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Guide to Patagonia's Monsters & Mysterious beings

I have written a book on this intriguing subject which has just been published.
In this blog I will post excerpts and other interesting texts on this fascinating subject.

Austin Whittall


Showing posts with label Orinoco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orinoco. Show all posts

Friday, December 5, 2025

Humboldt on Transatlantic pre-Columbian contact in America: Amalivaca


Continuing with some interesting information published by von Humboldt (see my previous post on pygmies and white indians), today's post will look into his comments on an ancient god who reached the interior of Venezuela, by boat, coming from a distant land beyond the ocean.


During his journey along the Orinoco in Venezuela in the year 1800, Humboldt described the myth of Amalivaca. Below is the relevant text from his work Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent during the years 1799-1804.


This text can be found on page 597:


"All mankind or to speak more correctly all the Tamanacs were drowned with the exception of one man and one woman who saved themselves on a mountain near the banks of the Asiveru called Cuchivero by the Spaniards. This mountain is the Ararat of the Aramean or Semitic nations and the Tlaloc or Colhuacan of the Mexicans. Amalivaca sailing in his bark engraved the figures of the moon and the sun on the Painted Rock Tepumereme of Encaramada. Some blocks of granite piled upon one another and forming a kind of cavern are still called the house or dwelling of the great forefather of the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near this cavern in the plains of Maita which they say was an instrument of music the drum of Amalivaca. We must here observe that this heroic personage had a brother Vochi who helped him to give the surface of the earth its present form. The Tamanacs relate that the two brothers in their system of perfectibility sought at first to arrange the Orinoco in such a manner that the current of the water could always be followed either going down or going up the river. They hoped by this means to spare men trouble in navigating rivers but however great the power of these regenerators of the world they could never contrive to give a double slope to the Orinoco and were compelled to relinquish this singular plan.
Amalivaca had daughters, who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition says, no doubt in a figurative style, that he broke their legs, to render them sedentary, and force them to people the land of the Tamanacs. After having regulated every thing in America, on that side of the great water, Amalivaca again embarked, and “returned to the other shore,” to the same place from which he came. Since the natives have seen the missionaries arrive, they imagine, that Europe is this other shore; and one of them inquired with great simplicity of father Gili, whether he had seen the great Amalivaca yonder, the father of the Tamanacs, who had covered the rocks with symbolic figures.
These notions of a great cataclysm; of a couple saved on the summit of a mountain, and throwing behind them the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, to repeople the Earth; of that national divinity, Amalivaca, who arrived by water from a distant land, prescribed laws to nature, and forced the nations to renounce their migrations; these various features of a very ancient system of belief, are well worthy to fix our attention. What the Tamanacs, and the tribes whose languages are analogous to the Tamanac tongue, now relate to us, they have no doubt learned from other people, who inhabited before them the same regions. The name of Amalivaca is spread over a region of more than five thousand square leagues; it is found designating the father of mankind (our great grandfather) as far as to the Caribbee nations, whose idiom approaches that of the Tamanac only in the same degree as the German approaches the Greek, the Persian, and the Sanscrit. “Amalivaca is not originally the Great Spirit; the Aged of Heaven, that invisible being, whose worship springs from that of the powers of nature, when nations rise insensibly to the sentiment of the unity of these powers; he is rather a personage of the heroic times, a man, who, coming from afar, lived in the land of the Tamanacs and the Caribbees, sculptured symbolical figures upon the rocks, and disappeared by going back to the country he had previously inhabited beyond the Ocean.
The anthropomorphitism of the divinity has two sources diametrically opposite; and this opposition seems to arise less from the various degrees of intellectual culture, than from the different dispositions of nations, some of which are more inclined to mysticism, and others more governed by the senses, and by external impressions. Sometimes man makes the divinities descend upon Earth, charging them with the care of ruling nations, and giving them laws, as in the fables of the East; sometimes, as among the Greeks and other nations of the West, they are the first monarchs, priest-kings, who are stripped of what is human in their nature to be raised to the rank of national divinities. dmalivaca was a stranger, like Manco-Capac, Bochica, and Quetzalcohuatl ; those extraordinary men, who, in the alpine or civilized part of America, on the table lands of Peru, New Grenada, and Anahuac, organized civil society, regulated the order of sacrifices, and founded religious congregations. The Mexican Quetzalcohuatl, whose descendants Montezuma thought he recognized in the companions of Cortez, displays an additional resemblance to Amalivaca, the mythologic personage of savage America, or the plains of the torrid zone. When advanced in age, the high-priest of Tula left the country of Anahuac, which he had filled with. his miracles, to return to an unknown region, called Tlalpallan. When the monk Bernard de Sahagun arrived in Mexico, the same questions precisely were put to him, as those which were addressed to father Gili two hundred years later in the forests of the Oroonoko ; he was asked, whether he came from the other shore, from the countries to which Quetzalcohuatl had retired.
"


