“Baum, who was in the woods late in the afternoon with his stepfather to build the tree stand for future hunting use, said he immediately knew what he was seeing. Though it was late afternoon, it had been a bright, sunny day, he said.
In other words, the visibility was excellent in the area near Hanley and Woodville Roads, just east of I-71, especially with no leaves on the trees.”
The Sea Lion as originally described in the 1500s from The John Carter Brown Library
For the second in a series of curious creatures once the cryptids of their time, we talk about the sea lion.
I can imagine a sea lion must have been quite a site if you had no knowledge or experience with one, I’d probably still want to pat one even then. But let’s take a look at one of it’s first sightings in Brazil in the 1500s…
In 1564, when the Portuguese had just arrived here, they found a monster on the beach? That’s right. It was where the city of São Vicente is today, on the coast of São Paulo. The story goes back to Pero de Magalhães Gândavo, one of our first historians. He says that, one night, the Indians pulled out of the sea a creature that measured more than 3 meters in length, full of fins and hair all over its body, “and on its snout it had very large silks like whiskers”. They named it ipupiara, or water demon in ancient Tupi.”
A text from that time tells a tale that goes a little like this;
Explorer Baltasar Ferreira killed this marine monster off the coast of São Vicente (present-day Santos in the state of São Paulo) in 1564. The monster is described as being 15 palms long, covered with hair, and with silky bristles like a mustache on its muzzle.
Today they say they still aren’t sure what the creature really was, but it is thought to be a lost sea lion that swam into their waters. A statue of the creature, which is thought to be what inspired the Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Shape of Water, still stands today…
“This is my favorite piece of bigfoot art ever. It shows the story of a teen from Manitoba who claims that in 1941 he shot a sasquatch after mistaking it for a moose. At the time he was worried it was a human, so he kept quiet for decades. From the book “Strange Creatures Seldom Seen” “
This was posted on http://r/bigfoot below is from the BFRO report on this encounter. The BFRO investigator was able to go and interview this witness.
If anyone knows the artist of this painting please let me know so I may credit them.
It happened the first week of November, 1941, 62 years ago, when Peter was 17 years old. He’d gone hunting for moose with two friends around Basket Lake, a small lake about 15 miles west of Gypsumville, the town near where Peter grew up and has always lived. The two friends hunted the east side of Basket Lake; Peter wanted to go to the west side, which he knew was good for moose and elk. There was patchy snow on the ground and Peter found ambling moose tracks criss-crossing the area, indicating feeding animals.
The spotty snow made tracking difficult but he moved ahead: “…Sure enough, I did see one in the willows feeding with its head down, and it was a cow moose – no calf, I didn’t see a calf, and no horns, so I knew it was a cow. At that time the bulls still have their horns. But, in 1941 yet before the major fires, there were bush and willows so thick that you couldn’t believe it. So you had to shoot through willows, there’s not… you didn’t always have an open shot, so… take a chance. So I did shoot, because I knew… take one or two steps and… [It would be gone].”
And… I looked in the willows… again, and I could see all this hair, so I thought to myself ‘Well, I’ll slow you up,’ and I took a good aim and I fired. It disappeared… looked like I got it, so I walked up to it slowly… It wasn’t far, 45 yards, only – ‘cause that’s about as far as you could see in that stuff – if it was that far. But I took my time, because when you approach a big game animal you have to approach carefully. You carry your gun across your chest with your hand on the breach, ready to fire. If it wants to jump you, you have one good shot, point blank. Don’t raise the gun to your shoulder, just turn it and pull the trigger. That’s the last chance you got. Because a big game animal, he gets you, you’ve had it.
I told a few folks about this over the years and they think I was nuts. But doesn’t matter what they think. I was close enough to know what it was. I would say about less than 50 ft. Right in the middle of a fire road.
In December 1977, my dad, uncle and my dad’s other friends and myself went up to the cabin owned by a hunters club in Gardner, Mass. We went to spend the night, cook food and my dad and his friends like to play cards after eating supper. Myself and a friend used the snowmobile with a sled attached to the back, we took turns driving the ski doo around and the other would stand on the foot rest on the sled.
The area was in northern central Massachusetts, very close to New Hampshire boarder. The cabin is in Ashburnham Mass. It’s about 2.5 miles up a fire road called Old Colony Road. I remember it was a snowy winter that year. The area where we saw this thing was right on the edge of a swamp, old train tracks run right thru the area and crosses the fire road that we used to get to the cabin.
It was about 4 p.m. or so, it was just getting a little dark. My friend and I left the cabin with the snowmobile, he was driving first and I was on the foot rest on the sled. We left and came up to the swamp, crossed over the tracks and headed down the road about 50 ft or so. It was getting a little late and we decided to not go to far so we turned the sled around on the road. Had to pick it up because of the narrowness of the road. Once we turned it around it was my turn to drive. So now we’re facing the tracks and the swamp is on both sides of the road. the road goes right thru the swamp and the tracks cross right by the edge of the swamp.
