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Sunday, April 30, 2006
Mysterious monsters inhabited Utah Valley waters
Daily Herald
D. Robert Carter
In this day and age, a cry of "Walla-la-loo-loo" wafting across the nighttime air would not cause a normal Utah Valley resident to tremble with fear. However, during an earlier time in Utah Valley, that cry would likely have sent a chill through the breech cloth of many a Shinob-fearing Timpanogos warrior. It may have also curdled the milk of nursing Ute mothers and caused numerous sleeping Indian children to unconsciously duck their heads under their animal skin covers and clutch their buffalo hide beanie babies a little closer. For that sound was the call uttered by Pawapicts, or Water Babies, whom native Americans believed inhabited the waters of Utah Lake, Provo River and other aqua pura.
There are various Utah Indian tales relating how these water beings came into existence. According to one account published by the Uintah-Ouray Ute Tribe in the book Stories of Our Ancestors, Pawapicts came into existence as the result of a wrestling match between a very stout man named Pahahpooch and Wildcat. It is possible that this account and other similar tales were attempts on the part of the Native Americans to explain what happened to their people who had drowned.
Before challenging Wildcat to a wrestling bout, Pahahpooch had thrown all of his other contestants and had never lost a contest. When the prearranged match began, the two grappled beside a large expanse of water. The feline creature eventually threw Pahahpooch into the middle of the lake and said, "You will stay in the water all the time now and people will call you Water Indian."
Pahahpooch's life in the water must have been a very lonely one, and eventually he tempted or forced others into the water to become Water Indians like him. Then it became the task of the new Water Indians to lure other people into the water or swallow them and carry them into the depths. The lakes or streams into which they were submerged became the victims' homes.
Utes apparently believed Pawapicts came in various shapes and sizes. Most Ute accounts agree that they had long black hair and cried like infants. However, Ute sources quoted in Anne M. Smith's book, "Ute Tales," variously described them either as being the size of a man's hand or as large as a three or four-year-old child. Sometimes, they even appeared in the shape and size of an alluring full-grown woman.
These last mentioned creatures, like their human counterparts, sometimes trapped their victims by using devious methods. In one story, a young man went to the river and watered his horses. He felt overcome with fatigue and went to sleep on the bank of the stream.
When the man awoke, he became aware that someone was lying beside him. He opened his eyes and saw a seductive woman in a green dress lying next to him. He fell in love with her, and she coaxed him to go with her under the water to meet her people. His family never saw him again.
Some of the tales in Smith's book reveal personal experiences Utes had with these inhabitants of the deep, or in Utah Lake's case, the not so deep. For example, John Duncan, a Ute whose Indian name was Red Sunrise, related a story of a Water Baby that lived near Provo. Duncan said that in his youth he knew a boy who neither believed in Water Babies nor thought they were bad. He wanted proof of their existence.
Once John and his friend traveled to Utah Valley and went fishing. They saw Water Babies on a flat rock in the Provo River drying their long hair. The Pawapicts looked about the size of three-year-old children and cried like babies.
Duncan's friend, who suddenly became a believer, wanted to see the small creatures clearer, and even though the boys were afraid, they edged nearer the water. The Water Babies saw the boys, became alarmed and dove into the river. Their long hair floated on top of the water. Then the river mysteriously began to rise and come nearer to the boys. At this point, the frightened young Utes ran away. John Duncan never saw a Water Baby again; after that experience, he may not have wanted to see another one.
When the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Great Basin, the Utes told some of their beliefs to the newcomers. These Ute tales probably helped stimulate the development of similar pioneer ghost and monster stories related to water. For example, the LDS Journal History contains an early (perhaps the earliest) pioneer reference related to Water Babies.
The Southern Exploring Expedition, led by Parley P. Pratt, traveled southward through Utah Valley in November 1849. The explorers crossed over the ridge into Juab Valley on the 29th of that month and camped at Punjun Spring. This body of water is now called Burraston Ponds.
That evening the men gathered for a camp meeting. They sang hymns and two men who were ill received blessings. Toward the end of the meeting, Indian interpreter Dimick B. Huntington told the group about Ute Indian traditions, one of which was that the spring near which they camped was bottomless.
The Journal History listing for this date tells of another Ute belief that Huntington may have told the men: "The Indians have a tradition that this spring is inhabited by a hairy being, like a child 8 years old . . . he comes up at nights, makes a noise like a frog and tries to frighten and catch Indians and draw them into this bottomless spring."
