Cryptomundo » Gorillas In Our Midst

Gorillas In Our Midst

Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 24th, 2006

A 19th Century illustration of Paul du Chaillu confronting a gorilla in Africa.

Why would early newspapers in the United States use the term "gorilla" so frequently in the late 1800s when a large, hairy anthropoid was seen in nearby hollows and hills? Simply put, gorillas during that time were rather closely tied to American explorers’ discoveries and American journalistic interest in others’ adventures with the apes.

I’m not for the source of all of the confusion and challenges among Bigfoot researchers and/or those making comments at Cryptomundo about whether or not "gorilla" was used as a way to describe early Bigfoot sightings in America. Between Craig and myself, we have placed several words here about this issues. But this is an old subject, in more ways than one, of course. Some thirty years ago I wrote my first article (an "On the Trail" column in Fortean Times) about the widespread use of the label "gorilla" to capture the "unknowns" being seen in the 1800s, with case examples. I’ve followed that examination with more ink on this in both Mysterious America and Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America. So here’s a summary of some of those older writings.

Just as the media frenzy that followed the sightings and footprint finds in the Himalayas during the 1920s-1950s caused media folks to term all accounts of hairy hominoids, in Canada and the USA, as "Abominable Snowmen" for decades, so too did the same thing happen in the middle 1800s, regarding "gorillas" in our midst and firsthand encounters with unknown apelike creatures.

The first historical mention of the gorilla in the Old World was in 500 BC. However, the modern era of the “gorilla” has a very American favor to it. In 1844, in the Boston Journal of Natural History , an American Dr. Thomas Savage gave the first scientific description of the gorilla. Only when a skull was obtained by another American Dr. Leighton Wilson in 1846 and the animal described in 1847, by Wilson and Savage, both West African missionaries, did the popularity of the “gorilla” really start sky-rocketing. Sir Richard Owen, thanks to Savage and Wilson, was the first to “formally” describe the gorilla.

In 1851 Captain Harris brought the first gorilla skeleton to England. That same year a skeleton was sent to Philadelphia. Also in 1851, French naturalist Saint-Hillaire first gave the animal its own genus. This was quickly followed by a good deal of media attention about gorillas, whipped up by Paul du Chaillu’s sensationalistic travels in Africa. Today I think few realize how intense that the media interest was in gorillas and most of it was caused by Du Chaillu’s African adventures and his book, Exploration and Adventures in Equatorial Africa: With accounts of the manners & customs of the people & the chase of the gorilla, crocodile, leopard, elephant, hippopotamus… which was published in 1861. Indeed, says primatologist Vernon Reynolds mentions, “After (du Chaillu’s) trip, which lasted from 1856 to 1859, du Chaillu returned to the United States, where he received widespread acclaim.” In other words, the guy went on a media tour, lecture tour, and turned his romantic zoology about gorillas into a living.

In 1863, another famous gorilla travel book was published; it was written by American explorer Winwood Reade, after he spent five months in gorilla country.

If you can imagine Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Drudge, Boing Boing, Anomalist, and Cryptomundo reporting daily about the speaking tours happening in America by the explorers who had these early gorilla encounters, you will get a flavor of what it was like in the last part of the 19th century among the American media. It was only natural that "gorilla" would have been on reporters’ minds when writing an article about the nearby valley’s sightings of strange hairy upright critters.

It appears logical that any American witness seeing a hairy unknown apelike creature would have used the gorilla as a frame of reference in describing their encounter. We do know that chimpanzees and monkeys in American traveling circuses were sometimes labeled “gorillas.” Despite the European framework of the gorilla discoveries, the media storm was really being generated out of America. The “lost from a circus” explanation, groundless as usual, could have been used without any gorillas even being in America.

The first four gorillas to be brought from the wild into captivity arrived in 1855, 1883, and 1897 at Liverpool, and in 1883 at Berlin. The first gorilla in Liverpool was thought to be a chimpanzee. The first two gorillas in the United States did not arrive until 1897, at Boston, and 1911, at New York. The Ringling Brothers Circus exhibited the gorilla “John Daniel” in the 1920s. The combined Ringling Brothers/Barnum circus owed and exhibited the famed “Gargantua” from 1937, until he died in 1949.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 9:53 am and is filed under Bigfoot, Books, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoology, Expedition Reports, Pop Culture, Sasquatch. You can follow responses via our RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.

Spread the Word!

del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit StumbleUpon Help

Similar Phenomena:

10 Responses to “Gorillas In Our Midst”

tapper responds: August 24th, 2006 at 10:50 am
A well written piece but a little long winded, don’t you think? Gorillas were top-of-mind back then but there was a real lack of knowledge about their size, geo distribution and the like that, so it only makes sense for people back then to refer to BF as a gorilla.

What bothers me about your article is the fact that you placed Fox News next to and before CNN. I would hardly call Fox an objective news source and, in fact, I think I’d believe anything I read on Cryptomundo before I’d believe Fox ‘News’
Loren Coleman responds: August 24th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Literary critics now, regarding length. LOL.

Actually, my placement of Fox was on purpose because they are so sensational about their “news.”
Dark-Obsessor responds: August 24th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I guess I’m an idiot to believe news sources before reports, claims, and such on here.

Besides, I believe something such as Bigfoot may exist somewhere, but, I doubt these claims were of one.
greywolf responds: August 24th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
I remember when I was a little kid the Ringling Bros/Barnum circus came to my town and my dad took me to see “Gargantua”. I was impressed but I was little at the time.
dbard responds: August 24th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Tapper:

Yours was a well-written post, but a little long-winded, don’t you think?
oldbutnotstupid responds: August 24th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
thanks Loren, I asked for more information and you came through.
chaoscryptrid responds: August 24th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Very insightful piece of work. But couldn’t bigfoot be considered in some way the american gorilla?
shumway10973 responds: August 25th, 2006 at 1:39 am
well, it was obvious to me when I heard the beginning timeframe for the word gorilla, that anything bigger than your average known chimp or monkey had to be a gorilla. Us simple folk use the easiest words to get our point across. Oh, and just to let everyone know (no matter what side of the fense you are on) there are no news media that tells the news without their political agendas. That’s why I stopped watching them years ago. Thank God for Cryptomundo and unknowncountry, between the 2 I get more useful news than most people I know.
twblack responds: August 25th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
I think this was a well written article myself.
pipdog responds: August 30th, 2006 at 12:40 am
It is well written and after all apes are apes, bigfoot or gorilla.

Furthermore, I’ve seen apes, now show me a real bigfoot!

Leave your comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.

|Top | Content|

Spread the Word!

10 Responses to “Gorillas In Our Midst”

Leave your comments

Main Page

Join The Search

Mystery Pages

Login

Advertisement

Syndication

Donate Today

The Beyond

Advertisement

microsoft window 2000 professional oem software

microsoft office 2003 oem,

cheap software downloads,

The Logo Creator MEGA pak 3.6;

microsoft window 2000 professional oem software

software oem cd line business;

iCorrect EditLab Pro 4.52,

software discount oem?

adobe cs2 photo shop total training

oem software bundle

"Buy cheap PhotoShop CS 2"

microsoft office 2003 oem,

microsoft window 2000 professional oem software

oem software bundle

software oem cd line business;

inkjet definition oem software

adobe cs2 photo shop total training

"locate software oem files"

iCorrect EditLab Pro 4.52,

adobe any cs2 from photo photo shop shop upgrade version

"how to activate reget deluxe"

microsoft office 2003 oem,

"locate software oem files"

software discount oem?

adobe cs2 photo shop total training