05/04/2019

East African Notes and Records: LITTLE FURRY MEN (AND WOMEN)
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S u n d a y, 2 7 F e b r u a r y 2 0 11

LITTLE FURRY MEN (AND WOMEN)
I had a stimulating lunch last week with
Gregory Forth, Professor of
Anthropology in the University of
Alberta in Canada. Greg's regional
specialisation is Southeast Asia, and the
Indonesian archipelago in particular,
where he's undertaken long-term
ethnographic research on the islands of
Sumba and Flores. He's written
extensively about indigenous religion
and ritual, and more recently
ethnozoology and cryptozoology, as the
following passage outlines:

Martin Walsh

Vumawimbi, Pemba, 1995

In addition to numerous journal

articles, this research has resulted in a
monograph on folk ornithology (Nage
birds, 2004) and has contributed
Greg Forth at work
substantially to another book entitled
Images of the wildman in Southeast Asia (2008). [...] A major focus of the latter work is indigenous
representations, found on Flores island and elsewhere, of hominoid creatures bearing a remarkable
resemblance to palaeoanthropological reconstructions of pre-sapiens hominins. While conducting fieldwork on
Flores in the 1980s, Professor Forth recorded information concerning a putative beings, now reputedly extinct
but surviving in historical memory of local people; these have since been hypothetically linked with the fossil
hominin, interpreted as a new species, Homo floresiensis, discovered by palaeoanthropologists working in
western Flores in 2003. (University of Alberta Field Research Office: links added)
In more ways than one this is a fantastic subject, and Images of the Wildman a fascinating study (for an
informed assessment see Andrew Strathern and Pamela Stewart's review in Anthropos 105 (2) (2010)). A
significant part of the book is devoted to a survey of wildman rumours and traditions outside Southeast Asia,
including a section on East Africa. I was fortunate to be one of the scholars Greg consulted when he was writing
this, though we hadn't met until he visited Cambridge last week. With his blessing this section is copied in full
below.

East Africa and the 'little furry men'

[from Gregory Forth, Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective (Routledge,
2008), pp. 217-220 (main text), p. 307 (footnotes).]
Besides Southeast Asia, Africa is the only region of the world that is home to great apes, including chimpanzees
(Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pygmy chimpanzees, Pan paniscus) and Lowland and Highland Gorillas (Gorilla
gorilla and Gorilla beringei). The continent is also the site of possible early or ancient encounters of European
and circum-Mediterranean peoples with large primates, perhaps most famously exemplified by Hanno's periplus
(Yerkes and Yerkes 1929: 2-3; Reynolds 1967: 29-31). If apes are a significant source of wildman images,
therefore, one might expect Africa to provide numerous exemplars. And if surviving or remembered pre-sapiens
hominins were their hypothetical origin, then Africa, as the major locus of human evolution, should be

prominent for this reason as well.
Recorded both in areas where apes are attested and in regions
where they are not, reports of African hominoids have been
comprehensively reviewed by Bernard Heuvelmans (1980). One
source is a report by Captain William Hichens, an Englishman
and former civil servant, who in the 1920s, while hunting lions in
the Wembere region of west central Tanzania, observed two
creatures emerging from dense forest. Resembling 'little men',
the creatures were tailless, covered in 'russet' hair, stood about
1.2 metres tall and walked erect (Hichens 1937: 373). Evidently
familiar with local primate life, Hichens remarks that the
creatures may have been monkeys, but 'were no ordinary
monkeys, nor baboons, nor colobus, nor Sykes, nor any other
kind found in Tanganyika' (ibid.). Wembere, it should be noted ,

notesandrecords.blogspot.com/2011/02/little-furry-men-and-women.html

EAST AFRICAN NOTES AND
RECORDS is an irregular blog by
Martin Walsh (and guests) and
place to post miscellaneous
notes about East African history,
ethnography, ethnobiology,
linguistics, and anything else
that comes to mind. It takes its
inspiration (if not quite its
content and style) from those
marvellously eclectic journals of
regional and national Africana
that political correctness,

disciplinary specialisation, and
the commercialisation of
academic publishing have largely
consigned to the dustbin of
history.
THE ZANZIBAR LEOPARD is a
very occasional blog by Helle
Goldman and Martin Walsh in
which we post news, views and
information about the Zanzibar
Leopard (Panthera pardus
adersi) and sometimes other
wildlife in the Zanzibar
archipelago.