Humboldt also saw petroglyphs, with symbols engraved and painted on rocks along the Orinoco. He gives their location and guesses that they were done by people who preceeded the current inhabitants: "We have seen above, that the region of sculptured rocks, or of painted stones, extends far beyond the Lower Oroonoko, beyond the country (latitude 7° 5’ to 7° 40’; longitude 68° 50’ to 69° 45’) to which belongs what may be called the local fable of the Tamanacs. We again find these same sculptured rocks between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (lat. 2° 5’ to 3° 20’; long. 69° to 70°); and between the sources of the Essequibo and the Rio Branco (lat. 3° 50'; long. 62° 32’). I do uot assert, that these figures prove the knowledge of the use of iron, or that they denote a very advanced degree of culture; but even on the supposition, that, instead of being symbolical, they are the fruits of the idleness of hunting nations, we must still admit an anterior race of men, very different from those who now inhabit the banks of the Oroonoko and the Rupunuri."


The Tamanac People


The Tamanacs were a tribe that belonged to the Cariban linguistic group and lived in the area comprised by the Cuchivero River, which flows into the lower Orinoco in Venezuela. The Jesuit missionaries attempted to group them in the mission of San Luis de Encaramada in 1749 (approx. location map) and Father S. Gilii (mentioned further up by Humboldt) remained there for 18 years until the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish colonies in America in 1767. He recorded the myth (more on his writings below). The mission passed on to another order, but it declined, and during the independence wars in the 1810s and 1820s they suffered a high death toll which nearly wiped them out.


They had a mythical deluge myth of noachian scale, which left only one man and one woman alive. They survived by climbing to the summit of the Tamanaca mountain. Amalivaca came to their land after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and civilized them in a Promethean way, he counted with the help of his brother. He is the one who engraved the symbols mentioned by Humboldt, on cliffs and rocks.


Gilli's Account


Filippo Salvadore Gilii (1721-1789) wrote his account (Saggio di storia americana o Sia storia naturale, civile, e sacra de regni, e delle provincie spagnuole di terra-ferma nell'America meridionale, 1780). Below is the text about Amalivaca (See vol. 3, p. 5).


" The Indians know, or rather, calling themselves Gentiles, also knew a tribe on which the inferior tribes depend, and they call them in their language the Amalivacà. The Parians call them the Amarivacà, the Caribs call them the Amarivacà; and the name given to them by the Zavaricotti, the Guaichiri, the Chirichiripi, the Machiritaria, and by many others, whose catalogue we will give elsewhere, is not very different.
The Tamanachi
[Tamanacs] give to Amalivacà a brother called Voce, and they say that with him he created the earth. In the formation of the river Orinoco there was a long conflict between the two of them.
...
Amalvacà had a daughter (the story of the Tamanachi continues) who, like many of her peers, loved walking; and her father, to prevent her from doing so, broke her legs.
Amalivaca stayed for a long time with the Tamanachi in the place called Màita. There they show the cave, which is nothing but a steep cliff on the top of which there are some rocks shaped like a cave. When I saw it, it was called the Amalivacà-jeutitpe; that is, the cave where Amalivacà lived. Your drum is not far from that cave is his drum, a large rock, on the road to the Màita, to which they give that name.
Amalivacà after he had been living for many years with the Tamanachi (their stories continue), finally chose a canoe and returned to the other side of the sea, from where he had come. You, for sure, they said to me, must have seen him there.
When leaving (here is some final news) Having already entered the canoe, he turned to the Tamanachi and said in another voice: uopicaccetpe mapkateccì; that is, you will change your skin so much. What he wanted to indicate with those words, the Tamanachi say that our ancestors did not die, but that by perpetually rejuvenating themselves, they would only have changed their skin like crickets, serpents, and other similar animals.
"


On page 30, Gilii notes that this deity was very human: " the Tamanachì speak of him as of a man (who was with them in Màita, they say, who had to be dressed, that he was white, and similar things not applicable to one who creoles, but to one who was the first to bring them to those places."


