The Asian Wild Man

by Jean-Paul Debenat

  When the re bird ies and the horse runs

  On the roads,

  The Tibetan people will be dispersed

  Like ants on the face of the Earth,

  And Dharma will come to the land of the red people.2

  The age of airplanes (civilian as well as military) of automobiles and tanks, of exile for many Tibetans, has unfortunately come, and the sixteenth Karmapa feels that it is time for the prophecy to be ful lled in its entirety. The Dalai Lama himself, supreme spiritual leader—although not ruler—of the four Tibetan Buddhist lineages had to ee his country during the 1959 Chinese invasion.

  During a trip to Arizona, the sixteenth Karmapa, known to Tibetans as the Buddha of Medicine, demanded to visit the Hopi Indians. Why? And why in particular the village of Shungopovi?

  The Hopi, an ancient people, are thought to be the descendants of the Anasazi. After the First World, that of the Creator when the Clan of Fire was preeminent, came the Second World, that of the Clan of the Spider: all creatures understood each other and were short of nothing; there were no diseases. Then came the Third World—that of the Clan of the Bow—followed by the Fourth World where the Clan of the Bear dominates.

  As with many other people, Hopi history unfolds in cycles. Among them, the seeds of the Fifth World have already been sown: one must learn to recognize them. The Hopi and the Navajo share many of the same problems. Cancer cases are proliferating. The government stocks nuclear waste in the sands of the surrounding desert. Chemical and petrochemical industries poison the air.

  In Tibet, discharge sites are at the surface. Pollution in the water and the soil foster diseases, congenital malformations in people and beasts, and mysterious deaths. “Neither the Tibetans nor the Hopi gather any bene ts from the frantic industrialization of their territory.”3

  When the eminent Tibetan visitor reaches the Hopi village, the area is still in the throes of a long and trying drought. In the car driving him there, the air conditioning breaks down. Although the temperature reaches 45oC, the traveler controls his metabolism and does not sweat. In the winter, he practices tuomo, the mystical inner warming. He is aware of the parallel prophecy among the Hopi, announcing the arrival from the East of a man wearing red. The Tibetan wise man, Rangjung Rigpé Dordjé, stops some distance from the village and walks unhesitatingly towards Ned, Chief of the village as well as of the Clan of the Bear.

  The Karmapa tells him, “We are related and we are both enduring terrible pains. The time has come to speak to each other.”4 Onlookers press closer, eager to witness this extraordinary encounter. Chief Ned, the Karmapa and other clan leaders enter the kiva, the inner sanctum of Hopi culture. The Fourth World is represented by the lower part of the sanctuary, where the altar is positioned. “Among the Hopi, the altar is an image of the world and its various stages. It corresponds point by point to the Tibetans’ mandala.”5

  When the participants nish their chants and prayers to the spirits—the kachinas—clouds gather and soon, as the Karmapa returns to the valley, it starts to rain. The Hopi and the Tibetan wise man prayed together for the rst time and “on that day of October 1974, they caught the same rain.”

  Some 30 years later in 2004, Gilles Van Grasdorff, an admirer of Tibetan spirituality and medicine, followed in the Karmapa’s footsteps. Van Grasdorff had already written a biography of the Dalai Lama’s personal physician, Tenzin Choedrack. Tibetan medicine resembles that of the Hopi in that it is holistic, treating not only the failing organ but the whole person. By chance, Van Grasdorff met a Hopi physician who guided him to the village of Shungopovi.

  On March 20, 2004, the Hopi were celebrating the spring equinox. The journalist was invited to the night dance of the kachinas. The Abbé Pierre6 used to say “life was a tent for the night.” The night of the kachinas transcends the canvas of the tent and opens the door to the illusion, which is true reality. During that night, time ceases to exist. The kachinas, spirits rather than divinities, led Van Grassdorf to that place where the Karmapa and Ned prayed in 1974, for there is so much to do in these last days of the Fourth World.

  The kachinas sing and dance for hours. Ned, the Chief of the Bear Clan, throws a kachina doll to the journalist. I leave it to the reader to imagine the spiritual enrichment associated with this inner journey! Such experiences are seldom to be measured with scienti c instruments.

  One should understand that kachinas, though possessing a single nature, have a variety of forms. Van Grasdorff compares them to the Tibetan dakinis, “those that travel through space.” He also compares them to Christian angels or to medieval fairies. These feminine deities are usually wise and protective, although some might also be evil and terrifying.

