New Cryptozoology Documentary - Other Northern Wildmen

[Music] last december i published a video on the legend of the nakani the red-eyed man-eating wild man of daenery indian lore said to haunt the boreal forests of northern canada and alaska the script for that video was an excerpt from my book legends of the nahani valley in which i outlined the history in folklore surrounding a mysterious region in canada's northwest territories where the headless corpses of prospectors were routinely discovered throughout the first half of the 20th century in this video i'm going to read another excerpt from that same book which touches on some of the other wild man legends endemic to the north country with a few minor exceptions the script for this video is exactly as it appears in my book legends of the nahani valley and contains some references to frontiersmen and ethnologists who featured earlier in the book with whom the casual viewer may be unfamiliar although you can absolutely understand and enjoy this video in its entirety without any knowledge of these characters any viewers interested in putting them into context can of course do so by reading my book legends of the nahani valley which you can find by clicking the link in the description without further ado here are the other northern wildmen enjoy [Music] over the years hundreds of wild man sightings have been reported on the pacific coast of alaska the historic homeland of the tlingit indians although dozens of eyewitnesses in these various reports referred to the figure they encountered as a bushman evoking the nakani of dene lore some of the descriptions they furnished correspond more closely with a classic portrait of a sasquatch a supposed ape man whose coastal range some believe extends from california to as far north as st michael alaska indeed the nakani is not the only wild man said to inhabit the north country as pierre burton put it in his 1956 book the mysterious north quote the mahoney who flipped through the peel river country in the northern yukon are enormous hairy giants with red eyes who eat human flesh and devour entire birch trees at a gulp the predatory sasquatches of british columbia's mountain caves are eight feet tall and covered with black wooly hair from head to foot there are others all akin to these the terrible brush man of the low show in the upper mackenzie with his black face and yellow eyes preying on women and children the weed ago of the barons that horrible naked cannibal his face black with frostbite his lips eaten away to expose his fang-like teeth the eight-foot head-hunting mountain men of the nahani and those imaginary beings of great slave lake whom the dog rib indians simply call the enemy and fear so greatly that they must always build their homes on islands safe from the shoreline where the enemy roam it is likely that a portion of pierre burton's succinct summary of the various wild men of the northland derives from michael h mason's aforementioned chapter in the arctic forests mason began this chapter which more broadly details the superstitions of the dene indians by stating quote it is no easy task to write on the habits and philosophy of these most interesting and attractive people for their most outstanding characteristic is general inconsistency after detailing the spiritual philosophy of the 20th century denny which he characterizes as a blend of traditional animistic beliefs and missionary introduced christianity mason went on to describe the human-like monsters in which these people very much believed chief among the devils of the gwichen wrote mason is the tinja rui or brushman he is very tall and thin with a black face and yellow eyes unquote although some authors have lumped the tinjaroi in with the nakani mason claimed that the gwychen made a distinction between this creature and the mahoney another name for the nakani and that they were far more terrified of the latter later on in this chapter mason briefly described a hostile invisible wild man called the na inn of whom quote many old men living today are afraid according to mason when a branch broke from a tree and landed on someone some old then a man would blame the incident on this mysterious creature no chapter on the wildman of the north would be complete without a nod to the kusteka the notorious land otter man of tlingit folklore the simpsion of prince rupert and terrace bc the haida of the queen charlotte islands and the nootka of western vancouver island all have their own versions of this treacherous semi-supernatural denizen of the pacific northwest according to northwest coast tradition koshtaka are small shape-shifters which can take the form of otters humans and human-sized otter men considered to be evil tricksters they are said to prey on those who have drowned or become lost in the woods sometimes these creatures save their victims before stealing their souls on other occasions they viciously rake at their victims with their sharp claws much like the nakani and the sasquatch the kostika is said to admit a high-pitched whistle alternating from low to high in 1953 a mysterious book entitled the strangest story ever told was privately published in new york under the name harry d kolp the book's preface stated that the author had been dead for several years but that the manuscript he put together was edited and submitted for publication by his daughter virginia this story ostensibly based on true events describes a race of hairy wild men whom some believe might be the kushtaka the book is divided into seven chapters each of them revolving around a particular stretch of wilderness inland of thomas bay a small inlet situated northwest of wrangle alaska not too far from the mouth of the sticky river [Music] locals sometimes referred to thomas bay as the bay of death on account of a massive landslide which swept through it in 1750 wiping out an entire trinket village and killing over 500 of its inhabitants in the