Elaborate research on the mummy of the San Pedro Mountains is nowadays impossible. Why? Like countless other significant discoveries and artifacts, it has been lost.
In the summer of 1940, two enterprising gentlemen were prospecting for gold in the San Pedro Mountains in Wyoming. While raking up another rock blockage, the miners stumbled upon the entrance to a small cave. It was possible to get there only by crawling, but would that hinder the prospectors? “What if there is Indian gold inside?”. With this idea, the men crawled inside the cave. But neither gold nor treasures were found in the cave, but something more curious was discovered – a perfectly preserved mummy of a tiny man. A wrinkled old man, legs crossed and long arms folded on his knees, sat on a small ledge, looking sadly before him. With a flattened skull, bulging eyes, and dark brown skin – the mummy looked rather strange. But what was most striking was its size. The height of the mummy of San Pedro in a sitting position did not exceed six and a half inches, which is just over 16 centimeters. And if it could straighten up, it would hardly be taller than 36 centimeters.
Reactions to the Discovery of the Mummy of San Pedro
Journalists quickly found out about the find, a photo of the “old man” appeared in a local newspaper, and experts began to study the mummy over time. And their opinions about Pedro (what else to call the little creature found in the San Pedro mountains?) were immediately divided. Someone immediately considered all this a fake, invented by the gold miners. Many considered the photographs of the San Pedro mummy to be fake. Other “experts” believed in the find but said that this mummy was not an adult but a baby. They said the Indians mummified a newborn. However, there was a third group of commentators, and by the way, the largest group. It was not without reason that they saw Pedro as a grown man. Indeed, a more detailed analysis showed that the “baby” has a full mouth of teeth and ominously pointed fangs. There were also traces of meat in the stomach of the crumbs, which points to the obvious question – what kind of meat could a baby eat? And another important detail: judging by the injuries to the limbs, skull, and spine, Pedro’s death was caused by violence.
What is the mummy, then?
Experts then remembered the legends of the Shoshone Indian tribe, who once lived in Wyoming, about the Nimerigars – the mysterious “race of dwarfs,” “tiny people,” or “little spirits,” as they were also called. These beasts, as the Indian old men told, lighting their pipes, were, though small in stature, but great in terms of malice and deceit. For example, they ambushed the gorges of the Rocky Mountains and fired bows at honest Indians. Moreover, their arrows were not simple but with poisoned tips. These tiny people were no strangers to resorting to black magic if something happened. In a word, they were harmful – scary! It is not for nothing that in the Shoshone language, nimerigars mean “cannibals.”
All this looks like fairy tales from grandmother’s closet. Still, at the end of the 18th century, one of the British missionaries in Coshocton, Ohio, stumbled upon an entire dwarf cemetery, about which he left a note:
“I saw in Coshocton long rows of graves of little people. They were buried with their heads to the west, where the sun was hidden behind the mountains. And this gave rise to the theory that these people worshiped the sun.”
It would be nice to look at these amazing burials, but the problem is that now there are no cemeteries in Coshocton – all the lands have long been plowed up for unknown reasons. And with the mummy of the San Pedro Mountains, everything is also complicated. It would be nice to research it with modern equipment and learn more about its origin, but … the thing is, Pedro disappeared.
What happened to the mummy?
For some time, the mummy was in one of the shops in the city of Casper, frightening and at the same time attracting customers. Then, it was taken to the local university for further studies, after which Pedro was sent to one private collection, then to another, and today, the trail of the mummy from the San Pedro mountains has completely dissolved in time and space. Not only historians – anthropologists, and other serious people are looking for it to confirm or deny Pedro belongs to the “race of dwarfs.” Fans of UFOs and all sorts of “classified materials” are waiting with no less impatience for news about the mummy.
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Sources:
• Fugleberg, J. (2016, October 03). The Mysterious Pedro Mountain Mummy. Retrieved November 22, 2020, from https://assets.atlasobscura.com/articles/31-days-of-halloween-wyomings-pedro-mountain-mummy
• The Truth Behind the Disturbing Mystery of the San Pedro Mountains Mummy. (2018, January 05). Retrieved November 22, 2020, from https://historycollection.com/truth-behind-disturbing-mystery-san-pedro-mountains-mummy/