The Hugag - Cryptids of the American Frontier

I don't know about you, but sometimes I get a little tired of the usual cryptids.  You know: Bigfoot, the Mothman, and Chupacabras.  Every so often I just want to sit back in my flannel, pretend to be a lumberjack (that's why I'm wearing flannel), and hear a tall tale about a fearsome critter.  If you're with me, then I've got a treat for you today.  Tonight's the night I let you in on the secret of the Hugag.

What's a Hugag, you say?

Nothin' less than one of the most fearsome and dangerous critters ever to stalk the hinterlands of the lumberwoods, that's all.

Pictured above in a highly accurate illustration from the 1910 edition of Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts, the Hugag (Rythmopes inarticulatus) is a large mammal of the Lake States.  It's territory includes northern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, but is also known to thrive throughout the forests of Canada, even unto the Hudson bay.

There are lots of similarities between the Hugag and your common moose, but DON'T BE MISTAKEN.  There are several extremely important differences that will allow you to spot a dangerous Hugag rather than the totally harmless and safe wild bull moose.

First off, you'll notice that the Hugag has no knees or leg joints of any kind.  Indeed, its long legs prevent it from bending over and force it to remain standing at all times.  Further, the Hugag is possessed of an extremely long upper lip, which keeps it from grazing.  If it were to stand by a grassy hillock steep enough to reach with its stiff legs, it would merely scrape that big upper lip across the ground, and never manage to get any fodder in its mouth.

Other features of the Hugag include a hairless head and neck, "strangely-corrugated ears" that droop downward, four-toed feet, and bushy tail.  Overall, witnesses of the Hugag consider it to have a downright prehistoric appearance.

The behavior and habits of the Hugag have luckily been recorded for posterity.

The diet of the Hugag consists largely of twigs or the bark of trees.  The creature is known to flop its big old lip around trees and strip the bark clean off.  This accounts for the bare patches on trees you might see as you hike.

It's said that the Hugag has a veritable "mania for travelling", and is capable of moving for an entire day without stopping.  Thus, few hunters who have taken up the trail of the Hugag have ever returned to camp with a head to show for their troubles.  At night, though, the Hugag does pause for sleep and refreshment.  It does so by leaning its weight against a tree, as it cannot bend its legs to lay down.  So, the next time you're camping and you hear a tree suddenly crash to the ground in the middle of the night, that would definitely be a Hugag. Successful Hugag hunters have been known to lay traps for their quarry by sawing notches in trees, such that when the Hugag goes to lean against them, they topple.  The Hugag then, in its helpless state, is easily dispatched.

The last known Hugag to be killed was on the Turtle River in northern Minnesota.  It was reported to be a young Hugag, weighing 1800 pounds, and was found stuck in the mud of the riverbank.  It was knocked in the head by Mike Flynn of Cass Lake.

And there ya have it.  I hope now you're all educated so that if you're ever wandering the woods and secret parts of the frosty Midwest, you'll know to look out for this most fearsome of American cryptids.

-Joanna

Mellified Man

While listening to Mary Roach's amazing book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, I came across a story so strange I had a hard time believing it wasn't an excerpt from some Victorian weird fantasy: The Mellified Man.

According to our only source, Li Shizhen, a Chinese pharmacologist of the 1500s, mellified man was a legendary medicine made from the honey-steeped mummy of a human being.  In his book, Bencao Gangmu, Li relates an account given by Tao Jiucheng.  That's right.  Our only source of the legend is based on secondhand hearsay.  In fact, Li is diligent enough to add at the end of the entry that he "does not know whether it is true so he is recording it for others to verify."  I have to confess, I'm really sad that nobody got around to verifying it.

So, on to the good stuff: how does one make a Mellified Man?

Well, you start with an old guy.  According to Tao (via Li) a volunteer, usually a man between the ages of 70 and 80, forgoes all food and water and subsists entirely on honey for the remainder of his life.  He bathes in honey, and honey is his only food.  It is said that after a month of this process, the man will begin to excrete nothing but honey.  Meaning his sweat, urine, and feces are nothing but the thick, golden substance.  Death follows soon after.

Then, the body is put into a honey-filled coffin for a hundred years until the body has completely mummfied, preserved by the antibacterial properties of the honey.  They even write the month and year of entombment on the coffin.  Which is a detail that makes me feel really weird about my strawberry jam canning practices.

Once the necessary century had passed, the seals was opened and the body was portioned out.  Pieces were sold in Arabian markets at jaw-dropping prices.  It is stated in the Bencao Gangmu that this confection was used to cure broken and wounded limbs.  When a small amount is taken internally, it will instantly cure any complaint.  It's also said to be extremely rare.

Now, whether or not this practice is true or just a really good story is unclear.  I dearly wish that there were ANY source other than Li, because it sounds like a practice weird enough to be true.  In fact, Burmese priests were known to preserve their chief abbots in coffins full of honey, though they did not eat them.  Further, Chinese medicine of the time did make use of human milk and urine.  And, the medicinal use of 'dry' mummies is well documented in chemistry books of Europe in the 16th and 18th centuries.  However, the combination of transforming a human body into a mummy that is also a confection is novel.

