California 1879/12/12 - Two Men Chased by Wildman in Antelope Mountains

[gigantor]

UPDATE 10 September 2026 by Trogluddite:  This update was necessitated by a discovery made while trying to synchronize the new archive of historical newspaper articles with this forum.  It is now possible to demonstrate that several newspapers used the same story while changing the facts to make it appear like a local news event.  See https://bigfootforums.com/topic/122001-massachusetts-1879-two-men-chased-by-wild-man-near-blackinton-tirademan-updated/.

 

The original version of this story, which supposedly occurred in Massachusetts, is included in Bigfoot in New York and New England by Paul and Robert Bartholomew.  It has also been added to The Bigfoot Forums' Standardized Sighting Record; see SSRID: 7855.  Tirademan found a version of the Massachusetts story published in a Canadian paper on October 31, 1879.  However, the earliest known Massachusetts version of this article was published in The Sun of New York (NY) on October 17, 1879.  That article is poorly copied and difficult to read.  Therefore, I've included a copy of the article published in the Fall River (MA) Daily Evening News on October 18, 1879.   

 

It wasn't particularly remarkable for one newspaper to copy, largely verbatim, an article from another newspaper in the days before wire services.  However, the story doesn't end in Massachusetts.  By mid-November 1879, newspapers had moved the hunters to either the Antelope Valley (California) or the Antelope Mountains (?) and claimed that the originating newspaper was in Nevada.  An article with the Nevada version of this story was published in The Daily Picayune of New Orleans (LA) on December 1, 1879.  It can also be found at the link above.  While some names and small details were changed to protect the innocent the plagiarist, the stories are unequivocally the same. 

 

It is unclear where Tirademan found the clip (below left), but it is very similar to both the Daily Picayune story and the original news article from Massachusetts (below right). 

 

                             

Edited 10 hours ago by Trogluddite
See update in body of post.

[PBeaton]

Cool find gigantor.