In his 1893 book The Wilderness Hunter, TR wrote about what he called "a goblin story that really impressed" him. Mental Floss Science Editor Kat Long joins Erin to discuss "The Bauman Incident."
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History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. Hello and welcome to a very special bonus episode of History Versus, a podcast from Mental Flaws and I Heart Radio about how your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host Aaron McCarthy, and today we're going to be exploring a tale Theodore Roosevelt wrote about in his book The Wilderness Hunter, a Memoir of his time on the Frontier, which was published in Many of the stories in the book are just what you'd expect from a big game hunter like tr but there's one unusual tale that stands out from the rest when the Roosevelt called a goblin story, which rather impressed me. Here to tell us about what's now known as the Bauman Incident is Mental Flaws science editor Cat Long, who wrote a piece about the event for US A couple years ago. I visited a small village on the central coast of British Columbia where members of the kittasue hey Hey First Nation have cultural stories about Sasquatches or buckwhists in the local language. They also shared with me a lot of stories about Sasquatches and their personal encounters with them um in their ancestral territory? Is that why when I asked someone to write this story you volunteered so quickly. Yes, it is okay. So what was the Bowman incident? The Bowman incident supposedly occurred in the mountains of western Montana and northwestern Wyoming, which in the late nineteenth century was still the Montana territory. On one of trs hunting trips to the region, he met a grizzled old trapper named Bowman who told him a wild tale. Tr doesn't mention Bowman's first name, but it may have been Carl L. Bauman. According to a Montana Historical Society journal, this Carl L. Bauman was born in Germany and he moved west in the eighteen sixties and died in Montana in nine So that timeline and geographical detail fits with TR's account, but we don't have any proof that he was the one. Bowman told TR how as a young man, he and a friend went to the Montana for Us to hunt beaver, and they set up their traps in a mountain pass that had been the scene of another trapper's mysterious, gruesome death the year before. So over a few days and nights, Bowman and his friend were tormented by a strange animal that destroyed their camp and howl with the cover of the trees, and watched them as they slept in all kinds of like creepy activities. And in the morning they found footprints indicating that the creature walked upright. Finally, after a few days of this, they couldn't take it anymore, and as they packed up to leave, Balman had to walk a few miles away to gather ups and beaver traps from stream, and when he returned to the campsite, he found his friend dead with fang marks in his neck. The scariest part about it was that the beast had not devoured the flesh, but early and this is what tr wrote, romped and gambled round it in an uncouth, ferocious glee. What did they think was the culprit? Tr rights in the beginning of the story that the culprit could have been quote merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast, but no man can say. He also suggests that Bowman thought it was something either half human or half devil, some great goblin beast. Bowman doesn't tell tr what he thought it was, and tr never comes right out and says it. But he seemed to imply that it was a sasquatch. But he wouldn't have called it a sasquatch or a bigfoot because according to the Oxford English Dictionary, we weren't even using those words yet. Sasquatch didn't come around until the late nineteen twenties and bigfoot until the late nineteen fifties. So anyway, why do people think this incident involved a sasquatch? Was that something that they believed in? At that time? Tales of hairy giants or wild men of the forest were already circulating around the Pacific Northwest, and indigenous people's in the region had led including saucequatch like characters. So they shared these tales of seeing and interacting with the actual sasquatches with the white trappers that they met, and then the white trappers and hunters had picked up the tail and retold the story. Are there any differences between what's in this account and what's in the account of indigenous people's encounters with the sasquatch? The kids who say that saucewatches are shy and generally stay out of people's way, and they are definitely not known as bloodthirsty murderers. But they do, however, scream really loudly in this really high pitched, freaky sound, and they also really stink, and tr mentioned those two characteristics in his account of the Baman incident as well. So what are some of the encounters that the Kidtasu told you about with Sasquatch. I remember one story, um that was told to me by one of the leaders in the community that they were out overnight on a beach gathering clams because it was like the time of year where they could where the tide was out and they could dig them up out at the beach really easily. So they've been doing this all night and were sort of gathered around the beach. Some of the members of the group heard this crazy scream coming out of the woods. But they looked over to the elder in the group, and the elder wasn't doing anything. He didn't seem alarmed at all, so they were like, okay, well, we'll just continue doing our thing. But they kept hearing this scream, you know, just out of the woods, and it's very quiet up there, like it's really I mean, it would have been shocking, and so kind of gathered closer and closer and closer to the boat that they had all come in on. The elder said, why aren't you out gathering clamps? You know what's going on? And and all of a sudden, this piercing, super loud scream just came out of the woods, and he suddenly looked incredibly shocked and started banging like the anchor on the boat, trying to scare whatever it was away, And everyone jumped in the boat and just motored off the beach like as fast as they could. So in that story, you know, we hear we see like the sauswatch screaming. They didn't see him, you know, it really stayed out of sight. But it was kind of like the Sasquatch might have been a little curious about what they were doing and was just trying to get their attention. But then they just got the hell out of there. They were like, we don't see you, and based on that noise, we do not want to see you. How often are they having encounters like these? I mean, are they common? A lot of people in the village have had them, um, but they don't happen like, you know, every day or anything like that. They might happen like to each person maybe like a few times in their life. And what did they say to Western sciences belief that Sasquatch isn't real? They understand like a lot of people, I don't think that they're real, or they don't believe them when they say that they've seen them with their own eyes. And their response to that is, well, you know, we don't need some Western scientists telling me whether they exist or not. Like I've seen them, or elders in our community, you know, have seen them and I believe what they say or our stories over generations and generations all talk about them, So how can they not exist? Yeah? And the one thing that I thought was really interesting from your peace was I think he went back to one of the elders and you asked him, right, and he said, you know, just because we haven't found like a skeleton or bones or anything doesn't mean anything. I've never found a bear skeleton in the woods either, exactly. A pretty good point. Yeah, Yeah, it really makes you think, you know, like we know a lot about what's out in the forest, but there's a lot that we don't know, and so we'll just have to kind of leave that where it is. So Tira was a pretty practical dude, and he was not really given to flights of fancy, So how did he describe what happened here? Tr said that Bauman was of German ancestry, must have heard all kinds of ghost and goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his mind. He also said that Bauman had heard tales from the Native American medicine men of snow walkers, specters, and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest. He says that Bauman must have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a shutter at certain points in the tail. Have any scientists thought about what the animal actually was? I don't think any real scientists have looked into this because from a scientific investigation point of view, there aren't many specific clues to go on, and and no physical evidence that could be tested for like sasquatch, d an a or they don't have any material to test for stable isotopes, which can show where an animal has been or what it's eaten or that kind of thing. So besides the walking on two feet thing. To me, it kind of sounds like it could be a mountain lion. People say that a cougar screaming sounds like a woman screaming for her life. Tierra himself once said, no, man could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound. What I was thinking is maybe a cougar was attacking a bear that was walking up, which would cover all the bases that was definitely, it was definitely, definitely it. Um Well, I guess this is just one of those mysteries that we are never going to solve. Thanks to cat Long for joining us, and thanks for listening to the special bonus episode of History Versus. We'll be back with another bonus episode in a few weeks. History Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lobra Lante. History Versus is the production of iHeart Radio and Mental Floss.