The Rock Art


In vol. 2, p. 234 he mentions the petroglyphs: "About eight miles from Ecaramada, there is a rock called Tepu merème, that is, the painted stone. I thought I would see some memorable stone there, and, eager to clarify, I went to see it. But as far as I could see, the paintings they have on the ceiling of the aforementioned rock are nothing but rough outlines, made in ancient times with some kind of stone, and have no appearance of letters. The Indians do not give them any meaning, and only say that they are made by Amalivacà, who they consider their god."


A paper describes the site of Amalivaca Cave (Tarble de Scaramelli, Kay, and Franz Scaramelli. 2021. Cueva de Amalivaca: Tradición y memoria. Boletín Antropológico 39: 35–65) with images of the rock art and details about its location, age, use, and interpretation of the symbols.


In 1810 Humboldt wrote a letter to a French colleague with the symbols that a friar named Juan Ramón Bueno had sent him, copied from rocks in Urbana, very close to the Gilli's Jesuit Mission site. These symbols, pictured below, were incised into hard granite rock, and Humboldt asked his colleague for help, as he wanted to decipher them. See this Paper in Spanish about this script, with Humboldt's letter. Also read his comments with a plate showing the script (French) in his book "Vues des Cordilleres, et monumens des peuples indigenes de l'Amérique", Humboldt, p.61.


Punic letters?


In "Vues des Cordilleres..." Humboldt wrote the following: "One might recognize in these characters some resemblance to the Phoenician alphabet; but I strongly doubt that the good monk, who seemed to take little interest in this supposed inscription, copied it with great care. It is quite remarkable that, of the seven characters, none is repeated more than once: I had them engraved only to focus the attention of scholars who may one day visit the forests of Guiana on such a worthy subject." (p. 61


urbana rock symbols
Urbana, Venezuela: Symbols in rock art

Humboldt continues: "It is quite remarkable, moreover, that this same wild and deserted region, in which Father Bueno believed he saw letters engraved on the granite, presents a great number of rocks which, at extraordinary heights, are covered with figures of animals, representations of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and other signs that are perhaps hieroglyphic. The natives recount that their ancestors, in the time of the great floods, reached the summit of these mountains by canoe, and that at that time the stones were still in such a soft state that men were able to trace lines on them with their fingers. This tradition suggests a horde whose culture is quite different from that of the people who preceded them: it reveals a complete ignorance of the use of the chisel and any other metal tool."


The Transoceanic Implications of Amalivaca


The deluge myth appears to be universal, it is mentioned by different cultures around the world, and probably reflects the flooding of coastal plains during the period following the end of the last Ice Age when areas like doggerland, the Black Sea, and the Sunda shelf were submerged by the rapid sea-level rise provoked by large-scale ice melt.


The interesting features of the Amalivaca myth are his civilizing activities, the bark or canoe that brought him across the Atlantic, to America, and his return to his place of origin after he finished his work here. He was a human, white, wore clothes, had a brother, and a daughter, and produced rock art.


Amalivaca was a human being.


His transoceanic origin is similar to the myth of the white, bearded, tunic-clad god-like people mentioned in other Amerindian myths: Quetzalcoatl among the Mesoamericans and also Viracocha among the Incas, who was also bearded, white, and wore special clothes, and whose name means "wide" (vira) and "sea" (cocha) and is said to have vanished by crossing the Pacific.


I am not implying that white, bearded Europeans or Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, etc. visited America in a civilizing mission, but point out a common myth that is shared by Aztecs, Incas, and the Orinoco jungle people. It must be an ancient one, with very old roots, perhaps dating to the times when America was peopled, contemporary with the post-glacial floods that originated the deluge myths across the Americas.



Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Thursday, December 4, 2025

Pygmies and White Indians - von Humboldt


I came across an interesting article about Pygmies in the Americas, written in 1963 by Armando Vivante "Current state of the discussion on American pygmies" (Estado actual de la discución sobre los pigmeos americanos, Vol 5, No 28, Revista del Museo de La Plata. Nueva Serie. Sección Antropología).


