Yetis got the name “abominable snowmen” in 1921 when the first British Everest expedition, led by Colonel H. W. Howard-Bury, sighted a number of large man-apes, or “men in fur coats,” moving in single file along the ice above the expedition. The expedition found footprints in the snow that were quite large, and distinctly resembled a human footprint.
The Sherpas told Colonel Howard-Bury that the creature was the Metohkangmi or Mehteh-Kangmi, or “man-beast of the snowy mountains.” At the Rongbuk monastery near Mount Everest on the Tibetan side, a lama told the British that five Mehteh-Kangmi lived in the upper reaches of the glacier. When the Colonel telegraphed the incident to his aides in Calcutta, the name of the creature was garbled and came out as “Metch Kangmi,” which a Calcutta columnist, trying to make sense of the words, deciphered as “wretched snowman,” or as he later put it, “abominable snowman.”
And, for the modern age, at least, a legend was born.
Early Reports of a Hairy Man-Ape in Asia
Probably the earliest report of what appear to be hairy apemen come from Persian and Greek accounts of Alexander the Great and his invasion of India.
I was able to find online at the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook site (located at: www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/ancient/arrian-bookVIII-India.html) the Greek historian Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandri: Book VIII, translated by E. Iliff Robson in 1933, which has a curious passage about hairy ape-men in it. The book chronicles the invasion of India by Alexander the Great’s troops in 326 BC and Book VIII is mainly concerned with the voyage of an Admiral named Nearchus to the Indus River.
In Chapter 23 we learn: “Leaving the outlets of the Arabis they coasted along the territory of the Oreitans, and anchored at Pagala, after a voyage of two hundred stades, near a breaking sea; but they were able all the same to cast anchor. The crews rode out the seas in their vessels, though a few went in search of water, and procured it. Next day they sailed at dawn, and after making four hundred and thirty stades they put in towards evening at Cabana, and moored on a desert shore.”
In Chapter 24 we are told of battles with hairy men with sharp claws:
Thence they set sail and progressed with a favoring wind; and after a passage of five hundred stades the anchored by a torrent, which ,was called Tomerus. There was a lagoon at the mouths of the river, and the depressions near the bank were inhabited by natives in stifling cabins. These seeing the convoy sailing up were astounded, and lining along the shore stood ready to repel any who should attempt a landing. They carried thick spears, about six cubits long; these had no iron tip, but the same result was obtained by hardening the point with fire. They were in number about six hundred. Nearchus observed these evidently standing firm and drawn up in order, and ordered the ships to hold back within range, so that their missiles might reach the shore; for the natives’ spears, which looked stalwart, were good for close fighting, but had no terrors against a volley. Then Nearchus took the lightest and lightest-armed troops, such as were also the best swimmers, and bade them swim off as soon as the word was given. Their orders were that, as soon as any swimmer found bottom, he should await his mate, and not attack the natives till they had their formation three deep; but then they were to raise their battle cry and charge at the double. On the word, those detailed for this service dived from the ships into the sea, and swam smartly, and took up their formation in orderly manner, and having made a phalanx, charged, raising, for their part, their battle cry to the God of War, and those on shipboard raised the cry along with them; and arrows and missiles from the engines were hurled against the natives. They, astounded at the flash of the armor, and the swiftness of the charge, and attacked by showers of arrows and missiles, half naked as they were, never stopped to resist but gave way. Some were killed in flight; others were captured; but some escaped into the hills. Those captured were hairy, not only their heads but the rest of their bodies; their nails were rather like beasts’ claws; they used their nails (according to report) as if they were iron tools; with these they tore asunder their fishes, and even the less solid kinds of wood; everything else they cleft with sharp stones; for iron they did not possess. For clothing they wore skins of animals, some even the thick skins of the larger fishes.
So what of this bizarre account? Were these men (“hairy, not only their heads but the rest of their bodies; their nails were rather like beasts’ claws;”) some sort of yeti battalion for the Hindu kings of this unidentified region of western India? Was there a time when the wild hairy men of Asia were on friendly terms with the Yogi-Kings of ancient India and actually fought against barbarian invaders? It is a fantastic thought!
