on file from the Northeast, notably New York State. Here, as revealed
in Edmond Wilson's book Apologies to the Iroquois, at least two tribes of dwarves supposedly lived among the Tuscaroras. One
of these tribes possessed extraordinary powers of healing and would sometimes treat injured or ailing Iroquois in exchange
for gifts of tobacco, but the other tribe preferred to play tricks instead, unless appeased with tobacco.
Much further
south, within Louisiana's Mississippi Delta, reports have periodically emerged concerning a race of 'little red men', according
to Peter Haining, writing in Ancient Mysteries (1977). About the size of ten-year-old children, they allegedly inhabit the
secluded depths of the bayous, where they are as adept at climbing trees as monkeys.
And even further south, in New
Mexico, there is an ancient Cochiti legend telling of how the Pueblo tribe of the Stone Lions was attacked by a fierce race
of pygmies. Full details are preserved in the 29th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1907-1908).
Nor
are mystery mini-humanoids confined exclusively to the United States within the North American continent. Moving northwards
across the 49th Parallel, southeastern Canada can also lay claim to a version - the Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg. These entities are
commonly met with in the vicinity of water, such as marshy ground, riverbanks, brooksides, or lake shores. Fond of playing
tricks on humans, they display a particular delight in finely braiding (with consummate skill) strands of hair on the tails
of horses, cows, and other domestic animals.
Their lore has been extensively researched by writer Pat Paul, of the
Maliseet Nation, who lives on the Tobique Indian Reserve in New Brunswick. Once frequently spied, nowadays the Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg
are rarely reported, but they do not appear to have entirely vanished.
Several years ago, one of the Tobique elders
and his wife looked out of their home's window one night during a heavy downpour of rain and saw three of these dwarves sitting
around an outdoor fireplace. In keeping with the ancient lore concerning these strange beings, the fire burning in this open-air
fireplace remained fully lit and blazing, in spite of the torrential rain pouring down upon it. Moreover, minute stone beads
supposedly manufactured by the Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg have been found at the Passammaquoddy Nation (Sebayik) Reservation in Maine.
Measuring 0.04-1 inch long, each of these beads is composed of a shale-like material, and contains a hole enabling the thread
to pass through.
Far more remarkable, however, but tragically lost (or at least mislaid) are the pygmy coffins and
corpses found on an unidentified island by Captain Luke Foxe during the early 1630s while exploring the Hudson Bay/Baffin
Island region of northeastern Canada. In 1635, Foxe recorded his extraordinary find in his journal as follows: The newes from the land was that this Iland was a Sepulchre, for that the Salvages [sic] had laid their dead
(I cannot say interred), for it is all stone, as they cannot dig therein, but lay the Corpes upon the stones, and well them
about with the same, coffining them also by laying the sides of old sleddes above, which have been artificially made. The
boards are some 9 or 10 ft long, 4 inches thicke. In what manner the tree they have bin made out of was cloven or sawen, it
was so smooth as we could not discerne, the burials had been so old. And, as in other places of those countries, they bury
all their Vtensels [utensils], as bowes, arrowes, strings, darts, lances, and other implements carved in bone. The longest
Corpes was not above 4 foot long, with their heads laid to the West...their Corpes were wrapped in Deare [deer] skinnes...They
seem to be people of small stature.
Although Foxe's sailors took away the wooden boards
to be used as firewood, they did not disturb the pygmy corpses, but the island in question has never been satisfactorily identified,
thereby ruling out the possibility of launching any modern search for further relics here.
WYOMING'S MINI-MUMMY
In
contrast, there is at least one corpse of an incredible North America mini-humanoid on record that has been formally examined
by scientists - but all to no avail, as it turned out.
Its extraordinary history began one day in October 1932, when
gold-prospectors Cecil Main and Frank Carr blasted a hole through the wall of a ravine in the San Pedro Mountains, about 65
miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming - and made a momentous discovery. The wall had been hiding a cavern, which contained a
small ledge. And sitting on the ledge, in cross-legged pixie-like pose, with its arms folded across its chest, was the mummy
of a diminutive humanoid figure, with a sitting height of less than 7 in and a total height of only 14 in.
Sporting
a tanned if wrinkled bronze-coloured skin, barrel-shaped body, large hands, long fingers, low brow, very wide mouth with large
lips, and broad flat nose, this strange figure resembled a smirking old man, who seemed almost to be winking at its two amazed
discoverers, as one of its large eyes was half-closed. Nevertheless, it was evident that he had been dead for a very long
time, and his death did not appear to have been a pleasant one. His head was abnormally flat, and was covered with a dark
gelatinous substance - later examinations by scientists revealed that his skull had been smashed by an extremely heavy blow,
and the gelatinous substance was congealed blood and exposed brain tissue.
The most detailed examination, including
x-ray analysis, was conducted by anthropologist Dr Henry Shapiro from the American Museum of Natural History, which confirmed
that the mummy was not a fake but did indeed contain a complete if minuscule skeleton, a fully-fused skull (verifying that
it was an adult humanoid, not an infant), and also a full set of teeth.
The Casper midget mummy's current whereabouts
are unknown, but its x-ray plates are still on file. Moreover, not long after its initial discovery by the two prospectors,
a Mexican shepherd called Jos‚ Martinez reputedly found another mummy and six separate skulls on a ranch in the same
vicinity. After soon suffering a number of mishaps, however, he considered them to be jinxed, so he swiftly replaced them
where he had found them.
