WEBVTT - TR vs. Bigfoot 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:05.800 History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:20.760 Mental Floss. Hello and welcome to a very special bonus 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:24.200 episode of History Versus, a podcast from Mental Flaws and 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:26.880 I Heart Radio about how your favorite historical figures faced 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.120 off against their greatest foes. I'm your host Aaron McCarthy, 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:32.560 and today we're going to be exploring a tale Theodore 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.199 Roosevelt wrote about in his book The Wilderness Hunter, a 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:37.599 Memoir of his time on the Frontier, which was published 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.760 in Many of the stories in the book are just 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:42.920 what you'd expect from a big game hunter like tr 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:45.839 but there's one unusual tale that stands out from the 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.560 rest when the Roosevelt called a goblin story, which rather 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.320 impressed me. Here to tell us about what's now known 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.200 as the Bauman Incident is Mental Flaws science editor Cat Long, 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:59.680 who wrote a piece about the event for US A 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.000 couple years ago. I visited a small village on the 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.520 central coast of British Columbia where members of the kittasue 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.120 hey Hey First Nation have cultural stories about Sasquatches or 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:11.760 buckwhists in the local language. They also shared with me 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.720 a lot of stories about Sasquatches and their personal encounters 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.200 with them um in their ancestral territory? Is that why 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:19.039 when I asked someone to write this story you volunteered 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:23.400 so quickly. Yes, it is okay. So what was the 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:32.240 Bowman incident? The Bowman incident supposedly occurred in the mountains 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.480 of western Montana and northwestern Wyoming, which in the late 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:39.399 nineteenth century was still the Montana territory. On one of 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:41.760 trs hunting trips to the region, he met a grizzled 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.560 old trapper named Bowman who told him a wild tale. 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.640 Tr doesn't mention Bowman's first name, but it may have 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:53.680 been Carl L. Bauman. According to a Montana Historical Society journal, 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:58.080 this Carl L. Bauman was born in Germany and he 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.320 moved west in the eighteen sixties and died in Montana 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.520 in nine So that timeline and geographical detail fits with 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:08.400 TR's account, but we don't have any proof that he 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:12.160 was the one. Bowman told TR how as a young man, 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:14.440 he and a friend went to the Montana for Us 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.120 to hunt beaver, and they set up their traps in 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.520 a mountain pass that had been the scene of another 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.680 trapper's mysterious, gruesome death the year before. So over a 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.440 few days and nights, Bowman and his friend were tormented 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:30.440 by a strange animal that destroyed their camp and howl 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:32.760 with the cover of the trees, and watched them as 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.560 they slept in all kinds of like creepy activities. And 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.720 in the morning they found footprints indicating that the creature 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.800 walked upright. Finally, after a few days of this, they 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.960 couldn't take it anymore, and as they packed up to leave, 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.080 Balman had to walk a few miles away to gather 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.640 ups and beaver traps from stream, and when he returned 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:54.359 to the campsite, he found his friend dead with fang 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:56.960 marks in his neck. The scariest part about it was 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:00.320 that the beast had not devoured the flesh, but early 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.679 and this is what tr wrote, romped and gambled round 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.280 it in an uncouth, ferocious glee. What did they think 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.440 was the culprit? Tr rights in the beginning of the 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:14.440 story that the culprit could have been quote merely some 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.720 abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast, but no man can say. 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:21.560 He also suggests that Bowman thought it was something either 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:25.640 half human or half devil, some great goblin beast. Bowman 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.600 doesn't tell tr what he thought it was, and tr 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:30.560 never comes right out and says it. But he seemed 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.840 to imply that it was a sasquatch. But he wouldn't 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.360 have called it a sasquatch or a bigfoot because according 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:38.920 to the Oxford English Dictionary, we weren't even using those 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.760 words yet. Sasquatch didn't come around until the late nineteen 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:45.000 twenties and bigfoot until the late nineteen fifties. So anyway, 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.080 why do people think this incident involved a sasquatch? Was 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.280 that something that they believed in? At that time? Tales 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.640 of hairy giants or wild men of the forest were 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.000 already circulating around the Pacific Northwest, and indigenous people's in 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.720 the region had led including saucequatch like characters. So they 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:05.800 shared these tales of seeing and interacting with the actual 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.480 sasquatches with the white trappers that they met, and then 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.560 the white trappers and hunters had picked up the tail 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:13.480 and retold the story. Are there any differences between what's 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.839 in this account and what's in the account of indigenous 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:21.160 people's encounters with the sasquatch? The kids who say that 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:24.360 saucewatches are shy and generally stay out of people's way, 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:28.200 and they are definitely not known as bloodthirsty murderers. But 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.720 they do, however, scream really loudly in this really high pitched, 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:36.599 freaky sound, and they also really stink, and tr mentioned 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.640 those two characteristics in his account of the Baman incident 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:41.560 as well. So what are some of the encounters that 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.279 the Kidtasu told you about with Sasquatch. I remember one story, 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.200 um that was told to me by one of the 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.960 leaders in the community that they were out overnight on 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:52.560 a beach gathering clams because it was like the time 