Native American Little People And The Pedro Mountain Mummy

Several Native American tribes have oral stories about little people, not unlike the European tales of fairies and sprites. The race of tiny people—between 20 and 36-inches in height—in the Shoshone legends were mean little fellas. They would attack the Shoshone and shoot tiny, poison-tipped arrows at them. We would chalk these legends up to folklore, just like fairies and sprites, except for one thing. The mummified body of a little person was discovered in Wyoming in 1932. What this proof that the Native American little people were real?

The Little People

In the Shoshone Tribe of Wyoming, the little people were called the Nimerigar, a name that translates to “people eaters.” The Nimerigar, according to legends, were fierce and aggressive. They would steal babies away in the night and eat them. They were expert archers and could shoot poison-tipped arrows at the Shoshone people with amazing accuracy. The stories also said that the Nimerigar systematically killed members of their own tribe who were too old, sick, or hurt to be productive members of the society. Their form of euthanasia was particularly brutal—they would bash in the skulls of the infirmed. Remember this…it will be important later. 

The Shoshone People

A Native American tribe, the Shoshone people lived in what is now Wyoming and Idaho, though they began to spread into the Great Plains by the 1500s. The Shoshone often clashed with other Native American tribes, such as the Arapaho, Lakota, Blackfoot, and Crow. The Shoshone evolved from a nomadic group to one with established villages, often with giant tepees. Perhaps the most well-known Shoshone in history was Sacajawea, who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition. 

A Mummy is Found

Tales of the little people in Shoshone folklore would be easy to dismiss as fantasy, and it was until a discovery in 1932. That’s when two gentlemen, Frank Carr and Cecil Main, who were in the San Pedro Mountains south of Casper, Wyoming, looking for gold, stumbled upon something incredible. Inside a cave, they hit a rich vein of gold. They used dynamite to break apart the vein, and when they did, they opened up a previously unknown chamber in the cave. In it, they found the mummified remains of a small human. The body was in a squatting position and had an oddly shaped head. The prospectors took the mummy to Casper and turned it over to scientists. 

Gleaning Information from the Mummy

The scientists conducted a number of tests on the mummy, which came to be known as the Pedro Mountain Mummy. The tests were conducted by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the results were certified as accurate by Harvard University’s Anthropology Department. They determined that the mummy was of a person who stood a little over 14 inches tall and lived around the 1700s. An x-ray of the body showed that it was fully formed adult male, approximately 65 years of age at the time of his death. Oddly, the mummy’s teeth were pointed. The mummy showed signed of trauma. In particular, the skull had been crushed by a forceful blow. Of course, this led to speculation that the mummy could be the remains of a legendary Nimerigar. 

Have Other Little People Been Found?

Many people insist that the remains of several other little people have been found in caves in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Some of these mummies may have been deformed infants or children, as scientists from the University of Wyoming claim, but others state that the results of testing on the mummified remains have been kept secret and never released to the public. In fact, the mummies themselves seem to disappear after they are turned over to authorities. An ongoing conspiracy theory states that the Smithsonian Institute hides or destroys evidence that runs counter to established beliefs. 

The Pedro Mountain Mummy also Disappeared

The mummy that was discovered by Carr and Main in 1932 turned into a sideshow display. Later, it was purchased by Ivan T. Goodman, a Casper, Wyoming, store owner who kept it in his store window. When he died in 1950, the Pedro Mountain Mummy went to New Yorker, Leonard Walder. After his death in the 1980s, the mummy has not been seen. Its whereabouts remain unknown.