first chapter the narrator claimed that he was one among four bankrupt prospectors who shared a cabin at wrangle alaska in the early 20th century in the spring of 1900 one of the four returned to the cabin with the happy news that he had met an indian with a chunk of gold-bearing courts in his possession and that the indian had given him directions to the place where he had found it he told me to go up to thomas bay the prospector informed his partners and camp on paterson river on the right side travel upriver for about eight miles and then turn to the high mountains and after traveling about a mile and a half i would find a lake shaped like a half moon [Music] it was there that the indian claimed to have found his prize the prospectors decided to pool their money together and secure an outfit for charlie the man who had returned home with the good news charlie was to head into the wilderness beyond thomas bay and see if there was any truth to the indian's tale that may charlie set out for the northerly diggings in the meantime the narrator and the other two partners found work in a sawmill and began to save up money for a grub stake in the hope that charlie's preliminary expedition would prove fruitful things went along until the first part of june culp wrote when on a sunday in the late afternoon we all being home and in walks charlie without a coat or hat and looking as if he'd been through hell he didn't give us any greeting whatever just heaved a piece of quartz over into a corner of the room and said get me something to eat i'm all in and want to rest the fellow looked it and after he had eaten he turned in without telling us a thing about his trip the quartz piece that charlie brought home was heavily streaked with gold much to his partner's delight despite the unbridled enthusiasm that took hold of his colleagues convinced as they were that they were now on the verge of a major strike charlie spent the next few days acting very strangely he seldom spoke refusing to answer his partner's many questions and occupied himself with hard manual labor from dawn to dusk finally charlie returned to the cabin one day and asked his partners to lend him enough money for a steamboat ticket to seattle he was finished with alaska he said and wanted to leave the north country for good he agreed to tell his partners about his experience in thomas bay but only if they promised to never remind him of it again when the prospectors agreed to his condition charlie told him his story charlie had reached the shore of thomas bay four days after his departure and proceeded up patterson river as the indian had instructed him he searched everywhere for the lake shaped like a half moon but only succeeded in locating one in the shape of the letter s the area surrounding the lake was curiously lifeless devoid of even the smallest game charlie was beginning to grow weary of the simple frontier fair he had brought with him from wrangle namely beans rice and bacon and decided to hike over to a ridge about eight miles east of the lake where he had heard some grouse hooting sure enough charlie found a few tarmigan there and began to hunt them in doing so he stumbled upon a ledge of quartz liberally streaked with gold as he did not have a pickaxe with them he used the butt end of his rifle to break a chunk off the rock destroying the wooden stock in the process the disappointment that charlie felt over the loss of his rifle was overshadowed by the elation that his discovery elicited he thrilled at the prospect of returning to the site with his partners and striking it rich after concealing the court's ledge with moss and detritus charlie climbed to the top of the ridge in order to scout for landmarks by which he might relocate his discovery right there fellows he told his partners i got the scare of my life i hope to god i never see or go through the likes of it again swarming up the ridge toward me from the lake were the most hideous creatures i couldn't call them anything but devils as they were neither men nor monkeys yet looked like both they were entirely sexless their bodies covered with long coarse hair except where the scabs and running swords had replaced it each one seemed to be reaching out for me and striving to be the first to get me the air was full of their cries and the stench from their sores and bodies made me faint abandoning his broken gun charlie fled for the sea with the creatures in hot pursuit he felt their hot breath on his neck and their sharp claw-like nails scratching at his back reason abandoned him and later that night charlie found himself a drift in his boat with no clear memory of how he managed to get there cold hungry and crazy for a drink of water he started for wrangle with his piece of gold streaked quartz the following five chapters of the strangest story ever told relate the misadventures of kolp his other prospecting partners and three frontiersmen of norwegian russian and japanese descent who all went into thomas bay country for one reason or another aside from the location in which they take place these stories are united by as cryptozoology pioneer ivan t sanderson put it in his commentary on the book quote a threat of reference to hairy stinking humanoids unquote as well as the temporary insanity which their quote overpowering and nauseating stink unquote appear to induce in all who encountered them this is not just the commonplace sanderson continued but now an almost invariable concomitant to all reports made by persons all over the world who say they have been in close proximity to one of these creatures unquote the seventh and final chapter of the strangest story ever told describes the experience of a frontiersman who established a trap line in the wilderness beyond thomas bay when inspecting his traps he found that they had all been sprung by a creature which left behind strange footprints the likes of which he had never seen before sometimes the animal walked