At this point I looked behind me to see if my friend was on the sled and holding on, when I looked up I saw this creature walking on 2 legs like a human. He crossed right by the tracks at the edge of the swamp and crossed the road right in front of us. I remember it looking at us and I remember the arms swing clearly. Just like the pictures I have seen from your site. Very similar. Anyway, I remember the its size, that’s what was scarey, so large, I’d say about 7to 9 ft high, weight about 400 to 500 pounds. At least for something that size it would most likely be heavy. I know the woods there well. I’ve spent years in the military and hunt every year. I have been trained in tracking and survival in the woods so I know what I am saying and what I saw. But the thing took about 2 steps and he was across the road. All black hair, didn’t notice any smells, but I can tell you this. I won’t forget that day ever. It was cold anyway and with no breeze the smell of it wouldn’t travel far. My friend was shocked. He won’t even mention it when I see him these days. He told one person and they treated him like he was on drugs. So thats why I never wanted to tell to many people.”
Crews found not one, but two strange footprints in his niece’s driveway near Payne’s Chapel Road, just two miles from the Bulloch/Jenkins County line Tuesday. The prints appear humanlike, but only show four toes. The largest measures 19″ long and 11″ wide, and was way deeper than Crews was able to make one of his own prints, and he weighs about 250 pounds. In fact, the off prints dwarf his size 13 EEE shoe prints, he said. Crews’ niece was taking her children to the end of the driveway Tuesday morning when she spotted the prints and called Crews. “She said she heard the dogs, which were in the house, raising cain around 4 a.m.,” he said. “They wouldn’t shut up.”
Sasquatch men, remnants of a lost race of “wild men” who inhabited the rocky regions of British Columbia centuries ago, are reported roaming the province again.
After an absence of several months from the district of Harrison Mills, 50 miles east of Vancouver, the long, weird wolf- like howls are being heard again and two of the hairy monsters were reported seen in the Morris Valley on the Harrison river.
Residents in the district tell of seeing the two giants leaping and bounding out of the forest and striding across the duck-feeding ground, wallowing now and again in the bog and mire and long waving swamp grasses.
The strange men, it was reported, after emerging from the woods, came leaping down the jagged rocky hillside with the agility and lightness of mountain goats.
Snatches of their weird language floated on the breeze across the lake to the pioneer settlement at the foot of the hills.
The giants walked with an easy gait across the swamp flats and at the Morris Creek, in the shadow of Little Mystery Mountain, straddled a floating log, which they propelled with their long, hairy hands and huge feet across the sluggish glacial stream to the opposite side.
There they abandoned the log and climbed hand over hand up the almost perpendicular cliff at a point known as Gibraltar and disappeared into the wooded wilderness at the top of the ridge. They carried two large clubs and walked around a herd of cattle directly in their path.
The return of the giants to the legendary stronghold of the Sasquatch monsters recalls the narrow escape of an Indian at the same spot last March, a huge boulder narrowly missed his canoe while he was fishing and looking up he said he saw a huge and hairy monster stamping his feet and gesticulating wildly, The Indian escaped by cutting his fishing tackle and paddling away. The same Indian declared the Sasquatch twice have stolen salmon which he tied in a tree outside his house out of reach of the dogs The latest appearance of the monsters was peaceful. They avoided the trails usually used by the people of the valley and molested neither cattle nor human beings.
People who have reported seeing the giants on their rare appearances described them as “ferociou looking wild men, nine feet tall and covered from head to toe with thick black hair.”
The Waterbury Democrat (Waterbury, Conn.), October 31, 1935
I really enjoy these early sightings, they seem more sincere however fanciful. The rate bigfoot is currently reported being seen feels somehow less believable to me. So I almost feel more comfortable going into the past encounters than I do some present ones. And of course you also have the legendary cryptozoologists of the time as well. History has always been more my speed…
“In or round 1557, Jean Lerius and two other members of the company were trekking through a forest in the interior of Brazil with some local Tupinamba Indian guides but armed only with swords or bows and arrows when, while passing through a deep valley there, they abruptly encountered at a distance of only thirty paces or so a very large reptilian creature of extremely distinctive appearance, squatting on top of a hill in the heat of noon, with one of its forefeet raised. Lerius described it as a lizard bigger than the body of a man, measuring 5-6 ft long, yet its most eyecatching feature was not its size but rather its extraordinary tegument. For according to Lerius, this unfamiliar animal was entirely covered in rough white scales that resembled oyster shells (and presumably, therefore, were opalescent, or nacreous, i.e. resembling mother of pearl?”
It must be amazing to have possibly been the first learned human to see a creature like this. The very roots of cryptozoology, to find undiscovered creatures such as this. I feel like people believe it’s just about filming a weekend stake out at a bigfoot hotspot. And as fun as that is, don’t forget to look around the rest of the forest as you may be the next person to discover something new.
Looking for bigfoot evidence is important to me, as you probably know, but learning the fascinating historical tales of every creature’s first appearance to man is wonderful and fascinating…
TGIF everyone, be safe in the forest this weekend…
And follow along with the Shuker Nature’s blog if you get a chance, link is above….
Sasysquatchgirl 