#legends – Sasysquatchgirl

The Shunka Warak’in: A Cryptid Bridging Native Lore and Pioneer Tales…

And now for something completely different… this weird creature called the Shunka Warak’in. Often dubbed the “Rocky Mountain Hyena” or simply “the Beast,” this wolf-like creature has slinked through Native American folklore and settler tales,and maybe even the Ice Age.

Roots in Native American Lore: The Dog-Snatcher of the Plains

Long before European settlers arrived, the Shunka Warak’in was a figure in Native American traditions, particularly among the Ioway (Iowa) tribe and neighboring groups like the Lakota and Shoshone in the Great Plains and Midwest regions. The name itself, “Shunka Warak’in,” translates roughly to “carries off dogs” in the Ioway language, fitting for a beast notorious for sneaking into villages under the cover of night to snatch canines right from under their owners’ noses.

Descriptions from oral histories paint it as larger than a wolf, with dark, shaggy fur, high shoulders, and a sloping back that gives it a hyena-like silhouette. It wasn’t just a scavenger; this cryptid was bold, aggressive, and eerily unintimidated by humans or campfires. Tribes like the Ioway distinguished it clearly from ordinary wolves, they knew their local wildlife intimately, and this was something else to them.

One tale, shared by Ioway historic preservationist Lance Foster, recounts a fierce battle where warriors slew a Shunka Warak’in. Victorious, they fashioned pieces of its hide into sacred war bundles or medicine pouches, believing the creature’s resilience would make them “as hard to kill” as the beast itself. In these cultures, the Shunka Warak’in wasn’t merely a monster; it symbolized the perils of the untamed frontier.

Pioneer Encounters: Excerpts from a Naturalist’s Memoir

Fast-forward to the late 1800s, when white settlers in Montana’s Madison River Valley began reporting encounters that eerily mirrored the Native tales. The most famous account comes from rancher Israel Ammon Hutchins, whose story was immortalized by his grandson, zoologist Ross E. Hutchins, in the 1977 book Trails to Nature’s Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist (with a 1997 reprint).

Hutchins recounts his grandfather’s chilling brushes with the creature in vivid detail. One excerpt describes an early sighting:

“One winter morning my grandfather was aroused by the barking of dogs. He discovered that a wolf-like beast of dark color was chasing my grandmother’s geese. He fired at it but missed and ran off towards the river.”

The beast returned repeatedly, prompting more confrontations. Eventually, Israel succeeded: “Then one morning in late January, my grandfather was alerted by the dogs, and this time he was able to kill it.” Witnesses described it as “nearly black and having high shoulders and a back that sloped downward like a hyena.”

The carcass was traded to taxidermist Joseph Sherwood, who mounted it and displayed it as the “ringdocus” or “guyasticutus”, quirky names for what became a local curiosity. It vanished for decades, known only from a grainy photo in Hutchins’ book, until its rediscovery in 2007 at the Idaho Museum of Natural History (now on display at the Madison Valley History Association Museum in Ennis, Montana).

Ross Hutchins, with his scientific background, couldn’t classify it definitively, speculating it might be an escaped hyena but noting the improbability.

Echoes from the Ice Age: The Running Hyena Connection

What if the Shunka Warak’in isn’t just myth or legend, but a remnant of prehistoric North America? Cryptozoologists often compare it to Chasmaporthetes ossifragus, the “running hyena” or “American hyena”, an extinct species that roamed the continent during the Pliocene to Pleistocene epochs (about 4.9 million to 780,000 years ago).

Unlike the bone-crushing hyenas of today, Chasmaporthetes was built for speed with long legs for chasing prey across the grasslands, with a hyena-like build but more wolfish agility. Originating in the Old World (possibly Africa, Europe, or Asia), it crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America around 5-3 million years ago, spreading south to areas like Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Mexico. Fossils are rare and fragmentary, but recent finds extend its range northward, even into Beringia and above the Arctic Circle.

This was a top predator on the Pleistocene plains, hunting pronghorns and other fast game. Its sloping back and powerful shoulders match Shunka descriptions, fueling theories of a relict population surviving into modern times perhaps even explaining those pioneer sightings.

Wrapping Up the Mystery: Fact, Fiction, or Fossil Survivor?

The Shunka Warak’in has sightings reported from Ioway warriors, Montana ranches and possibly Ice Age fossils. Is it a misidentified wolf? An escaped exotic pet? Or maybe did this creature survive, evolve and adapt from its ice age ancestors?

Have you heard of or had an encounter with this cryptid of legend, let me know…

Have a great Thursday!

