REMEMBERING PEDRO – THE MISSING MINI-MUMMY OF WYOMING

Two views of Pedro plus one of his x-rays from 1950 (Wikipedia/public domain)

In a two-part ShukerNature article (click here and here) from 2009, I documented a wide range of accounts concerning mysterious dwarf-like or pygmy-like humanoid entities that have been reported across the length and breadth of North America, and are often colloquially – and collectively – referred to as littlefeet. One of the most interesting of these was Pedro, the so-called mini-mummy or mountain mummy of Wyoming, because this was an actual specimen (not just an eyewitness report or a tale from traditional folklore). Also, it had been discovered in a most unexpected location, and subsequently featured in a very intriguing chain of events. Back in 2009, my article's documentation of Pedro was fairly brief, but since then I have investigated this mystifying entity in further detail, enabling me to flesh out or highlight various aspects of its story that had previously been somewhat obscure, contradictory, or totally confused in other accounts accessed by me. Consequently, I am now presenting here a much-expanded, updated version of my original ShukerNature coverage of Pedro.

Pedro's extraordinary modern-day history may have begun one day in October 1932 (but see later for an alternative claimed date), when gold-prospectors Cecil Main (spelt 'Mayne' in some accounts) and Frank Carr blasted a hole through the wall of a ravine in the San Pedro Mountains, about 65 miles southwest of the city of Casper, Wyoming - and made a momentous discovery. The wall had been hiding a small, room-like, hitherto-sealed cavern, which contained a ledge, 2.5 ft off the ground. And sitting on that 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.

Front view of Pedro (public domain)

Sporting a tanned if wrinkled bronze-coloured skin, barrel-shaped body, well-preserved penis, 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, because one of its large eyes was half-closed. Nevertheless, it was evident that this entity had been dead for a very long time, and its death did not appear to have been a pleasant one. Its head was abnormally flat, and was covered with a dark gelatinous substance - later examinations by scientists suggested that its skull may have been smashed by an extremely heavy blow, and the gelatinous substance was congealed blood and exposed brain tissue. Also, some reports claim that it had a broken clavicle (or scapula in certain others), as well as some broken vertebrae, and pointed "front teeth".

Due to its mountain provenance, this remarkable specimen was soon dubbed Pedro by the media, following its discovery's announcement in a report by the Casper Tribune-Herald newspaper on 21 October 1932 (but once again see later for an alternative claimed date).

When Main and Carr brought Pedro back home with them to Casper, it was widely denounced as a hoax, though some locals believed that it may indeed be one of the Little People long deemed in traditional lore to exist in the mountains. Carr died shortly afterwards, and in April 1934 Main sold Pedro to Homer F. Sherill from Crawford, Nebraska, who subsequently exhibited it encased inside a large glass dome as a curio at a circus there (as well as at several sideshows elsewhere), where it was seen by Eugene Bashor in 1936. Although he was only a boy at that time, Bashor was so fascinated by Pedro's enigmatic appearance that he went on to become a leading, longstanding investigator of North American mini-mummy and littlefoot reports.

Sideshow poster for Pedro (public domain)

Sherill owned Pedro for at least 7 years, but somehow this anomalous little entity subsequently turned up at Jones Drug Store in Meeteetse, a small town in Park County, Wyoming, where it remained on display until it was spied there one day in the mid-1940s by Ivan Goodman, a used car salesman from Casper, who reputedly purchased it from the drug store's owner, Floyd Jones, for several thousand dollars. Thereafter, Goodman utilised Pedro's eyecatching appearance to attract people to his car lot, and for which it became an unofficial mascot, with images of it being placed by Goodman in advertisements for his auto dealership. Moreover, it was during its period of ownership by Goodman that Bashor saw Pedro for a second time, in 1948, sitting on Goodman's desk.

In 1950, Goodman permitted some interested scientists to examine his 'mascot' in an attempt to uncover its true nature. The most detailed examination, including an x-ray analysis, was conducted by anthropologist Dr Henry ('Harry') Shapiro from New York's American Museum of Natural History. According to a Casper Tribune-Herald report of 5 March 1950, this study confirmed that Pedro was not a fake but did indeed contain a complete if minuscule skeleton, a fully-fused skull (seemingly verifying that it was an adult humanoid, not an infant), plus a full set of teeth. Some accounts have even claimed that Shapiro opined that Pedro had been approximately 65 years old upon death; others, conversely, alleged that he had identified it as an infant - yet another source of controversy regarding Pedro.