  To sum up, kachinas are intermediaries between the world of men and that of spirits, or of the masked dancers embodying these spirits, or even carefully decorated dolls. One might say that kachinas are the spirits of the departed. When a dancer wears a mask, he becomes the kachina, the spirit that the mask represents. The dancer moves to the songs, shaking a rattle made of a gourd attached to a stick. The kachinas dance the coming of spring, a basic celebration, the beginning of a new cycle.

  Thus, history never stops, life continues in a permanent cycle, except if one is reborn as a kachina among the Hopi, or one reaches Enlightenment among Tibetan Buddhists.7

  A pair of kachina ogres. ILUSTRATION: Author’s le

  2. The kachinas and Joyce Kearney In my preceding book, an essay on the wild man of the Paci c Northwest, I examined the role of sasquatch/bigfoot among Native Americans. I wrote about the various aspects of Dzonokwa, giant female gure of the pantheon of the tribes of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and of British Columbia. Those tribes speak variants of the Salish language, comprising two main linguistic divisions: Coast Salish and Interior Salish. It is to be expected that Dzonokwa would appear under somewhat different names among different tribes.

  However, beyond the domain of the Paci c Northwest, reports of the bigfoot emanate from the whole of North America as far as Florida where it is known as the skunk ape. There are even reports from South America: the shiru in

  Colombia, guayazi in Guyana, oucoumar on the Argentinean side of the Andes up to 4800 meters (15,000 feet), mapinguary in Brazil, etc.

  Actually, the wild man is found on all continents. Author and illustrator Philippe Coudray, as nimble with his pen as with his brush, has inventoried the many types of bipedal hominids and drawn them after the testimonies of witnesses in a series of commented illustrations. “This book, which of course includes a certain amount of interpretation, has no pretension of being the result of a scienti c enquiry. It merely describes, as faithfully

  as possible, what witnesses,

  mostly natives, claim to have

  seen with their own eyes.”8

  Some 15 years ago, when

  the habitat of sasquatch/big

  foot seemed to me restricted

  to the Paci c Northwest, I was

  already convinced that, at least

  at a mythological level, bigfoot

  was everywhere. I discovered

  that eyewitness reports actually

  originated from all American

  states.

  The small ye . Anasazi bigfoot. ILLUSTRATION: Philippe Coudray In January 2004, the cover of the monthly bulletin of the Western Bigfoot Society (The Track Record, no. 133) showed a pictogram from a cave inhabited by the Anasazis, the ancestors of the Hopi and the Zuni. This mysterious early American people had already disappeared before the arrival of the Europeans. They are thought to have reached their apogee sometime between 1000 and 1300 CE. Amateurs of history are fascinated by the quality of their weaving and artifacts, the skills of their farmers inspired by their god Kokopelli, their knowledge of astronomy, and their high level of urbanization. And to think these people knew neither writing nor the wheel.

  Historian Joyce Kearney added a short commentary, noting that the pictogram represented a bigfoot leaving a cave near the Puerco Ri
ver. She wondered about the nature of the object (a rope?) that it held in its hands. As to the double wavy squiggle above the creature’s head, I wonder if it might be a sign of its aura, or of the spirit that guides every being.

  In 2007, The Track Record no. 174 tickled the curiosity of readers by showing a hairy kachina doll, a possible bigfoot image. A

  Dzonokwa, a Kwakiutl mask.

  PHOTO: Christopher L. Murphy photo shows a picture of Joyce next to the kachina Chaveyo and a mask of Dzonokwa, both objects belonging to her.

  The existence of a giant in southwestern North America is not an isolated case. The Paiute, the Hopis’ northerly neighbors, spoke of Nu’numic, who lived with his wife in a vast cave from which he emerged to hunt the Indians, catch them, cook them and eat them.

  Joyce’s article also drew my attention to the tracings found near the Paiute Reserve in Mono County (eastern California). Along the Owens River a nearly inaccessible cliff, 800 meters (2700 feet) long, is covered with

  gures engraved in the stone (petroglyphs) and a few painted images (pictograms). These gures, the so-called Chalfant Valley Group, are only a few kilometers away from a series of tracks, a path seemingly leading to nowhere. There are hundreds of footprints carefully carved in the rock; some of them are those of giants. Were they indeed carved or are they real impressions?