Imperfect command of the Ute language likely caused some of the Indian stories to become garbled. Also, the settlers sometimes modified stories they heard so they fit better into the Euro-American culture's realm of understanding and belief. Within a short time, the pioneers had modified this Indian tale about Burraston Ponds, and their version took on a very ghostly Euro-American flavor.
The September 15, 1851, Millennial Star contains a description of Brigham Young's spring journey to visit some of the southern colonies in Utah Territory. This article contains a reference to Punjun Spring and shows how the pioneers modified the Indian story to better fit what they could more easily understand. The settler's version of the story says Indian traditions regarded the pond "as bottomless, and in the evening they report the slight wailing of an infant is often heard to proceed from it."
Through the years, the narrative underwent still further revision. The current version of this ancient Water Baby tale has been passed down through the Richard James Burraston family to Burraston's great-granddaughter, Karen Thorn, a resident of Springville. The Daily Herald of January 27, 2001, quotes Thorn as saying, "A story is told that a baby fell into the pond and was never found. Legend says if you go to the ponds at the right time you can hear a baby cry."
Other Water Baby tales are more closely related to Utah Lake. Some early settlers of Utah Valley even changed Utah Water Indian tales so they substantiated stories found in the Bible. This was the case with William S. Robinson, who was a boy when his family settled in American Fork during pioneer times.
Robinson wrote: "When we came here, we heard that a great monster was in the lake. We asked an Indian about this big reptile and he said it was a fish, and told how four of the Indians were in swimming and heard a noise and saw this big fish following. It swallowed them and they had a knife and cut themselves out of the fish. You can connect that story with the story of Jonah, (from) which I think it is handed down."
Many of the Great Basin's new settlers came to Utah Valley from England and Denmark and were familiar with stories of dragons and kraken, or as we call them, sea monsters. Utah pioneers may not have been able to believe in little people who lived in the lake, swallowed humans and carried them into the water, but it was apparently less difficult for some of them to believe in something just as chilling and dramatic. Indian tales sown on the fertile field of pioneer imagination resulted in a bounteous harvest of monster lore.
There was, however, little public comment dealing with the presence of water monsters in Utah until August 3, 1868. On that date, a letter in the correspondence column of the Deseret News sported an eye-catching headline consisting of the following four words printed in bold capital letters: "MONSTERS IN BEAR LAKE" The letter read in part:
"All lakes, caves and dens have their legendary histories. Tradition loves to throw her magic wand over beautiful dells and lakes and people them with fairies, giants and monsters of various kinds. Bear Lake has also its monster tale to tell, and when I have told it, I will leave you to judge whether or not its merits are merely traditionary."
The correspondent, Joseph Rich, son of Charles C. Rich, went on to say the local Indians believed Bear Lake contained a monster. They claimed that many years earlier the animal carried off Indians who were swimming in the lake. Although the monster had not been seen for many years, the Indians faintly remembered what it looked like. They said the monster had legs 18 inches long and spouted water upwards from its mouth.
On a summer Sunday in 1868, three men and six women spotted a huge brownish animal between 40 and 90 feet long swimming in Bear Lake. It swam faster than a speeding locomotive, and ten others of various sizes swam in its wake.
Rich finished his imaginative article by teasing his audience with these words: "Is it fish, flesh or serpent, amphibious or amfabulous or a great big fib, or what is it? ... Here is an excellent opportunity for some company to bust Barnum on a dicker for the monster, if they can only catch one."
Did the clever, articulate correspondent from Rich County believe what he wrote? The answer lies in the following statement Rich jotted down about twenty years later when summarizing the many things he had accomplished at that point in his life. He wrote, "I discovered and made famous by publication in the Deseret News that wonderful first class lie -- The Bear Lake Monster."
What motivated Rich to write his now famous letter? To many people in Utah's capital city, life on the northern fringe of the territory near Bear Lake seemed provincial and boring, and the area received few visitors during the first years of its settlement.
Rich apparently contrived to convince the people of Salt Lake City, including the woman he hoped to marry, that life in Rich County was not as drab and humdrum as they thought it was. Rich intended to attract more visitors to the area by making the Bear Lake Country the most talked about and widely known section of Utah Territory. Could his fanciful scheme succeed?
To be continued...
www.heraldextra.com/content/view/177060/4/
Loren Coleman has a commentary on Cryptomundo:
www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/whybearlake/
and previous comments:
www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/great-bear-lake/