on four legs at other times it walked on only two the trapper described the animal's hind tracks as quote about seven inches long and looked as if they were a cross between a two-year-old bears and a small barefooted man's tracks you could see claw marks at the ends of the toes toe pads and heavy heel marks between the toe pad marks and the heel marks was a sort of space where the foot did not bear so heavily on the ground as if the foot were slightly hollowed or had an instep the front set looked like a big raccoon's tracks only larger after his dog was abducted and presumably eaten by the strange creature the trapper returned to civilization where he related his story to cope he eventually overcame his fear of the mysterious animal and returned to his trap line in thomas bay country the trapper was never seen again some of those who have speculated on the nature of the mysterious devils of thomas bay have suggested that they might be kushtaka perhaps flesh and blood animals unknown to science or the transmogrified souls of the klingon who perished there in 1750 based on two separate incidents reported in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the author of this book has decided to include another alaskan monster in this list of northern wild men which one us army officer styled the glacial demon the first incident took place in 1898 during the klondike gold rush at that time rumor had it that an old russian trail led from the shores of prince william sound an alaskan inlet situated in the shadow of the vast valdez glacier located about 185 kilometers or 115 miles due east of anchorage alaska to the yukon gold fields circumventing canadian customs eager to avoid paying duty on their outfits at the canadian border about 3 500 american stampeders disembarked at this remote part of alaska and set out in search of the trailhead as it turned out there was no secret russian route to the interior the only way through the coast mountains in that part of alaska was over the valdez glacier prospectors who chose this route had to haul their supplies over 300 yards of sand and six miles of snow to reach the base of the glacier after that they had to ascend the icy monolith hoisting their sleds up with pulleys upon reaching the windy frozen summit of the valdez glacier stampeders ventured out onto the ice fields one by one with steel crampons strapped to their feet they slowly inched their way northwest picking their way through a minefield of deadly crevasses it would be several weeks before any of them reached the other side where an even more dangerous obstacle the clutina river awaited them some of the gold seekers who hazarded this so-called all-american route to the klondike were buried in avalanches their bones still lie trapped beneath the snow other unfortunates plunged through thin ice and plummeted to their doom disappearing down bottomless black crevasses those who avoided these fates faced a myriad of physical and mental tribulations on their journey over the glacial plane enduring extreme exposure severe sleep deprivation and countless hours immersed in an unearthly white fog they did most of their traveling at night when the ice was solid enough to bear their weight in the day when they weren't trying to sleep the sun reflected off the snow and ice causing many prospectors to go snow blind due to the harsh conditions stampeders were unable to thoroughly cook their food and many survived their journey over the valdez glacier by subsisting on half half-frozen half-cooked meals many who failed to turn back too stubborn to abandon their folly slowly descended into insanity in the spring of 1899 a man named w.r abercrombie a captain in the u.s army's second infantry regiment was dispatched to the valdez area in order to report his findings to the war department that april the officer reached port valdez a town that had since sprang up on the shores of prince william sound the site of present-day valdez alaska where he encountered a ragged band of stampeders suffering from snow blindness scurvy and frostbite these prospectors had just returned from the ice field after interviewing them abercrombie made the following entry in his report quote i noticed in talking to these people that over 70 percent of them were more or less mentally deranged my attention was first directed to this fact by their reference to a glacial demon one big raw bone swede in particular described to me how this demon had strangled his son on the glacier his story being that he had just started from 12 mile point a collection of huts just across the coast range of mountains from valdez with his son to go to the coast in company with some other prospectors when halfway up the summit of the glacier his son who was ahead of him hauling a sled while he was pushing behind called to him saying that this demon had attacked him and had his arms around his neck the father ran to the son's assistance but as he described it his son being very strong soon drove a demon away and they passed on their way up toward the summit of the valdez glacier the weather was very cold and the wind blowing very hard so that it made traveling very difficult in passing over the ice between the huge crevasses through which it was necessary to pick their way to gain the summit while in the thickest of these crevasses the demon again appeared he was said to be a small heavily built man and very active he again sprang on the sun's shoulders this time with such a grasp that although the father did all he could to release him the demon finally strangled the son to death the old man then put the sun on a sled and brought him down to 12 mile camp where the other prospectors helped bury him during the recital of this tale the old man's eyes would glaze and he would go through all the actions to illustrate how he fought off the imaginary demon when i heard this story there were some 10 or 12 other men in the cabin and at the time it would