  Equally surprising are the ancient stone houses overlooking the Owens River. There are 150 of them on a deserted plateau, as well as villages of 40–45 houses such as at Fish Springs. These houses are round—four meters (13 feet) across and two-thirds to one meter (2–3 feet) high—sometimes far apart, sometimes close to each other. They are built, without cement, of calcareous tufa, a stone commonly found in Mono Lake where it forms concretions that rise like towers above the water.

  Joyce Kearney thinks that these houses, built before the arrival of the Paiute, were the work of the wild man, which she believes to be “more advanced socially and technologically than most people believe”9

  These stone shelters are very similar to bories, dry stone huts found in France, used as temporary shelters for shepherds and their animals. The word borie comes from the Latin bovaria (a stable), a place for bos/bovis, Latin for bull. However, the wild men did not own cattle. Joyce Kearney concludes:

  1. Men lived in groups, or assembled in groups, for the winter season.

  2. They built permanent shelters in stone.

  3. They used stone tools. How and what for?

  Joyce adds that stone tools and arrowheads have been found in these villages, as well as the bones of marmots and mountain sheep.

  While traveling in Colorado, Joyce asked the owner of a Native art outlet if he had a kachina representing Chaveyo. She was shown a black, very hairy ogre. She bought it. Kachinas are often bought today as decorative items or collection pieces.

  Chaveyo’s face is like that of an ape. It is an ogre who can emerge at any time in the spring to kidnap unruly Hopi children, reminiscent of the bogeyman of the Paci c Northwest tribes. Among the Hopi, other ogres, male and female—similar to the Basket Woman of the Makah Idians of Washington State—are close to Chaveyo: Soyoko and Soyok Mana (ogresses), Nata-aska (black ogre), Wiharu (white ogre) etc.10

  Researchers who have studied the Hopi religion and those of their neighbors, the Zuni, Navajo and Pima, are astounded by the number of kachinas inhabiting their pantheon. Their religion incorporates deities from neighboring tribes and each clan has its own variant of the Hopi mythological system. It is easy to get lost among the crowd of kachinas. One may readily think that some are quite irrelevant, just like the bogeyman of our childhood. That would be a mistake. There are many categories or levels of kachinas, a word interpreted as meaning “esteemed high-rank initiates.” For example, it is thought that the rst category concerns the continuity of life. The kachinas of mid-winter dances herald the return of life: reincarnation is inherent to the continuity of life.

  The second category belongs to the masters, those who teach us where to live, who we are and what rules our lives. The third category represents the “keepers of the law,” who keep warning us until the day when they grow weary…

  The Hopi universe is ruled by cycles, from the smallest to the greatest, resembling in this respect many other North American native civilizations. “Why is it more dif cult to span 6 million years, a glaciation cycle, than 10 or 20 years for a solar cycle, than a few days?”11

  Why should it be a surprise to nd a religious leader, the Karmapa, followed by a Tibetan scholar, Van Grasdorff, make contact with the Hopi, another highly spiritual and threatened civilization?

  The painstaking investigations of Joyce Kearney have revealed the breadth of the wild man myth. We now can appreciate better its rich complexity. If the bigfoot kachina were to correspond to a real esh and blood entity, Kearney’s suggestions would indicate an elaborate lifestyle: stone shelters, processional footsteps, cliffside petroglyphs.

  The wall paintings of Lascaux and neighboring caves have surprised many observers. They were even thought to be a hoax; the art was too sophisticated, worthy of a Picasso or a Dali. Animals appear on top of each other, often doubled: mammoths, bisons, reindeer, horses…not to forget the surprising and superb shamans, halfman/half-beast of the Grotte des Trois Freres, in Aveyron. Who leads there? Who inspires the other, the man or the beast?

  1 Gilles Van Grasdor , L’A rapeur de pluie, p. 11.

  2 Gilles Van Grasdor , op. cit., p. 35.

  3 Gilles Van Grasdor , op. cit., p. 179.

  4 Gilles Van Grasdor , op. cit., p. 131.

  5 Gilles Van Grasdor , op. cit., p. 135. A mandala represents the world, the cosmos, the palace of a deity, or, according to Carl Jung, a symbolic representa on of the psyche. As a support for medita on, a mandala is

  painted, sculpted in three dimensions, or cra ed out of colored sand. There is some resemblance to the sand pain ngs of the Navajo, the Hopi’s neighbors. 6 L’abbé Pierre: French priest who ministered to the workers.

