Teddy Roosevelt avers it is.
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The next day, the creature again ravaged the camp while Bauman and his partner were checking their traps. They found a trail of prints in the soft dirt, and these confirmed once more that their assailant, unlike a bear, had walked off on just two feet. That evening, they set up a roaring fire, which they kept going all night. Around midnight, the creature was heard moving through the woods, and it several times "uttered a harsh grating, long-drawn moan." The following morning, Bauman and his partner decided to leave, but first they wanted to check their traps. As they moved through the forest, they sensed they were being followed. Roosevelt (1906, p. 259) said, "In the high, bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were, through long years of lonely wandering in the wilderness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute, or element." Bauman's partner returned to the camp before he did. When Bauman finally arrived, he found his partner dead. Said Roosevelt (1906, p. 260): "The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed deep in the soft soil, told the whole story."
Roosevelt had some thoughts about the episode. He wrote of Bauman: "he was of German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his mind; besides he knew well the stories told by Indian medicine men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers, and the spectres, and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest depths, and dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes through the regions where they lurk; and it may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say" (Roosevelt 1906, pp. 254-255).
Others are not so sure:
On July 4, 1884, the Colonist, a newspaper published in Victoria, British Columbia, carried a story titled: "What is it? A strange creature captured above Yale. A British Columbian Gorilla." According to the article, Ned Austin, a railway engineer, spotted a humanlike creature ahead of him on the tracks, blew the whistle, and stopped. The creature darted up the side of a hill, with several railway employees in pursuit. After capturing the animal, described as "half man and half beast" (Shackley 1983, p. 35), the railway employees turned him over to Mr. George Tilbury.
The Colonist reported: "'Jacko', as the creature has been called by his capturers, is something of the gorilla type, standing about four feet seven inches in height and weighing 127 pounds. He has long, black, strong hair and resembles a human being with one exception, his entire body, excepting his hands (or paws) and feet is covered with glossy hair about one inch long. His forearm is much longer than a man's forearm, and he possesses extraordinary strength" (Shackley 1983,p.35).
The paper added (Shackley 1983, p. 36): "Mr. Thos. White and Mr. Gouin, C.E., as well as Mr. Major, who kept a small store about half a mile west of the tunnel during the past two years, have mentioned seeing a curious creature at different points between Camps 13 and 17, but no attention was paid to their remarks as people came to the conclusion that they had seen either a bear or a stray Indian dog. Who can unravel the mystery that surrounds Jacko? Does he belong to a species hitherto unknown in this part of the continent?"
That the creature was not a gorilla seems clear — its weight was too small. Some might suppose that Jacko was a chimpanzee. But this idea was apparently considered and rejected by persons who were familiar with Jacko. Sanderson (1961, p. 27) mentioned "a comment made in another paper shortly after the original story was published, and which asked ... how anybody could suggest that this 'Jacko' could have been a chimpanzee that had escaped from a circus." Was the whole story perhaps a hoax? Myra Shackley thought not. She noted: "The newspaper account of Jacko was subsequently confirmed by an old man, August Castle, who was a child in the town at the time. The fate of the captive is not known, although some said that he (accompanied by Mr. Tilbury) was shipped east by rail in a cage on the way to be exhibited in a side-show, but died in transit" (Shackley 1983, p. 36).
Furthermore, there were additional reports of creatures like Jacko from the same region. Zoologist Ivan Sanderson (1961, p. 29) said about Jacko in one of his collections of wildman evidence: "one of his species had been reported from the same area by Mr. Alexander Caulfield Anderson, a well-known explorer and an executive of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was doing a 'survey' of the newly opened territory and seeking a feasible trade route through it for his company. He reported just such hairy humanoids as having hurled rocks down upon him and his surveying party from more than one slope. That was in 1864." In 1901, Mike King, a well-known lumberman, was working in an isolated region in northern Vancouver Island. He had to work alone. His native American employees refused to accompany him, fearing that the dreaded wildman of the woods lived there. Once, as King came over a ridge, he spotted a large humanlike creature covered with reddish brown fur. On the bank of a creek, the creature was washing some roots and placing them in two orderly piles beside him. The creature then left, running like a human being. King said: "His arms were peculiarly long and used freely in climbing and bush-running." Footprints observed by King were distinctly human, except for the "phenomenally long and spreading toes"(Sanderson 1961,pp. 34-35). |