In that same newspaper report, Goodman himself was quoted as stating: "After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years". However, such a dramatic claim as this seems unlikely to have been made by the scientists, so it may well have originated from the canny Goodman instead - possibly as an additional means of publicising his car business. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing for sure, because Goodman died later that same year.

Side view of Pedro (public domain)

Just before his death, Goodman loaned Pedro to Leonard Wadler, a New York businessman, for study purposes. However, it was never returned to Goodman's family, and Wadler moved to Florida soon afterwards, allegedly dying there during the 1980s. But what happened to Pedro? No-one knows, because no-one has been able to trace Wadler's precise movements and whereabouts once he had acquired Pedro. One report claimed that Wadler's family was contacted by (unnamed) investigators some time after his death enquiring where Pedro may now be, but that they had no idea either.

In a bid to rectify this regrettable situation, John Adolfi from Syracuse, New York, owner of the Bibleland Studios website, publicly announced on 3 February 2005 via a Casper Star-Tribune report by Brendan Burke that he would pay $10,000 for Pedro, if it still existed. He would then submit Pedro for DNA analyses, more x-ray studies, and magnetic resonance imaging in order to determine once and for all its precise identity. So far, however, Adolfi's reward remains unclaimed.

Reward poster for Pedro, issued by John Adolfi of Bibleland Studios (© John Adolfi/Bibleland Studios – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

Incidentally, back on 13 November 1936 one of Pedro's original discoverers, Cecil Main, had signed an official affidavit containing what he claimed to be the true facts behind their notable find, and which was sworn in Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, and officially recorded in Hot Springs County, Wyoming, on 16 August 1943. Oddly, however, this document contains what would appear to be some glaring inconsistencies with other versions of events.

In it, Main stated that Pedro had been discovered by them in June 1934. Conversely, as already noted in this present ShukerNature article, a report documenting that event had allegedly been published in the Casper Tribune-Herald on 21 October 1932, followed by additional articles published by this same newspaper in that same year, at least according to Brendan Burke's above-mentioned Casper Star-Tribune report from 2005. Here is what Burke wrote in it:

Mayne was prospecting for gold near Pathfinder Reservoir when an explosion he detonated revealed a small cave, according to a Oct. 21, 1932, article in the Casper Tribune-Herald. Inside the cave Mayne found the mummified remains of what looked like a tiny human.

Debate about the mummy's nature started soon after it was found. Some said it was a hoax. Others said it was the mummified remains of a baby. And others said it was one of the little people spoken about in Indian legends, according to Casper Tribune-Herald stories from 1932.

So if these supposed Casper Tribune-Herald reports from 1932 do indeed exist, then Main's claimed date of June 1934 was clearly incorrect. Main also alleged in his affidavit of November 1936 that Pedro was "now owned by Homer F. Sherill, and located in the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois". Yet once again, contemporary reports claim that Main had actually sold Pedro to Sherill in April 1934 (i.e. two months before it had even been discovered, according to the discovery date given in Main's affidavit). Moreover, as noted by Rebecca Hein in an undated online article concerning Pedro accessible within the WyoHistory website:

Archivist Armand Esai notes that the Field Museum has no record of the mummy's presence during that time. The item still could have been there on loan or for identification, but because it was not part of the museum's official collection, the mummy was not listed in the records.

As seen, the discrepancies between different accounts as to whether Shapiro had (or had not) claimed that Pedro exhibited certain adult characteristics are by no means the only contentious, contradictory aspects of Pedro's post-discovery history.

Pedro inside his glass dome, with ruler to show size (public domain)

Fortunately, at least Pedro's original x-ray plates are still on file and thus confirmed, as are some vintage photographs of it, including those presented here. Moreover, not long after Pedro's initial discovery by the two prospectors, a Mexican shepherd called José Martinez reputedly found another mummy and six separate skulls on a ranch in the same vicinity. After soon suffering a number of mishaps, however, Martinez 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 on a ledge in Kentucky's famous Mammoth Cave, and exhibited widely during the 1920s, which seemed to be only a few centuries old (later radiocarbon-dating studies, however, revealed that it was 3,000-4,000 years 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 in 1933 came upon a dead pygmy with sharp teeth in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, but both died soon afterwards, and others who saw it allegedly 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 Pedro, meanwhile, 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 family from Marin, California, that presently owns it.