not have been safe to dispute the theory of the existence of this demon on the valdez glacier as every man in there firmly believed it to be a reality [Music] although captain w.r abercrombie suspected that the glacial demon described by the swedish stampeder was nothing more than a delusion brought on by scurvy a fascinating article written by a prospector named frank e howard which appeared in the march 1909 issue of the alaska yukon magazine suggests that there may have been some truth to his tale in the article howard described an incident which took place during a prospecting trip that he made in the early 1900s while camping alone off the shores of yakitad bay located on the alaskan coast roughly halfway between port valdez and juno howard decided to explore the nearby malaspina glacier the largest piedmont glacier in the world howard ascended the glacier through a crack in the ice and began to make his way over to a distant ridge on the way he lost his footing and slid into an open crevasse although he did not sustain any major injuries from the fall which found him wedged between the fissure's narrow walls howard was unable to climb out of the slippery chasm and decided to follow it deeper into the ice hoping that it would lead out into the bay as i kept going ahead howard wrote i noticed a gradual increase of light and in a few more steps i stood in a broad wall of blue light that came down from above and looking up i saw there was no clear opening to the surface but objects were now revealed some distance around then an object rose slowly out of the glimmer and took form a spectral thing with giant form and lifelike movement the object rose erect a goliath in the shape of a man this glacial being had a small head narrow shoulders and abnormally wide hips it growled a challenge and suddenly howard was quote engulfed in a rank indescribable odor unquote petrified the prospector desperately searched for an escape route the hairs of his neck standing on end before he could make a move however the creature slinked away eyeing him quote with a slantwise glance as it vanished into the gloom his heart hammering in his chest howard continued deeper into the crevasse and found an exit about 50 feet away which opened up onto a timbered beach since my miraculous encounter and escape he wrote i often attempt to solve the mystery that still enshrouds the apparition of the glacier terror might have magnified my imagination but the apparition was not the imagination of an overbalanced mind i am thoroughly convinced i saw something it was not like any animal i had ever seen before the inuit of the far north from alaska to the arctic archipelago to greenland have legends about a race of primitive giants at least twice the size of regular men who once inhabited the lands they occupy today they called this ancient people tuna jack a word with etymological ties to tornad an inuktitut word denoting helpful spirits mentioned briefly in the chapter on the evil spirit of the nahani valley physically the tuna jack was said to be immensely powerful and could easily carry full-grown bearded seals on their backs they did not live in igloos like the inuit but rather in circular stone pit houses roofed with whale ribs and animal skins a simple people the tuna jack were said to practice a number of revolting customs they did not usually cook their meat and preferred to eat it rotten tuna juk women would sometimes sit with raw meat tucked between their thighs and belly in the hope that their body heat would hasten the decomposition process as they did not know how to cure animal skins bits of rotten meat and rancid fat dangled from the insides of their robes sometimes the tuna jug would sow their young warriors into maggot infested seal skins believing that this would somehow enhance their skills as warriors although the tuna juk are said to have fought bitterly with one another they rarely showed aggression toward the inuit and seemed to be deathly afraid of their dogs in addition to their martial prowess they were excellent hunters who could summon game with their voices eventually the inuit began to hunt down the tuna jug and in time greatly reduced their number the giants who survived these predations fled to the mountains of the interior where some say their descendants still linger to this very day some suspect that the legend of the tuna juk derives from interactions between the thule or proto-inuit the ancestors of the modern inuit and their prehistoric counterparts the more ancient dorset people the ancestors of the dorset are believed to have arrived in the canadian arctic around 3200 bc when the thule people spread west from the bering strait and onto dorset territory in the 12th century a.d the dorset were dying out unable to cope with the climate change which characterized the medieval warm period by 1 500 a.d the dorset are believed to have vanished completely in 1955 american writer kathleen sherman and a handful of scientists visited bylot island a polar isle situated just north of baffin island baffin island being the largest of its kind in the arctic archipelago it was on this island the inuit maintained that a ban of tuna jack once lived in ancient times sherman who described the experience in her 1956 book spring on an arctic island reported finding a cluster of circular mounds which proved to be large stones half buried in the permafrost some scientists among the group found whale bones and other stones in the vicinity of the structures and concluded that these large stones had once served as the foundations of crude houses dwellings evocative of the stone pit houses of the tuna juk sherman and her companions were baffled as to how the ancient builders of these structures managed to haul the huge foundation stones which were not of local origin from their source [Music] [Music] an algonquian legend which made its way to the north country from the great lakes region by way of the cree