Lake St. Clair Serpent…

“While Miss Ella Burdick and
some friends were out fishing on Lake St. Clair, one evening last week at sundown, a dark peculiar looking object was seen coming up the lake. They rowed very close to the object and were able to get a good look at it. It appeared to have a head somewhat like a dog, with huge eyes protruding and tusk-like projections on each side of the head. Its body appeared to lie some seven or eight feet under water. Some fishermen also saw it and claimed it was some sort of sea serpent. It was certainly a very dangerous and horrible-looking object and was swimming at a very rapid rate.”
Excerpt from cryptozoo-oscity about the 1800s sighting of the Lake St. Clair sea serpent…

http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2025/09/lake-st-clair-serpent.html?m=1

Lochness Canera Found 55 Years Later…

“An underwater camera set up 55 years ago to try and photograph the Loch Ness Monster has been found by accident by a robot submarine.

The ocean-going yellow sub – called Boaty McBoatface – was being put through trials when its propeller snagged the mooring for the 1970s camera system.

It is believed it was lowered 180m (591ft) below the loch’s surface by the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, a group set up in the 1960s to uncover the existence of Nessie in the waters.

No footage of Nessie has been found on the camera, but one of the submarine’s engineers was able to develop a few images of the loch’s murky waters. “

Bergman and the Three Big Bears…

The Bergman Bear , is supposedly a giant bear native to Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

This giant bear ended up intriguing Swedish zoologist Sten Bergman.

Bergman first brought attention to this elusive bear in the 1920s after examining a hide that was far larger than any known bear species. He described it as having short black fur and weighing between 450 and 2,500 pounds!

Bergman believed in the existence of this giant bear due to the physical evidence he encountered such as a massive paw prints measuring nearly 15 inches long and 10 inches wide. While no firsthand sightings have been recorded since the 1920s, local legends and rumors suggest that a few might still roam the remote regions of Siberia.

George M. Eberhart who wrote the book Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology has said that if it existed, it is “likely extinct”…

But could it be possible that this bear is still roaming Siberia? I believe it is.

There are other unbelievably large bears roaming in that area, let’s look at the Kamchatka brown bear for instance. The Kamchatka brown bear is the biggest brown bear in Eurasia with a body length of 7.9 to 9.8 ft tall on its hind legs, and it weights up 1,430 lbs.

Kamchatka brown bears are generally not dangerous to humans. During a study on the animal, one researcher found only 1% of his 270 encounters ended in a human attack.

Then there is the Irkuiem bear otherwise known as the “god bear”.

The Irkuiem bear is considered a cryptid bear, also from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. According to Fandom’s Encyclopedia of Cryptids, the descriptions of its enormous size and odd limb proportions led to the theory that it could be a short-faced bear, that would mean believing they weren’t actually extinct. Now it is believed to be a unique form of brown bear.

With one large known bear strolling around, would it be so impossible to believe that these currently labeled, “cryptid bears” could be out there as well?

Let me know what you think, have a great Sunday…

William T. Cox and the Fearsome Creatures of the Lumber Woods…

William T. Cox was the first State Forester and Commissioner of Conservation for Minnesota. He worked as a forester for the United States Forest Service. In 1929 Cox even traveled to Brazil to organize the Brazilian Forest Service. But what William T. Cox is most remembered for now is a brilliant field guide he wrote back in 1910 about imaginary creatures, or cryptids as we now know them today.

This field guide, with illustrations by Coert du Bois titled Fearsome Creatures of the Lumber Woods, With a few Dessert and Mountain Beasts features fictional creatures loggers would make up in their time in the deep forests. Often to haze new lumberers with.

Some of the amazing creatures featured in this book were the hodag, and the brilliant creature, the hugag. The Hugag is described as being similar to a moose with an extensive upper-lip, preventing it from grazing, and jointless legs preventing it from lying down.

But not all were completely fictional some were just embellished from strange creatures actually reported such as the Hyampom Hog Bear and the Snoligoster. Whether you’re reading about the fictional or the embellished critters here, it makes for a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again this weekend and definitely recommend it for the lovers of cryptozoology.

Have an awesome Sunday everyone!

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumber Woods

Stalking the Mysterious Skunk Ape of Florida’s Swamplands | OutdoorHub

Stalking the Mysterious Skunk Ape of Florida’s Swamplands | OutdoorHub
— Read on www.outdoorhub.com/stories/2025/03/07/stalking-mysterious-skunk-ape-floridas-swamplands/

Bigfoot or a Neanderthal…

In the late 1960s, a Soviet historian became fascinated with reports of a giant ape-like beast roaming the mountains of Central Asia. His obsession led him to develop an elaborate theory that these sightings were not of a mysterious cryptid, but of surviving Neanderthals who had endured since the last ice age.