This anterosuperior view of the head of an anencephalic human foetus demonstrates the disorganised connective tissue membrane that covers the top of the skull in the absence of the calvarium or skullcap (public domain)

Some researchers consider Pedro to have been a grossly-malformed human child or foetus - possibly with anencephaly, a teratological condition in which the brain has not developed fully (if at all) during foetal maturation. This latter identity was proposed for Pedro by anthropologist Prof. George W. Gill from the University of Wyoming after examining photos of it first shown to him by his students in 1971. Moreover, in 1994, after appearing with Eugene Bashor on an episode of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries hosted by Robert Stack and dealing with Pedro, Gill was contacted by a rancher from Cheyenne (Wyoming's capital) claiming to own a mini-mummy. This one proved to be a tiny blond-haired girl, only 4 in high, and dubbed Chiquita, which one of the rancher's (great-)grandfathers (reports differ) had purchased from a sheep-herder in or around 1929 and which had been kept ever since inside a trunk in his home's attic.

When Gill examined Chiquita and DNA analyses were conducted upon it, assisted by the Denver Children's Hospital, he found that it was indeed an anencephalic Native American infant (examination of a femur removed from this mini-mummy had revealed that its distal ends had not closed, a sign of infancy). In their book Mountain Spirit: The Sheep Eater Indians of Yellowstone (2006), Lawrence L. Loendorf and Nancy M. Stone stated that radiocarbon dating tests had indicated that it was around 500 years old.

With regard to Pedro, conversely, if its adult characteristics allegedly revealed by Shapiro during his 1950 study were genuine, and not erroneous identifications (or erroneous claims made by the media), they would seem to contradict an anencephalic status for it. (Incidentally, one report read by me claiming that Gill had studied Pedro's x-rays directly after Shapiro had conducted his own 1950 study of them, and that it was Shapiro who had personally given the x-rays to Gill at that time, is clearly in error, because in 1950 Gill was still only a youth.)

One of Pedro's x-rays from 1950 (public domain)

Also, why was Pedro placed on the ledge and then sealed away inside that small room-like cavern within the Pedro Mountains? After all, this does seem not only a very purposeful but also a very strange and extreme action for anyone to take with merely a malformed infant. And who placed it there anyway?

As documented in my 2009 two-part ShukerNature article on littlefeet, there are many Amerindian traditions of mysterious races of dwarves or pygmies. And some of these allegedly kill their own kind when they become old or infirm by beheading them, or by smashing their skulls - in precisely the way that Pedro and its Central American lookalike may have met their deaths. Just a coincidence?

Artistic representation of a North American littlefoot (© Tim Morris)

The story of Pedro the Wyoming mini-mummy is undoubtedly one of the most muddled, contradictory histories that I have ever investigated, so much so that I seriously doubt at this late stage in the proceedings, over 80 years since its discovery by Main and Carr, whether an entirely accurate course of events concerning this very enigmatic little entity will ever be pieced together.

Meanwhile, documenting Pedro 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.

Moreover, 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...

Seemingly not for thousands of years, but still a chilling little vignette, to say the least. And who knows - perhaps it really would have been best in this instance to have let sleeping dogs lie, or dormant dwarves dream on?

If anyone owns (or can obtain) copies of any of the Casper Tribune-Herald newspaper reports that were allegedly published in 1932 (and hence almost two years before the date of Pedro's discovery as claimed in Cecil Main's affidavit), I would love to see them! Thanks very much.

NB – As far as I aware, all illustrations included in this article are in the public domain (unless stated otherwise), including the x-rays (according to Wikipedia's entry for Pedro, they are in the public domain for the following reason: "Copyright expired because the work was published without a copyright notice and/or without the necessary copyright registration."), but in any case I am including all of them here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only.

Casper historian Bob David holding Pedro in a pre-1950 photograph (public domain)

NORTH AMERICA'S ELUSIVE BABYFEET – Part 2.