the story of the wendigo or weedago is another northern tale containing wild man elements according to some interpretations of the legend the wendigo is a ravenous man-eating giant which roams the northern forests in search of human flesh ojibwa storyteller basil h johnston included a colorful description of this corporeal version of the wendigo in the manitou his masterwork published by the minnesota historical society press in 2001 the wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones with its bones pushing out against its skin its complexion the ash gray of death and its eyes pushed back deep into the sockets the wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave what lips it had were tattered and bloody unclean and suffering from separations of the flesh the wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition of death and corruption another version of the wendigo legend has it that this entity is not a physical creature but rather a malevolent spirit associated with the north the cold and starvation during the winter months it roams throughout the wilderness in search of human hosts indians who engaged in cannibalism made themselves especially vulnerable to when to go possession when a person became possessed by a wendigo they gradually developed an insatiable appetite for human flesh which drove them to butcher and eat their fellow tribesmen even when other food sources were readily available philip godsell described this phenomenon in his introduction to the june 1946 issue of the alberta folklore quarterly saying quote the weed ago i might explain is an evil spirit that enters the body of a sick man converting him unless he is destroyed into a cannibal endangering the lives of every member of the band hardly a spring goes by but some wandering band of nomad hunters becomes obsessed with the idea that there is one of these cannibal spirits haunting the outskirts of the camp anxious to become domiciled within the person of some sick indian one famous case of suspected wendigo possession occurred in central alberta in 1878. that winter a plane's cree trapper named swift runner slaughtered cooked and devoured his wife and six children when the northwest mounted police arrested him for his crime he claimed that he was possessed by the wendigo and needed to be killed before he caused more damage the mounties acquiesced after trying swift runner and finding him guilty on seven counts of first degree murder they hanged him at fort saskatchewan alberta in 1879 another breed of northern wild man with both physical and supernatural qualities are the naked zoltara the demonic minions of the evil spirit which the dene believed to inhabit the nahani karstlands according to father julius jeddah in his article on the superstitions of the tenei indians these beings were shadowy devils that sometimes invaded dene camps in the middle of the night when the presence of these beings was announced by shamans quote a great excitement ensued during which the whole village was upset everyone losing his head from fright and a fine occasion was offered to the sorcerers to do any mischief they pleased unquote when a naked zoltara adopts a physical form it sometimes appears as a creature similar to a dragon or a whale more often however it assumes the form of some sort of goblin there are eight different types of goblins into which the naked zoltara can transform three of which resemble wild men the first of these is that nanela in a hairy long-armed creature with claw-like nails which invades camps at night and steals fish from drying racks although the appearance of a nana in is considered a bad omen for adults if the creature quote happens to stop near a sleeping child and pat its head the child shall become a shaman another goblin into which the naked zoltar can metamorphose is the yes you or ghastly wolf a hairy long-armed bipedal creature with lupine features which jeddah likened to the french loop guru or werewolf finally there are the santa rotana or men of the rocks a form of nekodzoltara which jedha described as quote a kind of wild men but with all the agility of spirits unquote these monsters inhabited the valley of the yukon river and were notorious kidnappers and thieves as was mentioned earlier in this chapter hundreds of sasquatch sightings have been reported over the years on the west coast of alaska many eyewitness descriptions of this creature are disturbingly consistent and when considered as a whole paint a vivid portrait of a hairy human-like giant which inhabits the rainforests of the pacific northwest the sasquatches reported on the alaskan coasts are usually very tall extremely powerful and tend to exude a terrible smell akin to rotten flesh or burning garbage they appear to communicate with each other through grunts and whistles and can sometimes be heard howling in the night most stories suggest that sasquatches are friendly shy and reclusive they tend to avoid human settlements although they may abduct people from time to time they rarely harm them thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video and would like to help support this channel please check out my book legends of the nahani valley which you can find by clicking the link in the description [Music] you

Channel: Hammerson Peters

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Keywords: cryptozoology documentary, cryptid documentary, nahanni valley, cryptid hunter, northern canada, nakani, kushtaka, sasquatch, sasquatch documentary, bigfoot documentary, bigfoot, wendigo, canadian, alaska, alaskan, northwest territories, yukon, cryptids, cryptozoology, headless valley, mystery, mysterious, south nahanni river, south nahanni, nahanni, nahanni river, cryptozoological, documentary, cryptozoologist, cryptozoological documentary, canada, true stories, nunavut, legends, wildman, history

Id: SvlIAejufXs

Length: 31min 43sec (1903 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020