A Yeti by Any Other Name would Still Smell Bad
As mentioned earlier, yetis got the name “abominable snowmen” in 1921 when the first British Everest expedition, led by Colonel H. W. Howard-Bury, sighted a number of large man-apes, and was told that the creature was the Metohkangmi (Mehteh-Kangmi) or “man-beast of the snowy mountains.”1,2 39
Yeti: Fact or Fiction,2 a “Know Nepal” series book gives the derivation of the name “yeti” as coming from the slightly different Tibetan mehton kangmi or “man of the high regions.” Other similar variations are that the word yeh means “snow valley” and teh means “snowman or man of the high regions.” According to Nepalese Sherpas the word yeti is derived from yah: “rock or cliff” and teh: “animal,” thereby forming the name yah-teh or “cliff-animal.” The word “yeti” is essentially a Sherpa word, popularized by the many international climbing expeditions that have gone into the Sherpa areas around Everest, Makalu and Kanchenjunga and heard stories of the elusive, hairy man-apes.
Kampa Dzong, near Mt. Everest, in a photo taken in 1921.
As early as 1820 the British explorer J.B. Fraser mentioned the name bang for the hairy wildman of the snows. Bang or bhang is similar to khang or kangmi, also lending itself to the name of another famous giant ape-creature, King Kong, or dare I say, King Kangmi in Tibetan.2
Other entries in the long list of names for yetis are chu-mung: the spirit of the glaciers; dredmo or dremo: a person who was born a human but has become a savage wildman; dzu-teh: a large, shaggy brown creature that eats cattle; megur, migu, or miegye: the Sikkimese word for yeti; nyalmu or nyulmo: a wild, hairy creature about nearly four meters (12 feet) tall that is very powerful and eats animals. Also listed as names for yeti are mirke, sagpa, rimi, thelma, rakshas, ban-manche, van-manas and Mahalangoor, a Nepalese word for “big monkey.” Rakshas means “demon,” ban-manche means “jungle man,” van-manas means “man of the forests.” Another Tibetan name is mi-de, or mig-de, which means bear-man, the Tibetan word de meaning “a large bear.”2
Kunzang Choden in her book Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti, states that the most common names for yeti are migoi (strong man) or gredpo. She also reports that a smaller version of the yeti called mechume or mirgola live in the dense bamboo forests at high altitudes. They are bipeds about a meter in height and have long arms. They are usually reported to be brownish-red in color with hairless, human-like faces, and a fringe of hair over the forehead. Most sighting of these creatures are reported by cattle herders who are forced to venture into the depths of the forests in search of missing cattle.12
There are many other names for the yeti in Central Asia, such as almas in Mongolia and the Altai Himalaya Region. The very fact that these creatures are well known in many different parts of Central Asia (and Southeast Asia) and have so many different names, shows that there must be something real to this creature—they are known locally and so must be given a name. I have to admit, however, that the yeti is very much a boogey-man, and a yeti by any name would smell as bad as any skunk ape in the swamps of the Arkansas or Louisiana.
It should be pointed out here that though the yeti has many names, it is almost universally thought to be very bad luck to ever see one. Even talking about yetis is bad luck. Many in the Himalayas believed that to encounter a yeti is sign that the witness will die soon. Thus, an encounter with a Yeti is to
be avoided, and even the whole subject is best not talked about too much. Yet, despite this superstition surrounding the yeti, many tales of yeti encounters have come out of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet.
Tenzing Norgay and Annelies Lohner at Mt. Everest, 1947 .
Yeti Footprints Capture Headlines
After it was decided that Mt. Everest was the highest mountain in the world an exciting era of exploration began. Expeditions set out from Darjeeling in British colonial India, the end of the railway in those early days. From here untold numbers of expeditions set out, many of them in secret, and in some cases the expedition had only one member, often an eccentric Englishman, Scot, Canadian or South African. With the often hilarious, confusing and sometimes harrowing reports of Himalayan survival issued from these groups came the first accounts to the west of hairy hominids living in the remote reaches of the Himalaya.
