Speaker 1: History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Mental Floss. Hello and welcome to a very special bonus
Speaker 1: episode of History Versus, a podcast from Mental Flaws and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio about how your favorite historical figures faced
Speaker 1: off against their greatest foes. I'm your host Aaron McCarthy,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to be exploring a tale Theodore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt wrote about in his book The Wilderness Hunter, a
Speaker 1: Memoir of his time on the Frontier, which was published
Speaker 1: in Many of the stories in the book are just
Speaker 1: what you'd expect from a big game hunter like tr
Speaker 1: but there's one unusual tale that stands out from the
Speaker 1: rest when the Roosevelt called a goblin story, which rather
Speaker 1: impressed me. Here to tell us about what's now known
Speaker 1: as the Bauman Incident is Mental Flaws science editor Cat Long,
Speaker 1: who wrote a piece about the event for US A
Speaker 1: couple years ago. I visited a small village on the
Speaker 1: central coast of British Columbia where members of the kittasue
Speaker 1: hey Hey First Nation have cultural stories about Sasquatches or
Speaker 1: buckwhists in the local language. They also shared with me
Speaker 1: a lot of stories about Sasquatches and their personal encounters
Speaker 1: with them um in their ancestral territory? Is that why
Speaker 1: when I asked someone to write this story you volunteered
Speaker 1: so quickly. Yes, it is okay. So what was the
Speaker 1: Bowman incident? The Bowman incident supposedly occurred in the mountains
Speaker 1: of western Montana and northwestern Wyoming, which in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century was still the Montana territory. On one of
Speaker 1: trs hunting trips to the region, he met a grizzled
Speaker 1: old trapper named Bowman who told him a wild tale.
Speaker 1: Tr doesn't mention Bowman's first name, but it may have
Speaker 1: been Carl L. Bauman. According to a Montana Historical Society journal,
Speaker 1: this Carl L. Bauman was born in Germany and he
Speaker 1: moved west in the eighteen sixties and died in Montana
Speaker 1: in nine So that timeline and geographical detail fits with
Speaker 1: TR's account, but we don't have any proof that he
Speaker 1: was the one. Bowman told TR how as a young man,
Speaker 1: he and a friend went to the Montana for Us
Speaker 1: to hunt beaver, and they set up their traps in
Speaker 1: a mountain pass that had been the scene of another
Speaker 1: trapper's mysterious, gruesome death the year before. So over a
Speaker 1: few days and nights, Bowman and his friend were tormented
Speaker 1: by a strange animal that destroyed their camp and howl
Speaker 1: with the cover of the trees, and watched them as
Speaker 1: they slept in all kinds of like creepy activities. And
Speaker 1: in the morning they found footprints indicating that the creature
Speaker 1: walked upright. Finally, after a few days of this, they
Speaker 1: couldn't take it anymore, and as they packed up to leave,
Speaker 1: Balman had to walk a few miles away to gather
Speaker 1: ups and beaver traps from stream, and when he returned
Speaker 1: to the campsite, he found his friend dead with fang
Speaker 1: marks in his neck. The scariest part about it was
Speaker 1: that the beast had not devoured the flesh, but early
Speaker 1: and this is what tr wrote, romped and gambled round
Speaker 1: it in an uncouth, ferocious glee. What did they think
Speaker 1: was the culprit? Tr rights in the beginning of the
Speaker 1: story that the culprit could have been quote merely some
Speaker 1: abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast, but no man can say.
Speaker 1: He also suggests that Bowman thought it was something either
Speaker 1: half human or half devil, some great goblin beast. Bowman
Speaker 1: doesn't tell tr what he thought it was, and tr
Speaker 1: never comes right out and says it. But he seemed
Speaker 1: to imply that it was a sasquatch. But he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have called it a sasquatch or a bigfoot because according
Speaker 1: to the Oxford English Dictionary, we weren't even using those
Speaker 1: words yet. Sasquatch didn't come around until the late nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties and bigfoot until the late nineteen fifties. So anyway,
Speaker 1: why do people think this incident involved a sasquatch? Was
Speaker 1: that something that they believed in? At that time? Tales
Speaker 1: of hairy giants or wild men of the forest were
Speaker 1: already circulating around the Pacific Northwest, and indigenous people's in
Speaker 1: the region had led including saucequatch like characters. So they
Speaker 1: shared these tales of seeing and interacting with the actual
Speaker 1: sasquatches with the white trappers that they met, and then
Speaker 1: the white trappers and hunters had picked up the tail
Speaker 1: and retold the story. Are there any differences between what's
Speaker 1: in this account and what's in the account of indigenous
Speaker 1: people's encounters with the sasquatch? The kids who say that
Speaker 1: saucewatches are shy and generally stay out of people's way,
Speaker 1: and they are definitely not known as bloodthirsty murderers. But
Speaker 1: they do, however, scream really loudly in this really high pitched,
Speaker 1: freaky sound, and they also really stink, and tr mentioned
Speaker 1: those two characteristics in his account of the Baman incident
Speaker 1: as well. So what are some of the encounters that
Speaker 1: the Kidtasu told you about with Sasquatch. I remember one story,
Speaker 1: um that was told to me by one of the
Speaker 1: leaders in the community that they were out overnight on
Speaker 1: a beach gathering clams because it was like the time
Speaker 1: of year where they could where the tide was out