Blog archive

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LITTLE FURRY MEN (AND
WOMEN)
ELEPHANT DUNG AND
EXPELLING SPIRITS
THE MALDIVES
CONNECTION
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East African Notes and Records: LITTLE FURRY MEN (AND WOMEN)
lies east of the normal range of chimpanzees and gorillas.
Hichens' efforts to follow the hominoids were in vain. Reacting
with 'mingled fear and amazement', a native hunter
accompanying the Englishman also saw the creatures. He
identified them as 'agogwe', rarely encountered beings which,
according to what villagers later told Captain Hichens, will weed
and hoe people's gardens at night in exchange for food and
millet beer.
These particulars suggest that the 'little furry men' are a
category recognized by local Tanzanians. Yet available

ethnography does not confirm that East Africans maintain a
representation labelled 'agogwe' which substantially accords
with the physical image reported by Hichens. Nor is it entirely
clear from which language the name 'agogwe' derives. Hichens
briefly mentioned his sighting in an earlier article, where he
writes the name as 'ngogwe'. He appears to gloss this term as
'little men of the trees' and to identify it as a usage of the
Iramba (or Nilamba) people (1928: 176). It is also in this article
that Hichens specifies the creatures as tailless. Evidently
drawing on Iramba lore, he further describes the 'ngogwe' as
'wailing a strange chant' as they travel (ibid.).[13]
Unabridged English translation (1958)

Heuvelmans compares Hichens' report to two other accouts of
East African hominoids. One refers briefly to 'little red men' inhabiting the eastern Kenyan region of Embu.
According to an African who claimed to have seen 'scores' of these beings, they will pelt human intruders with
small stones (S.V. Cook 1924: 25); but noticeably missing from this account is any explicit reference to body
hair. The same omission characterizes a later report from Mozambique. Writing in response to Hichens' article,
another Briton described how, from the deck of a cargo boat in 1937 and with the aid of a telescope, he was
able to observe two 'little brown men' between 1.2 and 1.5 metres tall walking on a beach among a troop of
baboons (Burgoyne 1938: 51).[14] The baboons appeared undisturbed by their presence. Referring to a similar
sighting by an unnamed friend, the author vaguely refers to a native injunction on shooting the little men.

►
► 2010 (27)
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► 2009 (8)

Some publications


Walsh, Martin 2018. Treasure
island: buried gold and the
spiritual economy of Pemba.
Kenya Past and Present 45: 2332.
Walsh, Martin 2018. Esmond in
Zanzibar: a personal recollection.
In Peta Meyer (ed.) The
unassuming American: Esmond
Bradley Martin, 1941-2018’,
Kenya Past and Present 45: 8.
Walsh, Martin 2018. The Swahili
language and its early history. In
Stephanie Wynne-Jones and
Adria LaViolette (eds.) The
Swahili World. Abingdon and
New York: Routledge. 121-130.
Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman
2017. Cryptids and credulity: the
Zanzibar leopard and other
imaginary beings. In Samantha Hurn
(ed.) Anthropology and
Cryptozoology: Exploring
Encounters with Mysterious
Creatures. Abingdon and New York:
Routledge. 54-90.
Cheke, Anthony S., Miguel Pedrono,
Roger Bour, Atholl Anderson,
Christine Griffiths, John B. Iverson,
Julian P. Hume, Martin Walsh 2016.
Giant tortoises spread to western

Indian Ocean islands by sea drift
in pre-Holocene times, not by
later human agency – Response
to Wilmé et al. (2016a). Journal
of Biogeography, doi:
10.1111/jbi.12882, 1-4.

Mt. Longonot crater

A somewhat more detailed sketch of putative hominoids is offered by a professional big-game hunter, Roger
Courtney (1940: 37-49) and concerns apelike creatures called 'mau men'. Found in the vicinity of Mount
Longenot [Longonot] in Kenya, the beings were described to Courtney by his guide, a Muslim of mixed Boran
and Mkamba descent named Ali (1940: 37-49). Ali had heard the story from his then deceased father, who
claimed to have been struck over the head and abducted by a group of mau men while tending sheep on the
slopes of the mountain, described as an old volcano full of caves. In this account, the mau are characterized as
small, apparently tailless creatures resembling 'monkeys' more than humans. While their skin was 'white', their
bodies were covered in long 'black' hair. Hair also hung over the eyes. The reputed eyewitness encountered the
mau sitting on ledges inside a cave, around a central fire. Characterized as forest dwellers, the creatures are
further described as reaching their caves by way of long underground passages. Apart from the fire and sticks
and stones which they employed as weapons, the mau appeared to possess no technology; as Ali points out,
they may even have obtained the fire from a natural volcanic source. Chattering like monkeys, they also seem
to have lacked an intelligible language. The only indication of their diet is the sheep stolen from Ali's father.
Ali's father explicitly distinguished the mau from less 'wild' pygmies residing in the forests to the west of Lake
Victoria, whom he had encountered in his travels. Indeed, in all respects except the use of fire and occupation
of caves, the beings sound very much like chimpanzees, which can be similarly light-skinned and with which the
shepherd may also have been familiar from his westward journeys. Although caution is always required in
translating local colour terms, the long 'black' hair of the mau contrasts with that of the russet-haired agogwe.
Even so, since normally dark-haired chimpanzees occasionally possess brown or reddish pelage, wayward
chimps, straying some 200 kilometres beyond the eastern limit of their normal range in western Kenya, could
conceivably explain Hichen's experience as well. Less readily accounted for is the hair hanging over the eyes of