Other mini-mummies have also been reported over the years from elsewhere in the U.S.A. One
of the most noteworthy of these was a 3-ft-tall, red-haired specimen discovered during the 1920s on a ledge in Kentucky's
famous Mammoth Cave, and which seemed to be only a few centuries old. During 1922, sheep-herder Bill Street claimed to have
found several small skulls and whole mummies in Montana's Beartooth Mountains, but their present whereabouts are unclear.
Two young men on a day off from the Civilian Conservation Corps came upon a dead pygmy with sharp teeth in Wyoming's Wind
River Mountains during 1933 (was it a Ninnimbe?); both died soon afterwards, and others who saw it died from severe illnesses.
In
1969, author John 'Ace' Bonar visited orthopaedic specialist Richard Phelps in Casper to see the preserved head of a mysterious
tiny humanoid that he was displaying at that time in his shop. Bonar learnt that the head had originally been taken from a
cliff near Wyoming's Muddy Gap. After Phelps's death in 1980, his daughter donated the preserved pygmy head to the University
of Wyoming in Laramie, where it is still said to be today.
According to Bonar, the husband of Winnie Cardell from Alcova,
Wyoming, also owned a mini-mummy - until he loaned it to a college professor, who never returned it. A specimen closely resembling
the famous Casper mini-mummy attracted media attention in January 1979 when it was loaned to Californian antique appraiser
Kent Diehl of San Anselmo for examination. Just under 1 ft long, with an indentation at the back of the head indicating brain
injury as the cause of death, the mummy was supposedly found in Central America during 1919, but Diehl would not publicly
identify the Marin family that presently owns it.
Attempts have been made by some researchers to dismiss the Casper
specimen as a grossly-malformed human child or foetus, but its adult characteristics conflict with this identity. Also, there
are many Amerindian traditions of mysterious races of dwarves or pygmies, as we have seen, and some of these allegedly kill
their own kind when they become old or infirm by beheading them or smashing their skulls - in precisely the way that Casper's
mummified midget and its Central American lookalike met their deaths. Just a coincidence?
DOVER DEMON
Sceptics
claim that North American mystery dwarves, pygmies, and other littlefeet exist only in native American folklore and legends,
and that white Westerners never report such beings. In reality, however, this is far from true, as exemplified by the Dover
demon.
At around 10.30 pm on 21 April 1977, 17-year-old Bill Bartlett was driving home with two friends through Dover
in Massachusetts when his headlights illuminated a bizarre entity picking its way along a stone wall at the side of the road.
Standing 3-4 ft high with hairless but rough-textured, peach-coloured skin, the creature had a disproportionately large melon-shaped
head whose face was wholly featureless except for a big pair of protruding eyes that glowed orange. Its body was slight, but
its arms and legs were very long and thin, terminating in slender, supple fingers and toes. Bill Bartlett later produced a
sketch of this entity, which became known as the Dover demon - a sketch that was almost identical to the drawing prepared
independently by a separate eyewitness, 15-year-old John Baxter, who had seen the being less than two hours after Bartlett's
encounter.
Baxter had been walking home close to the location of Bartlett's sighting when he spied the 'demon', and
chased it down a gully. Two other sightings were made within the next 24 hours, after which it was never reported again. On
account of its truly unearthly appearance, wholly unlike any type of creature known to science, some researchers have deemed
the Dover demon to be an extraterrestrial, or, at the very least, an interdimensional, visitor. All of which makes it all
the more intriguing that like so many other littlefeet on record, this mystifying entity does have a traditional, terrestrial
precedent.
The Cree Nation of eastern Canada speak of a mysterious, elusive race of pygmies known to them as the Mannegishi,
which live between rocks in the rapids. Their morphological description corresponds almost exactly with that of the Dover
demon.
So what are we to make of North America's littlefeet? Quite evidently, they are more than just a myth, and have
been in existence here for a very long time. But what are they, and where did they originally come from? Are they native
New Worlders that have retreated in historic times to remote localities away from modern humanity's conquering reach? Interestingly,
in his absorbing book on the huge extinct ape Gigantopithecus, entitled Other Origins: The Search For the Giant Ape in Human
Prehistory (1990), American anthropologist Dr Russell Ciochon briefly referred to a native American tradition concerning a
tiny human entity referred to as the ‘little cat man’, and he speculated that this may refer to an extinct North
American prosimian.
Or could the littlefeet actually comprise beings from a very different, parallel world that can
and do enter ours at will, in the best traditions of Little People everywhere? And where, in the infinitely subtle continuum
of reports, do Little People end and extraterrestrials begin, anyway? After all, entities like the Dover demon and other littlefeet
documented here effortlessly if confusingly embrace both ends of this vast spectrum of sightings instantaneously. Documenting
the Wyoming mini-mummy in his book Stranger Than Science (1959), veteran mysteries investigator Frank Edwards made the following
pertinent comment:
Scientists from far and near have examined this tiny fellow and have gone away amazed. He is unlike
anything they ever saw before. Sitting there on the shelf in Casper, visible, disturbing evidence that science may have overlooked
him and his kind much too long.
This is certainly true. However, just as there are two sides to every coin, in his
own book The Monster Trap (1976), Peter Haining offered an equally disturbing, obverse view:
For as some of the more
serious-minded of the old people of Casper who were alive at the time of the discovery will tell you, they believe the little
man was one of a whole race of barbaric dwarf people who once lived in the region in ancient times. And they get the distinct
impression from looking at him that he had been sitting there behind the stone wall for thousands of years waiting for someone
- or something - to return.
Now just suppose, they go on with the merest hesitation, that the long-awaited return of
what-ever-it-might-be has taken place - and it has found nothing there...
A chilling little vignette, if true. And
who knows - perhaps it really would have been best in this instance to have let sleeping dogs lie, or dormant dwarves dream
on?