The British reading public eagerly awaited accounts of new discoveries and marvels, and some yeti footprints would make a jolly good story! Howard Bury in his 1922 book Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance: 1921, says that they came across strange footprints in the snow in the Makalu and Chamlang area just east of Mt. Everest and west of Kanchenjunga:
On September 22, leaving Raeburn behind, Mallory, Bullock, Morshead, Wheeler, Wollaston and myself started off to Lakhpa La camp. We left the 20,000-foot camp in 22 degrees of frost at four o‘clock in the morning, accompanied by twenty-six coolies, who were divided up into four parties, each of which was properly roped. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the mountains showed up nearly as brightly as in the daytime. We rapidly descended the 200 feet from our terrace to the glacier, when we all “roped up.” The snow on the glacier was in excellent condition, and as it was frozen hard we made good progress. Dawn overtook us on the broad flat part of the glacier, the first of the sun falling on the summit of Mount Everest, which lay straight in front of us, and changing the colour of the snow gradually from pink to orange, all the time up sharp and clear in the frosty air. We mounted gradually past Kartse, the white conical-shaped peak climbed by Mallory and Bullock a month ago from the Kama Valley. We wended our way without much difficulty through the ice-fall of the glacier, below some superbly fluted snow ridges that rose straight above us. Then followed a long and at times a somewhat steep climb over soft powdery snow to the top of the pass. Even at these heights we came across tracks in the snow. We were able to pick out tracks of hares and foxes, but one that at first looked like a human foot puzzled us considerably. Our coolies at once jumped at the conclusion that this must be the “Wild Man of the snows,” to which they gave the name of Metohkangmi, “ the abominable snow man,” who interested the newspapers so much.
On my return to civilized countries I read with interest delightful accounts of the ways and customs of this wild man whom we were supposed to have met. These tracks, which caused so much comment, were probably caused by a large “loping” grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like those of a barefooted man. Tibet, however, is not the only country where there exists a “bogey man.” In Tibet he takes the form of a hairy man who lives in the snows, and little Tibetan children who are naughty and disobedient are frightened by wonderful fairy tales that are told about him. To escape from him they must run down the hill, as then his long hair falls over his eyes and he is unable to see them. Many other such tales have they with which to strike terror into the hearts of bad boys and girls.
Howard-Bury was popularizing two subjects exciting to the readers of British and other newspapers: that Mount Everest could be climbed by mountaineers with the equipment of the time—and that a mysterious man-ape, a virtual missing link, had been seriously reported from the Himalayas.
Howard-Bury and his group, after discovering these “yeti prints,” then continued on to the Chamlang La (Chamlang Pass), coming over the main Himalayan range from Tibet and seeing the forest-covered valleys of the southern Himalayas. Indeed, these deep river valleys which cut through the Himalayas and Hindu Kush into the Tibetan Plateau are heavily forested— to the point of tropical jungle in many cases—which makes high mountain passes subject to frequent snow fall prime sites where anomalous footprints might be found.
Explorers were often amazed as they looked down on the southern side of the Himalayas into Nepal (as well as Bhutan) and saw the lush, warm valleys that were absent on the Tibetan Plateau, and which they were forced to march through because of the blockade on foreigners imposed by Nepal (and Bhutan). Other nations passed such laws and attempted to keep foreigners and Western influence out of their countries, including Japan, Tibet, Oman and a number of other countries.
Walt Unsworth in his authoritative 1989 book, Everest, mentions the yeti several times and would seem to be a believer in the Yeti. Says Unsworth on page 66, referring to Howard-Bury’s 1921 expedition:
As the party climbed up the Lhakpa La again on the 22nd [of September] they were astonished to see giant footprints in the snow, which the porters immediately recognized as those of Metohkangmi—the Abominable Snowman or Yeti. Similar tracks had been reported in Sikkim in 1889, and were to be reported and photographed many times in later years.