Pygmies


I have posted about dwarves in the past, the mythical beings which are evoked in many Patagonian native legends. And in my book, I explored the "pygmy" option to explain the origin of these myths, below is an excerpt on this subject:


"Science, facts, and the Patagonian dwarves
Reports of minute people have surfaced periodically across South America since the arrival of the Spaniards. Mostly fantasies, some may hold some truth in them. For instance, in Cuzco, Perú, the heart of the Inca Empire, Spanish conquistador Pedro Pizarro wrote in 1571 about “three Indians, not seen before, very small, like dwarves.” Closer to Patagonia, in 1612, Ruy Díaz de Guzmán, another conquistador, mentioned “pygmies that live under the ground” in eastern Bolivia.
We could dismiss these stories of dwarves as fantasies of superstitious ill-educated soldiers, but in the early years of the 20th century, some scientists proposed theories about the peopling of America involving a “primitive” dwarf race, the “Diminutive Negroids,” or “Negrito” people.
American archaeologist Harold Sterling Gladwin (1883-1983) advanced the theory that “Diminutive Blacks” were the first people to arrive in America and that later migration from Asia assimilated or annihilated these first arrivals. He suggested that small blacks who had lived in southern China until the Chou dynasty could have moved north and entered America through the Bering Strait.
There are several groups of pygmies scattered around Southeast Asia, such as the Andaman islanders, the Semangs of Malaysia, and the Philippine Aetas. mtDNA studies have proven that these people descend from early human migrants out of Africa, who remained isolated in their specialized environments; but there is no proof that any of these people moved on to America.
Looking for such proof, in the early-20th century, Swiss anthropologist, Dr. Josef Kollmann, found pygmy remains in the Chincha Valley, Perú, and stated that they still survived as the short Changos of northern Chile, whose men were only 1.6 m tall (5 ft. 3 in.) and the women barely 1.45 m (4 ft. 8 in.) Small people indeed, but not dwarves.
The neighboring Mochica people were of a similar height, as shown by a 25-year-old female mummy (Lady of Cao) dating from 450 A.D., which measured 1.48 m (4 ft. 9 in.)
It is interesting to note that the Mochica spoke a language that “appears to be a linguistic isolate” totally unrelated to all other American Indian languages, and it “contains features that are rare both within South American languages and in the languages of the world.”
It seems that there is some reasonable basis for a “short” - but not dwarfish-group of Indians in the Americas north of Patagonia; but what about Patagonia itself?
We have two different pieces of evidence; one was put forward by Father Manuel Molina, who suggested that the Tachwüll dwarves may be based on fact. The other involves a mysterious group of short people in northern Patagonia, the Kofkeche...
"


Fair Indians and Pygmies


In his 1963 article, Vivante begins by mentioning some of the literature on the subject and also notes that Alexander von Humboldt wrote about pygmies in the sources of the Orinoco River, but does not provide additional information about it.


So, I looked up Humboldt's journey along the Orinoco and found tha while he was at Esmeralda, Venezuela in the year 1800 (see map), he mentioned pygmies and also "white" Indians! Below is the relevant text from his work Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent during the years 1799-1804.