For most people, the horror of this legend is in the cannibalism of it, but I'm not in that camp.  Honestly, the notion of swallowing a tiny lump of sweet-mummy-jerky isn't nearly so disturbing as what it must have looked like to watch this supposed process take place.  I love honey, and the thought of taking care of an elderly man as he starves to death, dripping honey into his puckered mouth, is enough to make me swear off of it forever.  Not to mention the image of pure honey excrement.  It's just such a vile juxtaposition of one of my favorite pleasures with slow, aged, oozing death.

Anyways, Happy Monday everybody!

-Joanna

The Moon-Eyed People

A request was made, once upon a time, that we include articles about lore, folk tales, and the extra disturbing ghost stories that our grandparents swore were true.  So, here we go with our first Matter-of-Fact Monday devoted to anthropology (of a sort)!

In the Appalachian mountains that range from Kentucky down to Georgia, there are strange formations in the rock.  Fortresses have been carved into the pre-existing features of the stone, and rocky walls dating back to 400 B.C. snake their way through the trees.  When Europeans began to sweep across the hills, they marveled at the ruins.  They asked the local Cherokee: Who built these structures?  The answer was not "We did." but rather "The Azgen.  The Moon-Eyed People."

The story goes that long ago, when the Cherokee first traveled to Southern Appalachia, they met a race already living among the mountains.  Their skin was the purest white, and their hair yellow.  They had beards, and large eyes that allowed them see well at night, but blinded them during the day.  They were so sensitive that they were even hurt by the glow of the full moon.  In some places, the story says it was the Creek that murdered the Moon-Eyed People, in others, the Cherokee themselves claim to have wiped them out.  The lone survivors were driven underground to live in subterranean tunnels, far from light and war.  The ghosts of the murdered still haunt the hills to this day.

In Ohio, the Shawnee refused to settle in Kentucky.  Despite it being prime hunting grounds, they claimed that if they set up their permanent dwellings there, they would be killed by the ghosts of the dead Azgen.

In Georgia, just over the North Carolina border, the Fort Mountain State Park preserves one of the most impressive ruins attributed to the Moon-Eyed People.  Massive stone fortifications towering several stories high have stood for thousands of years.  A historical marker is even dedicated to the 'legend' of the Moon-Eyed People.

It is said that on the darkest nights of the new moon, the Moon-Eyed People still venture out to steal livestock, property, or women and children.

There are several theories as to what may have inspired these tales.

1) The Welsh:

In 1810, John Sevier, former governor of Tennessee, wrote that he'd been told by the Cherokee leader Oconostota that the Moon-Eyed People were, in fact, Welsh.  There was a popular theory that noted how well the stories about the Moon-Eyed People lined up with the legend of Prince Madoc.  Madoc was said to have sailed across the ocean long before Columbus, and may well have settled in the New World with a band of his countrymen.  This would explain the pale skin and yellow beards.

Though this seems to be the most popular theory about the Moon-Eyed people on the internet, there is also the criticism that this account is more a testament to white colonial influence than historical fact.  Aside from these testimonials, and wild conjecture, there is no evidence that the Welsh traveled to North Carolina and became The Moon-Eyed People.

2) Albinos:

The Guna, an indigenous people of Panama, exhibit extremely high rates of albinism.  More common in males, albinos are treated as a different race and traditionally honored with a crucial task: protect the moon.  At night, they are sent out with special bows and arrows to shoot at the dragon that attempts to swallow the moon during lunar eclipses.  This keeps the moon safe and keeps the tides in check, a particularly important concern for people who live on an atoll.

It is not assumed that the Moon-Eyed People are a branch of the Guna.  But rather, the Guna are an excellent example of how an indigenous race could be a natural explanation for the Moon-Eyed People.  Through intertribal marriages, it is possible that a race of pale, yellow-haired people could have emerged organically, without an infusion of European genetics.

3) The Lost Tribes: 

After the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C., ten of the twelve tribes of Israel disappeared.  It is commonly assumed that they were assimilated into the surrounding nations.  However, there has long been the hope that the ten tribes would one day be rediscovered, and reunited.  A theory common among Mormons is that the Native Americans are, in fact, one of the lost tribes of Israel.

In this theory, the Moon-Eyed People are jews, instead of welshmen or indigenous albinos.

I personally ascribe to the albino theory.  The other two simply don't sit well with the accounts of the Azgen, or common sense.

If you'd like to read more about the Azgen, including multiple citations of primary sources, take a look at this snarky, in-depth article by a real anthropologist: The Moon in Your Eyes.

-Joanna

P.S. Hope you don't run into any Moon-People if you visit home, Laura.  Enlist a war-possum if you get in deep.