The Wild Man of the Woods: Arkansas, 1851, and How the Story Reached New Zealand

Long before anyone said “Bigfoot,” American newspapers had the wild man of the woods. One of the most widely reprinted came out of northeast Arkansas in the spring of 1851. It’s a good example of something this ledger runs into constantly: a story that seems to be everywhere, and is, but only because everybody copied the same paragraph.

What the story said

The Memphis Enquirer, in an item dated by later reprints to 9 May 1851, reported:

• In March 1851, a Mr. Hamilton of Greene County, Arkansas, out hunting with an acquaintance, saw a herd of cattle running in alarm.
• Chasing them was a figure of “gigantic stature,” with “the unmistakeable likeness of humanity.” Its body was covered in hair, and long locks covered its neck and shoulders.
• It looked at the two men for a moment, then ran, leaping 12 to 14 feet at a stride. Its footprints measured 13 inches.
• The paper said the creature had been known by tradition in St. Francis, Greene and Poinsett counties for about seventeen years, and that a planter who’d seen it recently had kept quiet for fear of not being believed.
• The most common local theory was that it was a human survivor of the 1811 earthquakes (the New Madrid sequence), left to fend for himself in the wilderness until he kept only “the outward resemblance of humanity.”
• An expedition was being organized in Memphis by “Colonel David C. Cross and Dr. Sullivan” to look for it.

That’s the whole of it. The witnesses’ own words were never printed. The paper reports what Hamilton and his friend described, at second hand.

How far it went

The Enquirer’s original isn’t in the Library of Congress’s digitized collection, but its copies are. The ledger’s research desk checked twelve U.S. reprints on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America between 23 May and 26 June 1851:

• the Athens Post in Tennessee;
• both editions of the Washington National Intelligencer;
• the Staunton Spectator in Virginia;
• the Danbury Times in Connecticut;
• Little Rock’s Arkansas State Gazette and Democrat;
• the North Carolina Standard in Raleigh;
• the Martinsburg Gazette;
• the Planters’ Banner in Louisiana;
• the Plymouth Pilot in Indiana (“Wild Man of the Forest”);
• the Vermont Watchman;
• Frederick Douglass’ Paper in Rochester.

Most ran the full text. The Planters’ Banner cut it down and dropped the earthquake theory.

Then it crossed the ocean. On 27 December 1851, the Wellington Independent in New Zealand ran it under “English Extracts,” headed “A Wild Man of the Woods” and credited to the New York Express. It’s sandwiched between a story about wrens nesting in a coat pocket and a note on a short preacher in a tall pulpit. The ledger read the text through the National Library of New Zealand’s Papers Past. It matches the American versions almost word for word, seven months and half a world from Greene County. That’s why the case is cross-filed to the ledger’s Antipodes desk.

Spread is not corroboration

Thirteen newspapers doesn’t mean thirteen witnesses. It means one report, copied. Editors in 1851 filled columns with exchange items from other papers, and an odd story from the frontier was ideal filler. None of the reprints the ledger has seen adds a new detail, a new witness, or a word from Greene County.

What would count as corroboration, and hasn’t turned up:

• the Memphis Enquirer original itself, or a follow-up;
• any report of what the Cross and Sullivan expedition found, or whether it set out;
• an independent Arkansas account from Greene, St. Francis or Poinsett counties.

Possible explanations

• An exaggerated sighting of a known animal. Black bears lived in the Arkansas delta then. A bear seen briefly among stampeding cattle is one possibility. That’s the ledger’s suggestion, not something any 1851 source says.
• A feral or reclusive person. That was the locals’ own favorite theory, as printed.
• Newspaper filler that grew in the telling. Possible, but none of the papers the ledger has seen treated it as a joke.
• An early “sasquatch” report. That framing is modern and retrospective.

Ledger status

Folklore. It was a real, widely printed 1851 story with a single source and no follow-up. It belongs with other press-made legends on this site, like Tombstone’s winged monster.

No map pin. The paper gives nothing more specific than “Greene County,” and the land there is mostly private farmland.

Sources

• Wellington Independent (Wellington, NZ), 27 Dec 1851, “English Extracts,” “A Wild Man of the Woods” (credited to the New York Express, quoting the Memphis Enquirer). Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand. Full text read by the ledger.
• Arkansas State Gazette and Democrat (Little Rock), 30 May 1851, p.3. Library of Congress.
• Daily National Intelligencer (Washington), 28 May 1851, p.2. Library of Congress.
• Planters’ Banner (Franklin, La.), 14 Jun 1851, p.1 (shortened). Library of Congress.
• Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), 26 Jun 1851, p.4. Library of Congress.
• Other reprints checked: Athens Post (23 May), Staunton Spectator and Danbury Times (28 May), Weekly National Intelligencer (31 May), North Carolina Standard (7 Jun), Martinsburg Gazette (10 Jun), Plymouth Pilot (18 Jun), Vermont Watchman and State Journal (19 Jun), all 1851, via Chronicling America. The research desk checked the LoC pages through OCR; the ledger couldn’t load them directly this session.