"...the Oroonoko [sic - Orinoco] receives on the north the Ocamo, into which the Rio Matacona falls. At the sources of the latter live the Guainares, who are much less copper-coloured, or tawny, than the other inhabitants of those countries. This is one of the iribes called by the missionaries fair Indians, or Indios blancos, respecting whom I shall soon treat more at large." (p.559)
...
"I shall here proceed to give some information respecting the tribes of dwarf and fair Indians, which ancient traditions placed for centuries near the sources of the Oroonoko. I had an opportunity of seeing some of these Indians at Esmeralda, and can affirm, that the shortness of the Guaicas, and the fairness of the Guahariboes, whom Father Caulin calls Guaribos blancos, have been alike exaggerated. The Guaicas, whom I measured, were in general from four feet seven inches to four feet eight inches high (ancient measure of France). We were assured, that the whole tribe were of this extreme littleness; but we must not forget, that what is called a tribe constitutes, properly speaking, but one family. The exclusion of all foreign mixture contributes to perpetuate varieties, or the aberrations from a common standard. The Indians of the lowest stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares and the Poignaves. It is singular, that all these nations are found close to the Caribbees, who are remarkably tall. They all inhabit the same climate, and subsist on the same aliment. They are varieties in the race, which no doubt existed previously to the settlement of these tribes, (tall and short, fair and dark brown) in the same country. The four nations of the Upper Oroonoko, that appeared to me to be the fairest, are the Guahariboes of the Rio Gehette, the Guainares of the Ocamo, the Guaicas of Canno Chiguire, and the Maquiritares of the sources of the Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari. It being very striking to see natives with a fair skin beneath a burning sky, and amid nations of a very dark hue, the Spaniards have forged two daring hypotheses, in order to explain this phenomenon. Some assert, that the Dutch of Surinam and the Rio Esquibo may have intermingled with the Guahariboes and the Guainares ; others insist, from hatred to the Capuchins of the Carony, and the Observantins of the Oroonoko, that the fair Indians are what are called in Dalmatia muso di frate, children whose legitimacy is somewhat doubtful. In both cases the Indios blancos would be mestizoes, sons of an Indian woman and a white man. Now, having seen thousands of mestizoes, I can assert, that this comparison is altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the fair tribes, whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and the smooth, straight, black hair, which characterizes other Indians. It would be impossible to take them for a mixed race, like the descendants of natives and Europeans. Some of these people are very little, others of the ordinary stature of the copper-coloured Indians. They are neither feeble, nor sickly, nor albinoes ; and they differ from the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny skin. It would be useless after. these considerations, to insist on the distance of the mountains of the Upper Oroonoko from the shore inhabited by the Dutch." (p.564)


Back to Vivante and the 1963 article


Vivante looks into the conquistador and Spanich chronicles and notes that the references are vague, racist, and place the pygmies in the upper reaches of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. He notes the chronicle of Nicolas Federmann (1530-31) who mentioned a tribe of pygmies in that area of Venezuela, the Ayaman people, "a nation of dwarves."


The article then mentions several authors, including Kollman, and Haliburton (Science, 1896) who reported pygmies in the Guyanas (close to Humboldt and Federmann's sightings). Sullivan, in 1898, repeated similar stories about people along the upper Negro River (Amazonia): "I met, while on the Rio Negro, one of the tributaries of the Upper Amazon, a race of remarkably small people". As well as D.G. Brinton (The Dwarf Tribe of the Upper Amazon, American Anthropologist, Vol. 11, No. 10 Oct., 1898, p.319).


text
Dwarf Tribe in the Amazon. Brinton, 1898

Vivante cites those who are in favor of pygmies and those who oppose the idea and criticizes both groups. He also mentions the black dwarves, and the mythical dwarves (including some Patagonian examples). Overall, he seems to favor the idea of an ancient, relictual mutation appearing, fragmented, among certain native groups. However, he suggests further research with objective methods to clarify the matter.


Next Posts...


I found some interesting material in Humboldt's book, and also in Vivante's work, which I will explore and present, with additional information, in the next posts.



Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Monday, April 23, 2012

The "Savage" Man of Venezuela


The snow of the Andes regions run down its eastern slopes and joining the rainfall of the Equatorial region, feeds the great rivers of South America: the Amazon, the Paraná and the Orinoco. This area, a vast portion of the South American continent is covered in parts by the Amazon rain forest, and in others by immense wetlands, savannas or mountain ranges. It is the ideal place for a relict race of humans to hold out against modern men.


In my recent series of posts I have covered several of these hominids that have been reported since the first Europeans set foot in the area. They are deeply entrenched in the native’s lore and as such may have been based on fact, their “wild men” or “hairy jungle men” may be in fact their distorted view on our ancestors (H. erectus, the Neanderthals or even some other hominid race that moved out of the Old World and in to America).


My post on the Corupira led me to a source mentioning “savage men” in Venezuela. Today I will write about them, and, as usual go to the oldest known sources and not just copy and paste rehashed information of unknown origin.


The Wild man according to Gilij


Filipo Salvadore Gilij was an Italian jesuit priest (1721-1789), who lived in what is now Venezuela at missions set up along the Orinoco River. He lived in touch with the natives and learned their languages. He returned to Italy when Spain expelled the Jesuits from its American territories in 1767 and wrote an “Essay on American History...” which, in several volumes, deals with the natural and human history of the areas he visited.


