(Here is another in a series of legendary tales of Bigfoot type creatures
told by very well know men. In this article we explore the story that was told
to Teddy Roosevelt by a trapper. This is part 1 of the story)
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| President Teddy Roosevelt |
Presidential frontiersmen "Rough-rider" Teddy Roosevelt began writing his
soon to be published book in 1890. Titled The Wilderness Hunter, the author
writes of a grizzled, weather beaten trapper by the name of Bauman, whose figure
of a man reminded me of actor Robert Redford's portrayal of the legendary
woodsman-tracker Jeremiah Johnson. Bauman however was German born, lived all of
his life out on the early frontier. Roosevelt must have had some degree of
belief in Bauman's tale to include his thoughts in his book.
He [Roosevelt]
was a hard man to fool with a wild tale." Bauman must have held to the story for
it was said that he could hardly repress a shudder at certain points in the
yarn. A yarn that was to become a legend at Roosevelt's unwitting recounting,
weathering the retelling for more than 100 years and will go on ad infinitum.
One of Idaho's best known horror stories, it tells the story of two
trappers who set out on a beaver hunt in the still remote alpine terrain of the
beautiful Salmon River countryside. This portion of the Salmon River is located
in the Bitterroot Mountains between the state of Idaho and Montana. To this day,
stories of the Sasquatch come out of this part of this virgin wilderness.
Roosevelt wrote that the previous year a trapper's body had been found torn to
bits and partially eaten by an "unknown beast, which left enormous human foot
tracks in its wake." [Bears do not leave human footprints; overlapping bear
tracks upon one another can be differentiated.]
Oblivious to what should have been a warning to the senses, these two men
journeyed deep into the wilderness' remote regions, moving campsites from one
creek to another in search of satisfactory places in which to place their beaver
traps. Here is that famous excerpt about Bauman from Roosevelt's book:
"Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be very superstitious. They lead
lives too hard and practical, and have too little imagination in things
spiritual and supernatural. I have heard but few ghost stories while living on
the frontier, and those few were of a perfectly commonplace and conventional
type. But I once listened to a goblin-story, which rather impressed me.
A
grizzled, weather beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman who, born and had
passed all of his life on the Frontier, told it the story to me. He must have
believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a shudder at certain points
of the tale; but he was of German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been
saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore. So that many fearsome
superstitions were latent in his mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by
the Indian medicine men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers, and the
specters, [spirits, ghosts & apparitions] the formless evil beings that
haunt the forest depths, and dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after
nightfall passes through the regions where they lurk. It may be that when
overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by
the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still
more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally
wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say.
When the event occurred, Bauman was still a young man, and was trapping
with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of the Salmon from the
head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, he and his partner determined to
go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream
said to contain many beavers. The pass had an evil reputation because the year
before a solitary hunter who had wandered into it was slain, seemingly by a wild
beast, the half eaten remains being afterwards found by some mining prospectors
who had passed his camp only the night before.
The memory of this event, however, weighted very lightly with the two
trappers, who were as adventurous and hardy as others of their kind. They took
their two lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass where they left them in
an open beaver meadow, the rocky timber-clad ground being from there onward
impracticable for horses. They then struck out on foot through the vast, gloomy
forest, and in about four hours reached a little open glade where they concluded
to camp, as signs of game were plenty.
There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and after building a brush
lean-to and throwing down and opening their packs, they started upstream. The
country was very dense and hard to travel through, as there was much down
timber, although here and there the somber woodland was broken by small glades
of mountain grass. At dusk they again reached camp. The glade in which it was
pitched was not many yards wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs rising round
it like a wall. On one side was a little stream, beyond which rose the steep
mountains slope, covered with the unbroken growth of evergreen forest.
They were surprised to find that during their absence something, apparently
a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among their things, scattering
the contents of their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroying their lean-to.
The footprints of the beast were quite plain, but at first they paid no
particular heed to them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying
out their beds and stores and lighting the fire.
While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his companion
began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the fire to
follow them up, where the intruder had walked along a game trail after leaving
the camp. When the brand flickered out, he returned and took another, repeating
his inspection of the footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood
by it a minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked,
"Bauman, that bear has been walking on two legs."
Bauman laughed at this, but his partner insisted that he was right, and
upon again examining the tracks with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made
by but two paws or feet. However, it was too dark to make sure. After discussing
whether the footprints could possibly be those of a human being, and coming to
the conclusion that they could not be, the two men rolled up in their blankets,
and went to sleep under the lean-to. At midnight Bauman was awakened by some
noise, and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a
strong, wild-beast odor, and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness
at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague,
threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately afterwards he heard
the smashing of the under wood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into
the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.
After this the two men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled fire,
but they heard nothing more. In the morning they started out to look at the few
traps they had set the previous evening and put out new ones. By an unspoken
agreement they kept together all day, and returned to camp towards evening. On
nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment that the lean-to had again
been torn down. The visitor of the preceding day had returned, and in wanton
malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding, and destroyed the shanty.
The ground was marked up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it had gone
along the soft earth by the brook. The footprints were as plain as if on snow,
and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it certainly did seem as if,
whatever the thing was, it had walked off on but two legs.
(Part 2 soon, thanks for reading the blog)