the mau. However, it is a point of interest that exactly the same feature is attributed to hominoidal beings
reported from Central Africa.
Different from other East African images are hominoids - most of
them apparently quite human (see Heuvelmans 1990a) - that
numerous Maasai and other Kenyan tribesmen described in the
1970s to the French anthropologist Jacqueline RoumeguèreEberhardt (1990). Among these is a figure Roumeguère designates
anonymously as 'XI' (there are five Xs altogether) and describes as
hairy-bodied, possessing long head hair and huge feet, heavy set
and extremely strong. The head hair is dark; the body hair is
reddish-brown or fawn among younger specimens (who could
conceivably be of a size comparable to Hichens' agogwe) but
darker or sometimes grey in adults. Standing as tall as a human
(1.3-1.85 metres) and occasionally taller, the creatures are

notesandrecords.blogspot.com/2011/02/little-furry-men-and-women.html

Walsh, Martin 2016. Pygmy tales:
tall stories about short people in East
Africa. Kenya Past and Present 43:
49-60.
Prendergast, Mary E., Hélène Rouby,
Paramita Punnwong, Robert
Marchant, Alison Crowther, Nikos
Kourampas, Ceri Shipton, Martin
Walsh, Kurt Lambeck, Nicole L.
Boivin 2016. Continental Island
Formation and the Archaeology
of Defaunation on Zanzibar,
Eastern Africa. PLoS ONE 11(2):
e0149565.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0149565.
Walsh, Martin 2013. The Segeju
complex? Linguistic evidence for the
precolonial making of the Mijikenda.
In Rebecca Gearhart and Linda Giles
(eds.) Contesting Identities: The
Mijikenda and Their Neighbors in
Kenyan Coastal Society. Trenton,
New Jersey: Africa World Press. 2551.
Walsh, Martin 2013. Alison
Redmayne (1936-2013).
Anthropology Today 29 (3): 28.
Walsh, Martin 2013. Mung'aro,
the Shining: ritual and human
sacrifice on the Kenya coast.
Kenya Past and Present 40: 1122.
Walsh, Martin 2013. Realizing
the potential of collective action
groups: coordinating approaches
to women’s market engagement.
Case study on women’s collective
action in the vegetable sector in

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East African Notes and Records: LITTLE FURRY MEN (AND WOMEN)
further depicted as wielding huge clubs, killing buffalo and

carrying away the carcasses, consuming raw flesh and possibly
employing a language. Despite their size and strength, they are
not aggressive towards humans. These reports, Roumeguère
suggests, could reflect a surviving non-sapiens hominin such as
Homo habilis or Homo erectus. In his Preface to Roumeguère's
book, Heuvelmans (1990a: 26-34), on the other hand, suggests a
robust Australopithecine (presumably a Paranthropus).
For a student of Florenese representations, probably the most
remarkable feature of Roumeguère's book is a Maasai report of
one sort of Kenyan hominoid (distinguished as 'X4') being offered
milk in a gourd container and, 'perhaps mistaking it for a fruit',
attempting to eat the gourd. It is perhaps curious that, unlike the
agogwe and similarly small creatures, nothing like Roumeguère's
anonymous hominoid was reported during the colonial period in
East Africa. On the other hand, there is arguably some
resemblance to the 'Nandi bear', an early twentieth-century
British term for a mysterious creature named 'chimoset' by the
Nandi of Kenya and sometimes described by European
eyewitnesses as a 'big hairy biped' or 'an enormous baboon'
(Heuvelmans 1995: 490).[15]
Maasai X-files