In particular, he described the “Savage” or “Wild man” of the Orinoco. Below is the Italian language text of the part of his work that deals with this creature: [1]



 

A rough translation is the following:


”In my history I said I had not met any Indians who told me that they had seen the “Savage” with their own eyes. But what did not happen over many years, happened recently when another missionary to whom I owe the following account.
At the Mission at the Falls of Aturi a child went into the jungle and with great pain to his relatives, did not return and though they searched for him. After 10 days the child reappeared, more dead than alive. The missionary called him in, gave him a substantial broth and heard the Indian boy’s account: The Savage took him by his hand and rescued him, took him to a cave in where he had food. On the the tenth day the food stash finished so the Savage went out to get more food, this gave Diego (the child’s name – James in English), the chance to return home. The boy was about ten years old. He said he was never left alone by the Wild man and that it was single, but gave no other details. He ignored or could not say what food the Savage ate. But being a wild animal, the abbot says a type of ape, I would believe it was fruit. But I cannot add more.
[1]


These Aturi Falls, or, as they are known in Spanish, “Raudal Ature” or Ature Rapids are located on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, close to the town of Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela as can be seen in the map below:


mapa raudal Ature
Map showing the location of Ature Falls, home of the “Savage”.
Copyright © 2012 by Austin Whittall

Humbold’s account (1800)


German explorer and scientist, Alexander Von Humboldt,(1769-1859) wrote about this creature. Between 1799 and 1801 he travelled around parts of Southern, Central and North America. He visited the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada (current Colombia and Venezuela) in 1799-1800 and again in 1801.


It was during his first trip that he explored the upper Orinoco River reaching San Carlos in May 1800. It was during this trip that he passed by the Ature Rapids and wrote about the Savage. Below are his comments (full English language text can be seen following the link at [1] in our Sources):


It was among the cataracts that we began to hear of the hairy man of the woods called salvaje [Savage is the translation] that carries off women constructs huts and sometimes eats human flesh The Tamanacks call it achi and the Maypures vasitri or great devil The natives and the missionaries have no doubt of the existence of this anthropomorphous monkey which they singularly dread.
Father Gilij gravely relates the history of a lady in the town of San Carlos who much praised the gentle character and attentions of the man of the woods She lived several years with one in great domestic harmony and only requested some hunters to take her back because she was tired she and her children a little hairy also of living far from the church and the sacraments
[2]


Humboldt is skeptical as can be seen in the paragraphs that follow. Where he calls the story a “fable which the missionaries the European planters and the negroes of Africa have no doubt embellished with many features taken from the description of the manners of the ourang outang the gibbon the jocko or chimpanzee and the pongo” [2]


He noted that this “belief is particularly prevalent among the people such are the banks of the Upper Oroonoko [sic] the valley of Upar near the lake of Maracaybo the mountains of Santa Martha and of Merida the provinces of Quixos and the banks of the Amazon near Tomependa [2] and that if after centuries of Spanish occupation nobody had ever hunted one of these great monkeys. He suggested the following reasonable explanations:


  • The capuchin monkey with its human-like appearance originated the myth.
  • A bear. He writes: "It may be also and this opinion appears to me the most probable that the man of the woods was one of those large bears the footsteps of which resemble those of a man and which is believed in every country to attack women" [2]

Humboldt concludes with a piece of advice for those who might follow his steps and explore the upper Orinoco jungles: “ continue our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the woods and examine whether it be some unknown species of bear or some very rare monkey analogous to the simia chiropotes potes or siruia satanas that can have given rise to such singular tales”[2]. The monkeys he mentions is the Black Bearded Saki. For photographs of this monkey see below [3].


Sources
[1] Filippo Salvadore Gilij, (1784). Saggio di storia americana: o sia, Storia naturale, civile e sacra de'regni, e delle provincie spagnuole di Terra-Ferma nell' America Meridionale . L. Perego erede Salvioni, 1780. pp 315 note XXII.
[2] Alexander Von Humbodt and Aime Bonpland. (1827). Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown... and H. Colburn, pp 81+
[3] Photos of the Black Bearded Saki.


Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 
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