  7 Gilles Van Grasdor , op. cit, p. 288.

  8 Philippe Coudray, Guide des animaux cachés, édi ons du Mont, 2009, p. 7.

  9 David E. Stuart, Anasazi America: Seventeen Centuries on the Road from Center Place, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM, USA, 2000.

  10 Joyce Kearney, pers.comm. 2 July 2008. “Sasquatch being more advanced socially and technologically than most people believe.”

  11 Soyok li erally means “monster.” I described the bogeyman role played by sasquatch/bigfoot in the last part of my book, Sasquatch/Bigfoot and the Mystery of the Wild Man.

  Appendix 2 Angels and Demons

  René Laurenceau taught Russian from 1966 to 1991 at the School of Mines in Saint-Etienne. I think of him as a prominent expert on wild men, from John the Baptist of the Bible to Bernard Heuvelmans’ pongoid man. He has published in Bipedia (an online magazine) and in the monthly bulletin Hominologie et Cryptozoologie.

  René Laurenceau is also a keen amateur of puppets. In Russia, these are often inspired by creatures from the folkloric tradition: russalka, tchutchuna or domovoi.

  Laurenceau gave me a copy of a 40-page booklet entitled Les anges et les démons (Angels and Demons), which he illustrated with his own drawings of puppets. (The legend of the last sketch reads: “The puppet does not speak, but the voice speaks through it.”)

  The author has allowed me to quote from a few pages of his text. I love its poetic tone, lively style, insight and erudition. It opens up perspectives at once broad and deep on the question of the wild man.

  Some preliminary de nitions will be useful:

  Russalka: a dangerous female creature living in the water, it may try to drown bathers. She is particularly active at the beginning of June (Russalka week). Anton Dvorák wrote an opera, in Czech, about this aquatic succubus, Rusalka, a lyrical tale in three acts (1901). Turgenev’s tale “Pre Bejine” (in his Stories of a Hunter) features russalka as the heroine. It is also from Turgenev that Maupassant obtained
the story “The Fear,” where russalka attacks a young bather.

  The Tchutchuna: a wild man with black skin and hair, from Yakutia in northwestern Siberia. Myra Shackley thinks he is extinct. René Laurenceau comments, “It is a Siberian belief that once a Yakut is near death, he must not be saved so that death will not be deprived of its promised. Formerly, a man rescued from the doors of death was expelled from all yurts and igloos. He had to wander in the tundra, chased away by all if he didn’t want to leave. The belief was then that his skin would turn from yellow to black…The Yakut who cheated death was punished by becoming the tchutchuna of the tribe, a word derived from some primitive shamanism.”

  The Domovoi: “The domovoi has the stature of a child but the face of an old man. His blond, nearly white hair falls on his shoulders in wavy curls. The domovoi, whose name indicates that he is part of the household, lives under the stove…The survivor from the last glaciation doesn’t fear the cold, but welcomes the heat from the stove… The domovoi visits the stable at night, pets the horses, tours the hen house to chase away the fox or the snake.”

  For additional details, please consult the article “Nègres blancs” (White Negroes), which Laurenceau published in Bipedia (no. 22, January 2004).

  Excerpts from Angels and Demons Chapter 8

  According to legend, russalka has green skin and hair and wears a green dress. She is green all over, without worrying too much about the fact that demons need no dress. Which is not the case however for the angels Blue Beard, Red Beard, Black Beard and White Beard, who do need robes. The russalka needs no robe. Neither do the black Siberian tchutchuna, the golden haired Dionysus, the wild man of the woods from Java formerly called orangutan until the day that the mawas of Borneo stole its name, the naturally ochre-colored man of the Caucasus, quite different from the pale one which covered itself with ochre to hide from hunters. But the all-green russalka is but a legend. She covers herself with water plants to make believe she is green, just as the Neanderthal man calls himself neanderthal to suggest that he comes from the valley of the new man, when he is really an ancient man, returned like a ghost to the valley of the new man in 1856, the year of Freud’s birth. We must be wary of the pranks of the wild men returning to us. Our spooks.