Printing the Legend
When Charles Howard-Bury and his colleagues set off on their reconnaissance mission to
Mount Everest they could not have guessed that they would play a role, albeit inadvertently, in popularising
the Himalayan legend of the yeti. However, news of their encounter with unusual tracks high in the mountain snow
was quickly embellished by contemporary journalists and an instantly recognisable aspect of modern pop culture was born.
Mount Everest they could not have guessed that they would play a role, albeit inadvertently, in popularising
the Himalayan legend of the yeti. However, news of their encounter with unusual tracks high in the mountain snow
was quickly embellished by contemporary journalists and an instantly recognisable aspect of modern pop culture was born.
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 to the conclusion that this must be 'The Wild Man of the Snows,' to which they gave the name of Metohkangmi, 'the abominable snow man' ... 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. |
An artist imagines the Yeti - sketch by Philippe Semeria (creative commons 3.0).
For generations, children in Tibet were told stories of a 'wild man of the snows', an ape-like creature. Much larger than a human and with long shaggy hair, the creature was said to roam the Himalayan heights, only occasionally entering into the daily realm of humans. 
As Howard-Bury noted, tales of mysterious human-like creatures extend far beyond Tibet and can be found throughout the world. This postage stamp from Kyrgyzstan shows a friendly version of their local abominable snowman. Howard-Bury encountered Kyrgyz nomads while travelling along the Tian Shan mountains in 1913 and may have heard local stories of unusual creatures inhabiting the wilderness.
(Kyrgyz Express Post, 2016) |
Murderers, Myths or just Misunderstood?
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When Howard-Bury returned to Europe after the end of the reconnaissance mission, he was surprised and amused to discover that his encounter with a mysterious footprints had gained widespread attention.
During the expedition, Howard-Bury sent regular reports to the Mount Everest Committee, which were subsequently reprinted in newspapers such as London's The Times. The first mention of strange footprints appeared in the Times on 21 October 1921. The report stated that, as Howard-Bury and his colleagues approached the Lhakpa La, they saw 'one mark, like that of a human foot'. Howard-Bury described it as puzzling but added that his Tibetans porters were certain that the track belonged to 'a wild, hairy man' of a type that was 'occasionally to be found in the wildest and most accessible mountains'. The paper added a frisson of excitement to what was an otherwise simple, if intriguing incident by adding the headlines 'Wild Hairy Men' and 'Human Footprints'. That report sparked a fortnight of related reports and letters in the Times in which the existence of these creatures was either judged to be plausible or dismissed as a misidentification. One letter (5 November 1921) noted that 'it has probably occurred to those of your readers who are big-game hunters' that the print was likely made by a bear. Indeed, Howard-Bury came to a similar conclusion judging that it had been left behind by a wolf. Other letters made reference to related stories in Switzerland and mountainous regions of Russia, while Douglas Freshfield, a well-known member of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club, pointed out (2 November 1921) that similar accounts were recorded by British officials in the mid-19th century on the border between India and Nepal. Of these letters and reports, the most eye-catching was headlined: 'Tibetan Tales of Hairy Murderers' with the subtitle 'Abominable Snowmen' (31 October 1921). The Times stated that the Mount Everest expedition porters 'bring confused stories about strange wild men'. The Times was equally confused. It is not clear whether the 'strange wild men' to which the paper referred were supposed to be an undiscovered creature or merely unkempt humans who had been 'driven into waste places' after committing murder. Abominable Snowman or Abominable Journalism?
The report of 31 October 1921 contained the first mention of the abominable snowman in the Times. The term is reputed to have originated with Henry Newman, a special correspondent based in Calcutta (modern Kolkata), who often provided features to newspapers and to the Reuters News Agency, giving his reports a wide reach.
The report in the Times stated that the Tibetans used the term metoh-kangmi to describe these mysterious creatures (Howard-Bury also used this term in Mount Everest: the Reconnaissance). While various translations are given for this term, it is generally translated as 'man-bear snowman' or 'bear-like snowman' and Tibetan traditions seem to differentiate between two types of these creatures: one of which walks on four legs and the other which is bipedal. Newman is supposed to have, whether by accident or design, mistranslated 'metoh' as 'filthy'. Given that 'Filthy Snowman' is not a particularly memorable term, he then substituted filthy with abominable. His instincts were correct and the term stuck. It is often claimed that Newman interviewed members of the reconnaissance team when they arrived back in Darjeeling in October 1921. Sixteen years later, Newman wrote a letter to the Times (published in the paper on 29 July 1937) in which he stated: 'When this expedition returned to Darjeeling I went up to interview some of the members and I asked questions about these tracks'. The team members responded by saying, as in the official narrative of the mission, that a four-legged creature such as a wolf had made the tracks. Newman, he wrote, also spoke with some of the porters who gave a very different explanation for the origin of the tracks: for the porters, the track was left behind by what they described as 'a wild man'. At some stage over the next four decades, accounts of the reconnaissance mission's story became altered. In 1961, Ivan T. Sanderson, a British writer with a penchant for the paranormal, published a book entitled Abominable Snowmen, which explored stories of yeti-like creatures around the world. In his book, Sanderson claimed that Howard-Bury had actually seen, through binoculars, a number of dark forms moving about on a snowfield above the Lhakpa La. Howard-Bury and his colleagues, who were at an altitude of 5,000 metres, made for the snowfield where they found a large number of footprints, each of which was much bigger than those of a human. Sanderson's version bears only a passing resemblance to Howard-Bury's account in Mount Everest: the Reconnaissance. By the 1960s, however, Mount Everest: the Reconnaissance was out-of-print and not easily available. As such, Sanderson's embellished version, in which Howard-Bury had probably seen a yeti, albeit from a distance, gained popularity. Howard-Bury, if we are to judge by his comments in 1921 and an interview with the Westmeath Examiner in 1961, did not mind being quizzed about the yeti. He seemed mildly amused by questions on the topic but he always repeated the same version of events: he encountered unusual tracks near the Lhakpa La which were likely to have been created by a wolf. Neither he nor yeti believers such as Sanderson could have envisioned the 21st Century situation in which the yeti, the sasquatch and a myriad of similar creatures, are at the centre of an industry of books, television shows, YouTube channels, and pseudo-scientific documentaries in which the focus of the investigation remains forever, tantalisingly, out of reach and beyond proof. |
On our way home we stopped in Paris,' Col. Bury commented, 'The first thing I was asked about was the new race of people we were supposed to have met. From this it would seem that the publication of the references to the tracks in the snow minus the exclamation marks was the beginning of the world-wide interest taken in the "Man of the Snows"
Charles Howard-Bury in an interview with the Westmeath Examiner, 19 August 1961
In 1951, a British expedition to Mount Everest, led by Eric Shipton, took this photo of what appeared to be a footprint. The photo, which included an ice axe to demonstrate its scale, sparked renewed public interest in the 'abominable snowman'.
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Tintin, the intrepid Belgian reporter, journeyed through Tibet during the 1950s. Like Howard-Bury, he saw unusual tracks in the snow. Global interest in the Yeti gathered pace during the 1950s and Howard-Bury's encounter with those tracks would become part of the newly emerging international folklore.
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A clipping from the Westmeath Examiner, 19 August 1961 (Marian Keaney/Westmeath Library Services: Howard-Bury Collection)