Despite this distraction it was a very tired party that assembled on the col, and none of them were keen to go on. ‘I observed no great sparkle of energy or enthusiasm among my companions,’ Mallory wrote later.
Indeed, the sight of any yeti tracks by the party would be likely to dampen spirits rather than lift them since, as I pointed out earlier, it is very back luck to see a yeti or come in any sort of contact with them. Even talk of yetis is considered unlucky.
Unsworth goes on in his book to mention that the 1922 British Everest expedition, with many of the same members as the 1921 reconnaissance, had finally met with head lama of the Rongbuk Monastery near the Tibetan side of Mount Everest:
The expedition reached the Rongbuk valley on 30 April. The name means ‘the valley of steep ravines,’ and it is indeed a most desolate place seldom free from the piercing wind coming off the mountain. To the Tibetans it is a holy place; at the entrance to the valley, opposite the village of Chobuk, was a large mani (or prayer) stone beyond which it was forbidden to kill any living creature, and five miles up the valley was the Rongbuk monastery, one of the most sacred places in Lama Buddhism.
The Rongbuk Lama, having completed the year of seclusion which had prevented him from meeting Mallory in 1921, received Bruce warmly. The General was impressed, as were all who met this remarkable person: ‘He was a large, well-made man of about sixty,’ wrote Bruce, ‘full of dignity, with a most intelligent and wise face and an extraordinarily attractive smile.’ On a later visit another member of the team, equally impressed, put it more succinctly: ‘Gee! That chap is either the holiest saint or the greatest actor on earth.’
The Lama inquired of Bruce his reasons for wishing to climb Chomolungma (the local name for Everest) and Bruce, astutely grasping the situation, realized that any conventional explanation would be useless. Instead he drew upon the spiritual. They came as pilgrims, he explained, for Chomolungma was the highest mountain in the world, and any man who reached the summit must necessarily be nearer Heaven. The Lama could understand that. He invited Bruce to partake of Tibetan tea, but the General, who hated the stuff, declined on the grounds that he had sworn not to touch butter until his pilgrimage was over. He also promised that no animals would be slaughtered in the valley, a rule which was rigorously enforced— even the animals destined to provide meat for the expedition were butchered beyond the Chobuk mani stone and brought to Base Camp as carcasses.
Bruce also took the opportunity to question the Lama about the yeti, the tracks of which had been seen in 1921, and he was calmly informed that five yetis lived in the upper reaches of the valley. From other monks in the monastery, the expedition learned that the yetis were much feared. They were said to be man-like and covered in long hair. Sometimes they raided villages, carrying off women, killing men and drinking the blood o
f yaks.7
Indeed, Sherpas greatly fear the yeti, and believe that to see one is very unlucky and often means an untimely death. That yetis will occasionally kill yaks by grabbing them by the horns and breaking their necks with their incredible strength is very disturbing to Sherpas, Tibetans and other cattle-yak herders in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. Unsworth has a footnote in his book that contains this curious information:
An old print of an orangutan.
At Khumjung monastery they keep a yeti scalp which has been examined scientists and pronounced a fake, but the stories about this monster are so numerous and so consistent in detail that nobody can dismiss them out of hand. Tracks have been seen and photographed on several occasions. Quite recently a herd of yaks was killed in Khumjung and the girl tending them struck dumb and bereft of reason with horror. The people are convinced it was the work of a yeti. Whatever one may think of these stories, the fact remains that the Abominable Snowman is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the present day, possibly the last and greatest of them all. Perhaps it should be left a mystery, so that our grandchildren may still have something to wonder at.
With this remark, Unsworth joins the ranks of knowledgeable mountaineers who think that there is a genuine mystery concerning the yeti, and that it is not a bear or imaginary cryptid. The incident with the young female Sherpani who was struck dumb by fear at the astonishing sight of the yeti took place in July 1974. More on this episode in the next chapter.
Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants Page 6