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:54.560 of year where they could where the tide was out 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:56.400 and they could dig them up out at the beach 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.800 really easily. So they've been doing this all night and 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.919 were sort of gathered around the beach. Some of the 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.280 members of the group heard this crazy scream coming out 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:08.920 of the woods. But they looked over to the elder 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:10.760 in the group, and the elder wasn't doing anything. He 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.159 didn't seem alarmed at all, so they were like, okay, well, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.719 we'll just continue doing our thing. But they kept hearing 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.320 this scream, you know, just out of the woods, and 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.600 it's very quiet up there, like it's really I mean, 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.400 it would have been shocking, and so kind of gathered 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:27.320 closer and closer and closer to the boat that they 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.920 had all come in on. The elder said, why aren't 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:33.039 you out gathering clamps? You know what's going on? And 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:37.719 and all of a sudden, this piercing, super loud scream 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:42.640 just came out of the woods, and he suddenly looked 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.400 incredibly shocked and started banging like the anchor on the boat, 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.719 trying to scare whatever it was away, And everyone jumped 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:49.880 in the boat and just motored off the beach like 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.480 as fast as they could. So in that story, you know, 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:56.680 we hear we see like the sauswatch screaming. They didn't 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.600 see him, you know, it really stayed out of sight. 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.400 But it was kind of like the Sasquatch might have 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:04.000 been a little curious about what they were doing and 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:06.040 was just trying to get their attention. But then they 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.360 just got the hell out of there. They were like, 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:11.800 we don't see you, and based on that noise, we 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.480 do not want to see you. How often are they 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.320 having encounters like these? I mean, are they common? A 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.239 lot of people in the village have had them, um, 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.640 but they don't happen like, you know, every day or 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:26.400 anything like that. They might happen like to each person 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:28.760 maybe like a few times in their life. And what 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:33.560 did they say to Western sciences belief that Sasquatch isn't real? 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.120 They understand like a lot of people, I don't think 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:37.720 that they're real, or they don't believe them when they 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:39.760 say that they've seen them with their own eyes. And 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.200 their response to that is, well, you know, we don't 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.200 need some Western scientists telling me whether they exist or not. 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:49.400 Like I've seen them, or elders in our community, you know, 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:51.840 have seen them and I believe what they say or 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.920 our stories over generations and generations all talk about them, 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.000 So how can they not exist? Yeah? And the one 0:06:58.040 --> 0:06:59.960 thing that I thought was really interesting from your peace 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:01.680 was I think he went back to one of the 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:05.520 elders and you asked him, right, and he said, you know, 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.320 just because we haven't found like a skeleton or bones 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:10.640 or anything doesn't mean anything. I've never found a bear 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.680 skeleton in the woods either, exactly. A pretty good point. Yeah, Yeah, 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:16.560 it really makes you think, you know, like we know 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:18.920 a lot about what's out in the forest, but there's 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.280 a lot that we don't know, and so we'll just 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:25.080 have to kind of leave that where it is. So 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.480 Tira was a pretty practical dude, and he was not 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:32.280 really given to flights of fancy, So how did he 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.640 describe what happened here? Tr said that Bauman was of 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.880 German ancestry, must have heard all kinds of ghost and 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.440 goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.320 his mind. He also said that Bauman had heard tales 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:50.800 from the Native American medicine men of snow walkers, specters, 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.200 and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest. He 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.720 says that Bauman must have believed what he said, for 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.400 he could hardly repress a shutter at certain points in 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.160 the tail. Have any scientists thought about what the animal 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.760 actually was? I don't think any real scientists have looked 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.200 into this because from a scientific investigation point of view, 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.880 there aren't many specific clues to go on, and and 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.240 no physical evidence that could be tested for like sasquatch, 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.280 d an a or they don't have any material to 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:22.679 test for stable isotopes, which can show where an animal 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:24.760 has been or what it's eaten or that kind of thing. 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.480 So besides the walking on two feet thing. To me, 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:30.880 it kind of sounds like it could be a mountain lion. 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.360 People say that a cougar screaming sounds like a woman 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.320 screaming for her life. Tierra himself once said, no, man 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:40.439 could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound. What 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.320 I was thinking is maybe a cougar was attacking a 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.360 bear that was walking up, which would cover all the 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:52.600 bases that was definitely, it was definitely, definitely it. Um Well, 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:54.439 I guess this is just one of those mysteries that 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.319 we are never going to solve. Thanks to cat Long 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.199 for joining us, and thanks for listening to the special 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:01.880 bonus episode of History Versus. We'll be back with another 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:04.840 bonus episode in a few weeks. History Versus is hosted 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.080 by me Aeron McCarthy. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.040 Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The show is edited by 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.640 Dylan Fagan and Lobra Lante. History Versus is the production 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:16.199 of iHeart Radio and Mental Floss.