Born in 1905, Boris Porshnev was a Soviet historian who dedicated much of his career

to studying mainstream academic topics, like popular uprisings in 17th-century France and the Thirty Years’ War. However, his scholarly pursuits were later peppered with an unorthodox interest in cryptozoology, especially the strange reports of the so-called Almas.

For centuries, reports of the Almas have emerged from people living within the mountain system of Central and East Asia, including Mongolia, the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains, Xinjiang, Gansu and Qinghai in China, and the Tuva Republic in Siberia.

As reports continued to surface, Porshnev secured approval from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in the 1950s to formally investigate the Almas. In 1958, he led an expedition to the Pamirs of Tajikistan, accompanied by a team of folklore experts, geologists, and botanists. After collecting a load of anecdotal reports about local sightings, the commission compiled a 400-page report on the topic, concluding that the Almas was most likely real and residing in the region between the Tian Shan, Pamir, and Mongolia.

After the expedition, Porshnev began to suggest that the Almas were, in fact, a living Neanderthal. He had flirted with the idea in previous publications, but it was most explicitly laid out in his 1974 book called L’Homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant (French for Neanderthal Man is Still Alive), co-authored with explorer and prominent cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans.

“One must say that Porshnev and I were both quite convinced of the existence of wild hairy men in the broadest and loosest sense,” Heuvelmans wrote in the intro to Porshnev’s other book, The Struggle for Troglodytes.

“However, there was a point on which we never managed to agree: I saw the Himalayan snowman as an anthropoid ape while Porshnev saw an actual human, more specifically a Neanderthal man survivor from the recent Pleistocene,” he added. Fossilized remains of the extinct hominin species have been uncovered in this part of world.

You can read more from IFL Science’s article Here

But what do you think about his theory? I have always been on a line believing more that what ever this creature turns out to be, they have likely been here along. After all we know now thanks to more recent findings that several different types of hominids were existing side by side, might the infamous cryptid wandering out forests be one of them. I think yes. Man? Ape? Something in between most likely.

Maybe some day we’ll know for sure, hopefully in our lifetime…

Have a great day everyone and please I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Camper shares terrifying ‘Big Foot’ encounter miles away from Sasquatch-sighting hotspot | Daily Mail Online

A terrified camper claims he was left cowering in his tent after being woken up by the 15-foot sasquatch.
— Read on www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14473615/Camper-Big-Foot-encounter-Sasquatch-sighting-hotspot.html

The Deer Woman…

Shedevrum AI

“In the moonlit woods where shadows play

Roams the Deer Woman, wild and fey

With eyes like embers, dark and deep

She wanders through the forest’s keep

Her form shifts in the twilight’s glow

Half a woman, half a doe

She tempts the heart with graceful ease

A spirit of the ancient trees

Whispered tales of love and fear

Of those who dared to venture near

With every step, her mystique grows

A haunting presence, soft and close

Legends speak of her allure

A warning wrapped in beauty pure

She beckons with a lusty siren’s call

To those who heed, they’ll rise or fall

In her gaze, both life and death

A fleeting touch, a stolen breath

She dances in the moon’s embrace

A mystery, a timeless grace

Beware the Deer Woman’s charm

For in her arms lies both harm and calm

A story woven in the night

A legend in the pale moonlight”

Bigfoot in Books… The Story of Man

“Of Giant Apes and Snowmen
IN the 1930’s, Ralph von Koenigswald, who discovered the first man-ape jaw in Java and some human remains to be described shortly, combed the Chinese drugstores of several Oriental cities, in search of fossil teeth. For centuries the Chinese have used the bones of fossil animals to cure their ills, in the belief that courage, strength, and virility come from the powdered remains of large, strong, and potent animals. Their cure for toothache is powdered teeth. Out of thousands of teeth, von Koenigswald found, in Hong Kong, six of particular interest.
They are human-like in form, but six times as large, in volume, as those of living men. Between the stubs of the roots, gnawed by cave porcupines, he detected powdered yellow earth, which told him that the teeth had come from caves near the Yangtze gorges.
He called the animal to whom the teeth had belonged Giganto-pithecus, the giant ape. For years some paleontologists believed that Gigantopithecus was an ancestor of man, but in the late 1950’s Chinese scientists found three jaws of this animal, which was an aberrant ape. It lived in the Pleistocene, too late to be our ancestor.
An even more famous and fabulous animal is the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman. His tracks have been found in snow and mud in the Himalayas, and he has been reported as far north as Mongolia. Eyewitnesses have described him as tall, two-legged, tawny-coated, maned, big-muzzled, and big-toothed. Several expeditions to Nepal and Soviet Central Asia have failed to find this elusive animal, whose numerous tracks are so far unique.
Even if it turns out to be a primate it is more likely to be a survival of Gigantopithecus than an Australopithecine.”

From, The Story of Man
Carleton S. Coon, 1962