Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

I want to thank David for sending this to me. David writes ”

Wes, Your recent discussion of the forest “little people” reminded me of a related report by famed American author Theodore Roosevelt. I hunted down the passage and I thought the SC community would enjoy it.

Taken from “The Wilderness Hunter” (1893), Chapter VII, Hunting in the Selkirks; The Caribou

We find Roosevelt on a hunting expedition 20 or 30 miles north of Idaho in British Columbia.

“In September, 1888, I was camped on the shores of Kootenai Lake, having with me as companions, John Willis and an impassive-looking Indian named Ammal.…Ammal himself was one of the Lower Kootenais; I had hired him for the trip, as Indians west of the Rockies, unlike their kinsman of the plains, often prove hard and willing workers. His knowledge of English was almost nil; and our very scanty conversation was carried on in the Chinook jargon, universally employed between the mountains and the Pacific… I often tried to talk with him about game and hunting, but we understood each other too little to exchange more than the most rudimentary ideas.…Ammal objected strongly to leaving the neighborhood of the lake. He went the first day’s journey willingly enough, but after that it was increasingly difficult to get him along, and he gradually grew sulky. For some time we could not find out the reason; but finally he gave us to understand there were “little bad Indians” who would kill him if they caught him alone, especially at night. At first we thought he was speaking of stray warriors of the Blackfeet tribe; but it turned out that he was not thinking of human beings at all, but of hobgoblins.…After nightfall, round the camp fire, or if I awakened after sleeping a little while, I would often lie silently for many minutes together, listening to the noises of the wilderness. At times the wind moaned harshly through the tops of the tall pines and hemlocks; at times the branches were still; but the splashing murmur of the torrent never ceased, and through it came other sounds – the clatter of huge rocks falling down the cliffs, the dashing of cataracts in far-off ravines, the hooting of owls. Again, the breeze would shift, and bring to my ears the ringing of other brooks and cataracts and wind-stirred forests and perhaps at long intervals the cry of some wild beast, the crash of a falling tree or the faint rumble of a snow avalanche. If I listened long enough, it would almost seem that I heard thunderous voices laughing and calling to one another, and as if at any moment some shape might stalk out of the darkness into the dim light of the embers.”

Editorial:

Yes, this passage is from the same book as the Bauman account. The “little bad Indian” event occurred in 1888 and I suspect Roosevelt did not hear the Bauman tale until 1890. Today, this region of the Rockies is well represented by Bigfoot sightings and on the “Missing 411” map. Ammal may have been sharing his fear of the “little bad Indians” but I suspect the Indian was unable to clearly communicate his apprehension of very large territorial “Indians” with bad attitudes. Lost in translation?

It sounds like Teddy did not sleep well in the Canadian Rockies. The “cry of some wild beast, the crash of a falling tree”, (what could push a tree over) and “thunderous voices laughing and calling to one another.” (Samurai chatter?) I think old Teddy was a novice Bigfoot researcher and too ignorant to know it. I can’t help imagining poor, wide eyed Ammal, sleeping with a both hands on his rifle, with his back to the fire, staring into the darkness all night long. Poor Ammal. Yes, by the end of the chapter, Teddy bags his Caribou. It is hard to imagine Caribou that far south.

Roosevelt is famous for his run on sentences. It seems he had a difficult time ending a thought. Or maybe he was too cheap to hire an editor. Roosevelt wrote about 35 books over his lifetime on diverse topics; many about hunting and frontier living. Wilderness Hunter is primarily a cover to cover hunting trip. Most of Roosevelt’s stories are very contemporary; hunting stories that could have been written last week. But Roosevelt was writing in the final years of the Indian wars when the frontier was still fresh and dangers lurked around every bend in the game trail. I enjoyed this book completely but be prepared for a very different perspective on wildlife conservation and frontier race relations.”