Notes
[13] I am grateful to [x1] of Cambridge University for alerting me to Hichens' 1928 article. As is general in Bantu languages, the initial /a/ in
'agogwe' would appear to be the general noun class prefix for humans or humanlike beings. But since this is also applied to animals in some Bantu
languages, it is not certain that the word denotes something locally classified as human, or even hominoid (Walsh, pers. comm., September 2006).
On the other hand, the initial /n/ in 'ngogwe' is the usual Bantu prefix for nouns denoting animals; and in this connection, Walsh has suggested
that, if 'agogwe' is not a misprint, Hichens may have substituted this for 'ngogwe', perhaps by way of correctio, in his 1937 piece. Referring to the
Tanzanian Ihanzu people, Todd Sanders of the University of Toronto mentions as a possible comparison the term 'ahing'wi', denoting aboriginal but
now invisible 'bush-dwelling creatures' that Ihanzu describe as having bodies divided laterally between a human half and a wooden half consisting

of a log. The figure thus suggests the widespread image of the 'half-man' (see Needham 1980) and the partly vegetal 'green man', often considered
a variant of the European wildman. Sanders further remarks that, as the Ihanzu word for 'log' is 'igogo', this image could conceivably be the source
of Hichens' 'agogwe'. Another peculiarity of ahing'wi is their ability to produce porridge, milk, or meat from rocks, which they then leave in the
bush for humans they favour (Sanders, pres. comm., September 2006) - an idea that suggests an inversion of the agogwe practice of receiving beer
from people for whom they perform agricultural labours.
[14] Although Burgoyne entitles his article 'little furry men', this simply replicates Hichens' usage and Burgoyne does not actually describe the
figures he saw as hairy.
[15] As the English name should suggst, other colonials likened the animal to a bear (no species of which is found in Africa). Heuvelmans reviews
evidence suggesting that the Nandi Bear may indeed be a member of the Cynocephala (baboons and allies) of an unknown species (1995: 473-75);
but in the end he favours an old and rather large ratel, or 'honey badger' (family Mustelidae), as the main source of the representation.

 References
Burgoyne, Cuthberet 1938. Little furry men. Discovery 19: 51.
Cook, S. V. 1924. The leprachauns of Kwa Ngombe. Journal of the East [Africa and Uganda Natural] History
Society 20: 24.
Courtney, Roger 1940. A Greenhorn in Africa. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited.
[Forth, Gregory. 2004. Nage Birds: Classification and Symbolism among an Eastern Indonesian People. London
and New York: Routledge.]
[Forth, Gregory. 2008. Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective. London and
New York: Routledge.]
Heuvelmans, Bernard 1980. Les bêtes humaines d'Afrique. Paris: Plon.
Heuvelmans, Bernard 1990a. Preface to Roumeguère-Eberhardt.
Heuvelmans, Bernard 1995. On the Track of Unknown Animals. Revised third English edition. London and New
York: Kegan Paul International.
Hichens, William 1928. Africa's mystery beasts. The World Wide Magazine 62 (no. 369): 171-76.
Hichens, William 1937. African mystery beasts. Discovery 18: 369-73.
Reynolds, Vernon 1967. The Apes: The Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Orangutan and Gibbon - their History and their
World. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Roumeguère-Eberhardt, Jacqueline 1990. Le dossier X: les hominidés non identifiés des forêts d'Afrique. Paris:
Editions Robert Laffont.

[Strathern, Andrew J. and Pamela J. Stewart. Review of Forth 2008. Anthropos 105 (2): 636-637.]

notesandrecords.blogspot.com/2011/02/little-furry-men-and-women.html

Tanzania, Oxfam GB, February
2013.
Walsh, Martin and Helle
Goldman 2012. Chasing
imaginary leopards: science,
witchcraft and the politics of
conservation in Zanzibar.
Journal of Eastern African
Studies 6 (4): 727-746.
Walsh, Martin 2012. The not-soGreat Ruaha and hidden histories of
an environmental panic in Tanzania.
Journal of Eastern African
Studies 6 (2): 303-335.
Walsh, Martin 2010. Deep
memories or symbolic
statements? The Diba, Debuli and
related traditions of the East
African coast. In Chantal
Radimilahy and Narivelo
Rajaonarimanana (eds.)
Civilisations des mondes
insulaires (Madagascar, ỵles du
canal de Mozambique,
Mascareignes, Polynésie,
Guyanes): Mélanges en
l'honneur du Professeur Claude

Allibert. Paris: Karthala. 453-476.
Wynne-Jones, Stephanie and
Martin Walsh 2010. Heritage,
tourism, and slavery at Shimoni:
narrative and metanarrative on
the East African coast. History in
Africa 37: 247-273.
Walsh, Martin 2009. The use of
wild and cultivated plants as
famine foods on Pemba island,
Zanzibar. Études Océan Indien
(Special issue: Plantes et sociétés
dans l’océan Indien occidental)
42/43: 217-241.
Walsh, Martin 2009. The
politicisation of Popobawa:
changing explanations of a
collective panic in Zanzibar.
Journal of Humanities 1 (1): 2333.
Walsh, Martin 2009. Against
consensus? Anthropological
critique and the deconstruction of
international water policy. In D.
C. Nanjunda (ed.) Social
Anthropology in India: An
Ethnography of Policy and
Practice (Vol. II). New Delhi:
Sarup Book Publishers. Chapter
19. [reprinted without my
permission!]