Speaker 1: and they could dig them up out at the beach
Speaker 1: really easily. So they've been doing this all night and
Speaker 1: were sort of gathered around the beach. Some of the
Speaker 1: members of the group heard this crazy scream coming out
Speaker 1: of the woods. But they looked over to the elder
Speaker 1: in the group, and the elder wasn't doing anything. He
Speaker 1: didn't seem alarmed at all, so they were like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just continue doing our thing. But they kept hearing
Speaker 1: this scream, you know, just out of the woods, and
Speaker 1: it's very quiet up there, like it's really I mean,
Speaker 1: it would have been shocking, and so kind of gathered
Speaker 1: closer and closer and closer to the boat that they
Speaker 1: had all come in on. The elder said, why aren't
Speaker 1: you out gathering clamps? You know what's going on? And
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, this piercing, super loud scream
Speaker 1: just came out of the woods, and he suddenly looked
Speaker 1: incredibly shocked and started banging like the anchor on the boat,
Speaker 1: trying to scare whatever it was away, And everyone jumped
Speaker 1: in the boat and just motored off the beach like
Speaker 1: as fast as they could. So in that story, you know,
Speaker 1: we hear we see like the sauswatch screaming. They didn't
Speaker 1: see him, you know, it really stayed out of sight.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of like the Sasquatch might have
Speaker 1: been a little curious about what they were doing and
Speaker 1: was just trying to get their attention. But then they
Speaker 1: just got the hell out of there. They were like,
Speaker 1: we don't see you, and based on that noise, we
Speaker 1: do not want to see you. How often are they
Speaker 1: having encounters like these? I mean, are they common? A
Speaker 1: lot of people in the village have had them, um,
Speaker 1: but they don't happen like, you know, every day or
Speaker 1: anything like that. They might happen like to each person
Speaker 1: maybe like a few times in their life. And what
Speaker 1: did they say to Western sciences belief that Sasquatch isn't real?
Speaker 1: They understand like a lot of people, I don't think
Speaker 1: that they're real, or they don't believe them when they
Speaker 1: say that they've seen them with their own eyes. And
Speaker 1: their response to that is, well, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: need some Western scientists telling me whether they exist or not.
Speaker 1: Like I've seen them, or elders in our community, you know,
Speaker 1: have seen them and I believe what they say or
Speaker 1: our stories over generations and generations all talk about them,
Speaker 1: So how can they not exist? Yeah? And the one
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was really interesting from your peace
Speaker 1: was I think he went back to one of the
Speaker 1: elders and you asked him, right, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: just because we haven't found like a skeleton or bones
Speaker 1: or anything doesn't mean anything. I've never found a bear
Speaker 1: skeleton in the woods either, exactly. A pretty good point. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really makes you think, you know, like we know
Speaker 1: a lot about what's out in the forest, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot that we don't know, and so we'll just
Speaker 1: have to kind of leave that where it is. So
Speaker 1: Tira was a pretty practical dude, and he was not
Speaker 1: really given to flights of fancy, So how did he
Speaker 1: describe what happened here? Tr said that Bauman was of
Speaker 1: German ancestry, must have heard all kinds of ghost and
Speaker 1: goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in
Speaker 1: his mind. He also said that Bauman had heard tales
Speaker 1: from the Native American medicine men of snow walkers, specters,
Speaker 1: and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest. He
Speaker 1: says that Bauman must have believed what he said, for
Speaker 1: he could hardly repress a shutter at certain points in
Speaker 1: the tail. Have any scientists thought about what the animal
Speaker 1: actually was? I don't think any real scientists have looked
Speaker 1: into this because from a scientific investigation point of view,
Speaker 1: there aren't many specific clues to go on, and and
Speaker 1: no physical evidence that could be tested for like sasquatch,
Speaker 1: d an a or they don't have any material to
Speaker 1: test for stable isotopes, which can show where an animal
Speaker 1: has been or what it's eaten or that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So besides the walking on two feet thing. To me,
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like it could be a mountain lion.
Speaker 1: People say that a cougar screaming sounds like a woman
Speaker 1: screaming for her life. Tierra himself once said, no, man
Speaker 1: could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound. What
Speaker 1: I was thinking is maybe a cougar was attacking a
Speaker 1: bear that was walking up, which would cover all the
Speaker 1: bases that was definitely, it was definitely, definitely it. Um Well,
Speaker 1: I guess this is just one of those mysteries that
Speaker 1: we are never going to solve. Thanks to cat Long
Speaker 1: for joining us, and thanks for listening to the special
Speaker 1: bonus episode of History Versus. We'll be back with another
Speaker 1: bonus episode in a few weeks. History Versus is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Aeron McCarthy. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The show is edited by
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan and Lobra Lante. History Versus is the production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Mental Floss.