Yahoos in North America July 6, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern , trackback
Reading anomalous material there is sometimes an overlap of tiny details that are perplexing. Consider this description of three different North American wild men (who would certainly be called Big Foot today).
In 1905 an article in the Washington Post described a Maryland wild man: ‘When it shrieks it sounds much like ‘Ya-ho! Ya-ho! Ya-ho!’ It generally makes the cry three times in quick succession and then remains quiet sometimes for three minutes.’ (174)
In 1889, in the Carolinas, Indians heard, after a wild man sighting, a strange noise in the woods ‘yaho, yaho, yaho’ (298)
A 1911 book about Virginia describes the Bogey of Craddock Marsh that screamed out in the night ‘Yahoo! Yahoo!’ (318)
Now how is it that three different reports from three different parts of the US describe a monster with the same cry? Before Beach asked himself this question ‘yahoo’ meant one of two things: an appallingly buggy email provider or the monsters of the last island in Gulliver’s Travels (1726). These latter yahoos are the horrific anthropoids who were the slaves and enemies of the Houyhnhnms the horse creatures that represent the best this world can hope for. The word ‘yahoo’ was apparently coined by the author and because of Swift’s influence in the eighteenth century, and perhaps because of the base simplicity of the word, it quickly passed into every day speech. As the longer OED has it: ‘Freq. in mod. use, a person lacking cultivation or sensibility, a philistine; a lout, a hooligan.’ The OED shows, though, that the name also stayed close to Swift’s original sense. It sometimes just meant ‘Wild Man’ as in:
c. 1810–20 Handbill, During the Fair.‥ Two surprising large Yohoes; or, Wild Men of the Woods, being the most Wonderful of the kind ever Exhibited. 1814 Lincoln, Rutland & Stamford Mercury 22 Apr. 3/5 Just arrived, and to be seen in a commodious booth, in the Crown and Anchor Yard, Lincoln.‥ The Great Yahoo, or Wild Man of the Woods.
Therefore, might we speculate that these creatures were known sometimes as ‘yahoos’ in North America and that this mysterious name (to the more illiterate) was explained by their cry? This process might have been helped along by the fact that ‘yahoo’ could be ‘ya-hoo’ ‘hi there’ or ‘yahoo!’ ‘I won!’, both exclamations? A useful hypothesis but also one with some supporting evidence. The Maryland monster (215) was known as the Yaho; and a New York wild man was known as the Yo-ho (215). Any other clues: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com or do we have a precious bit of zoological Sasquatch data, as in ‘Yahoo, Yahoo!’ [from the woods] ‘Christ, Saunders, I would say it is a female in heat!’
This exercise was made possible by Chad Arment’s endlessly interesting Historical Bigfoot, which splits sightings into States for the US and provinces for Canada. Page numbers correspond to that work.
