The First Yeti Report

      The yeti, as every schoolboy knows, was introduced to the outside world in 1921 when Charles Howard-Bury, leader of the first Everest Reconnaissance Expedition reported a series of footprints in the Lhakpa Pass. Although he thought they were made by a "loping grey wolf", his sherpas identified them as belonging to a metoh-kangmi. To this the Calcutta journalist, Harry Newman gave the whimsical, and no doubt very inaccurate translation of "abominable snowman" - thereby casting a cloud over the issue. After all, logic tells us that the presence of an unknown primate in the Himalayan wilderness cannot be ruled out, but how can anyone take a "snowman" serious, especially an "abominable" one. Thank goodness Howard-Bury provided a couple of rival names, one of which was "yeti"!
       There had been previous reports of footprints, and of the legend, which had not caught the public's imagination. But as far as can be ascertained, the earliest reference was by B. H. Hodgson, the British Resident at the court of Nepal from 1820 to 1843.

       1832 saw the publication of the first volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which you can read here. Hodgson's contribution was at pages 335 to 348, entitled "On the Mammalia of Nepal". He apparently hired shooters to obtain specimens. In the article on monkeys on page 339 he provides a brief footnote.

My shooters were once alarmed in the Káchar by the apparition of a "wild man," possibly an ourang, but I doubt there accuracy. They mistook the creature for a câcodemon, or rakshas, and fled from it instead of shooting it. It moved, they said, erectly: was covered with long dark hair, and had no tail.

        Let us examine this brief report in detail. The Káchar is the foothills of the Himalayas. The word, "câcodemon",Greek for evil spirit, is just his translation of rakshas, a demon in Hindu mythology. This is important, because it means that his shooters did not recognize it as a normal species of the area, and had no knowledge of the yeti tradition.

       "[P]ossibly an ourang": the great apes were little known at this period (and the gorilla hadn't even been discovered). The orang utan (in various spellings) tended to be the public's idea of a huge ape. Compare Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". Orang utans (there are three species) occur only in Borneo and Sumatra, although there are fossils from China. They are covered with long red hair, and do not walk upright.

       It would appear that Howard-Bury's shooters had seen an unknown ape i.e. a yeti. Just think: if the shooters had shot it instead of running away, the mystery would have been solved before it even started.