Walsh, Martin and Helle
Goldman 2008. Updating the
inventory of Zanzibar leopard
specimens. CAT News
(Newsletter of the IUCN/SSC Cat
Specialist Group) 49 (Autumn
2008): 4-6.
Walsh, Martin 2008. The legend
of Mwaozi Tumbe: history, myth
and cultural heritage on Wasini
island. Kenya Past and Present
37: 26-32.
Walsh, Martin 2007. Pangolins
and politics in the Great Ruaha
valley, Tanzania: symbol, ritual
and difference / Pangolin et
politique dans la vallée du Great
Ruaha, Tanzanie: symbole, rituel
et différence. In Edmond
Dounias, Elisabeth Motte-Florac
and Margaret Dunham (eds.) Le
symbolisme des animaux:
l'animal, clef de voûte de la
relation entre le homme et la
nature? / Animal symbolism:
animals, keystone of the
relationship between man and
nature? Paris: Éditions de l'IRD.
1003-1044.


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East African Notes and Records: LITTLE FURRY MEN (AND WOMEN)

Yerkes, Robert M. and Ada W. Yerkes 1929. The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

Posted by Martin Walsh at 19:36
Labels: agogwe, cryptids, cryptozoology, ethnozoology, Gregory Forth, hominoids, Ihanzu, Iramba, Kenya, Maasai, Mozambique, Mt.
Longonot, Nandi bear, primates, Tanganyika, Tanzania, Wembere

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Walsh, Martin 2007. Island
subsistence: hunting, trapping
and the translocation of wildlife
in the western Indian Ocean.
Azania 42 (Special issue: The
Indian Ocean as a Cultural
Community): 83-113 (with an
online appendix: 'Island mammal
lists and local names').

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Walsh, Martin 2006. A click in
Digo and its historical
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Walsh, Martin and Helle
Goldman 2007. Killing the king:
the demonization and
extermination of the Zanzibar
leopard / Tuer le roi: la
diabolisation et l'extermination
du leopard de Zanzibar. In
Edmond Dounias, Elisabeth
Motte-Florac and Margaret
Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme
des animaux: l'animal, clef de
voûte de la relation entre le
homme et la nature? / Animal
symbolism: animals, keystone of
the relationship between man

and nature? Paris: Éditions de
l'IRD. 1133-1182.

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Walsh, Martin, Kevin Kane and
Candace Nelson 2005. A case for
business training with women’s
groups. In Malcolm Harper and
Jim Tanburn (eds.) Mapping the
Shift in Business Development
Services: Making Markets Work
for the Poor. Bourton-onDunsmore / New Delhi: ITDG
Publishing / Samskriti. 17-24.
Goldman, Helle, Jon WintherHansen and Martin Walsh 2004.
Zanzibar's recently discovered
servaline genet. Nature East
Africa 34 (2): 5-7.
Walsh, Martin and Helle
Goldman 2004. The Zanzibar
leopard - dead or alive?
Tanzanian Affairs 77: 20-23.
Walsh, Martin 2003. Languages,
cultures and environments:
historical linguistics between the
African Great Lakes and the

western Indian Ocean. In A.
Dahlberg, H. Öberg, S. Trygger,
K. Holmgren and P. Lane (eds.)
Second PLATINA Workshop 1719 October 2002, Usa River,
Arusha, Tanzania (EDSU
Working Paper 46). Stockholm:
Environment and Development
Studies Unit, Stockholm
University. 53-74.
Walsh, Martin and Helle
Goldman 2003. The Zanzibar
leopard between science and
cryptozoology. Nature East
Africa 33 (1/2): 14-16.
Walsh, Martin 2003. Huntergatherers in the hinterland of
Mombasa: notes on the Maumba
of Chonyi and related traditions.
Azania 38: 148-154.
Goldman, Helle and Martin
Walsh 2002. Is the Zanzibar
leopard (Panthera pardus
adersi) extinct? Journal of East
African Natural History 91 (1/2):
15-25.
Walsh, Martin and Imani Swilla
2001. Linguistics in the Corridor:
a review of research on the Bantu

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