Reward poster for Pedro, the missing Wyoming mini-mummy

Herewith the second part of my survey of North America’s mysterious babyfeet and other littlefeet (click here for Part 1). 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

Iromically, the most contentious North American mini-humanoid on record is one that was actually formally examined by scientists. Yet it still remains mystifying, with a history full of contradictory claims.

This specimen's extraordinary history began one day in October 1932 (or June 1934 in some accounts), when gold-prospectors Cecil Main (spelt 'Mayne' in some reports) and Frank Carr blasted a hole through the wall of a ravine in the San Pedro Mountains, about 65 miles southwest of the city of Casper, Wyoming - and made a momentous discovery. The wall had been hiding a small, room-like, hitherto-sealed cavern, which contained a 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 this entity had been dead for a very long time, and its death did not appear to have been a pleasant one. Its head was abnormally flat, and was covered with a dark gelatinous substance - later examinations by scientists suggested that its skull may have been smashed by an extremely heavy blow, and the gelatinous substance was congealed blood and exposed brain tissue. Due to its mountain provenance, this remarkable specimen was soon dubbed Pedro by the media, following its discovery's announcement in a report by the Casper Tribune-Herald newspaper on 21 October 1932.

To cut a long and highly controversial (not to mention often contradictory) story short, Pedro became the property of used car-dealer Ivan Goodman from Casper, who purchased it during the mid-1940s from Floyd Jones, a drug store owner in the small Wyoming town of Meeteetse, where it had been on display for some years. In 1950, Goodwin made Pedro available for scientific examination, the most detailed of which, including x-ray analysis, was conducted by anthropologist Dr Henry Shapiro from the American Museum of Natural History. According to a subsequent Casper Tribune-Herald report, the examination had revealed that Pedro was not a fake but did indeed contain a complete if minuscule skeleton, a fully-fused skull (seemingly verifying that it was an adult humanoid, and not an infant - not even an anencephalous one), and also a full set of teeth. Certain other reports, conversely, allege that Shapiro had identified it as an infant.

Pedro's current whereabouts are unknown; it was last recorded in 1950. That was the year in which Goodman loaned it to a New York businessman, Leonard Wadler, who wanted to study it, but it was not returned to Goodman's family after Goodman died later that same year. Soon afterwards, Wadler moved to Florida, where he apparently died sometime during the 1980s but his movements and precise whereabouts during the intervening three decades are presently undetermined. As for Pedro: was it subsequently lost or even destroyed after being acquired by Wadler, or does someone, somewhere, still own it? No-one seems to know. Even a $10,000 reward for Pedro's discovery offered in February 2005 by Bibleland Studios founder John Adolfi has so far failed to uncover it, but its x-ray plates from 1950 are still on file, as are several vintage photos of it. Moreover, not long after Pedro's initial discovery by the two prospectors, a Mexican shepherd called Jose 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.

Some researchers have dismissed Pedro as a grossly-malformed human child or foetus (anencephaly being a popular explanation, as proposed during the 1990s on an Unsolved Mysteries TV show by University of Wyoming anthropologist Dr George Gill after viewing photos of Pedro and its x-rays), but if its alleged adult characteristics are genuine, they would conflict with this identity. And anyway, why was it placed on the ledge and then sealed away inside that small cavern within the Pedro Mountains, and by whom? After all, this seems a very strange, extreme action to take with merely a malformed infant. 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 by smashing their skulls - in precisely the way that Pedro and its Central American lookalike may have 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 constitute 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."

Moreover, 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, to say the least. And who knows - perhaps it really would have been best in this instance to have let sleeping dogs lie, or dormant dwarves dream on?

NORTH AMERICA'S ELUSIVE BABYFEET – Part 1.

A North American littlefoot or babyfoot (Tim Morris)

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, often colloquially (and collectively) labelled as ‘littlefeet’ or 'babyfeet'. This is a great tragedy, because these diminutive denizens, which appear to have been particularly abundant within the Pacific Northwest in bygone times, and to have exhibited certain characteristics associated with the Little People and sometimes even with extraterrestrial visitors, may be more than mere legends, and might actually still exist today.

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 unmistakeable 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 civilisation. 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 publicised 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.

Recognising its potential, the braves skinned the carcase and stuffed its skin to make it look as if it were still a living calf. Ever afterwards, they took this strange artefact 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.

To be continued... (click here)