In the age of Internet e-mail, I was surprised to receive this report by forwarded ground mail postmarked Julyt 2005 Wrangell, AK 99929. It is uploaded on this website under ‘stories’ because attempts to contact anyone by the name listed has proven futile, making investigative contact impossible. The letter has been spell-corrected but wording and sentence structure remains as original as possible. It was written by hand and readability was difficult, perhaps done by a senior citizen. Still, the letter contains interesting observations.

Wrangell, Alaska

In 1918, a German gold prospector of a stature half starved made his way (a day’s walk) back to Wrangell from a northern most mining camp; he was looking for food and provisions.  Lacking in strength from dietary neglect and penniless except for a pinch of garnered gold, in route to the settlement he sat down to pick new sprouts of fireweed plant to eat which was mixed in a scraggly field of berries.  He ate what his stomach could tolerate and fell asleep curled up in a bed of grass in the warm afternoon sun. 

The story goes on, -the prospector claimed persons talking nearby awakened him. Glee filled to have company and needing direction to the settlement, he worked his way twixt high berry brambles of thorn to see who was there and meet his company. 

His eyes beheld a bushwoman!  The hairy woman was sitting on the ground feeding a small one berries hand to mouth; the little one was sitting inside the circle of her huge legs.  "…the bulk of my being was in great astonishment and fright for my safety in the presence of the giantess." Later he exclaimed, “…now in control of my faculties, I take leave of my civil upbringing to declare she is the ugliest woman ever a lonely man set eyes upon.”

His journal indicated the bushwoman talk to the smaller one in words sounding of the same kind to the Tongass Tlingit Indian, which he knew as Native. She was of brown colored hair about her face and body, unclothed bosom in nakedness of great size, a length of darker hair on the back of her head and neck and fed the berries left-handed. The note is blurred, ending with, “…heard the bushman on the Stikine River…(a blurred or stained space) ...capsized his dugout last spring.”

No one knows what became of the bushwoman, but his youngest son found the prospector’s bones in his camp four years hence. There was no disturbance or clamor in camp and no tins of food. It was determined his father died of delirium from starvation and cold; a length of cord was found tied such to hold up his trousers around his wasting figure.  Tools and bedding in his tent untouched.

A. Petermann to grandson, 1947, unpublished stories by E. Petermann " On his great grandfather's knee."

Sent to Bigfoot Encounters by Anna Petermann in a hand-written note, portions translated from German in September 2005. It was postmarked July 2005 Wrangell, AK 99929


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