The next mythical being that I will examine as a supposed correlary to bigfoot is the omah of the Yurok people of the lower Klamath River in northwestern California. Bigfooters tell us that the omah is known to the Yurok as a hairy giant and 'The Boss of the Mountain'. It is also said that omah or oh-mah is also a word meaning 'Boss of the Woods' to the Hupa tribe, also of Northern California.
Some preliminary links on the Yurok:
http://www.yuroktribe.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurok_Tribe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurok_traditional_narratives
(Last link contains further links to online narratives.)
The first and main source that seemed to keep popping up in my searches was a page at Bobbie Short's bigfoot website Bigfoot Encounters under the heading "O-mah - Oh-mah - Omah U-mah - Tintah-k'iwungxoya'n R ac ne oomah ah - Creek Devil | Boss of the Mountain" Here's a link:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/yurok_terms.htm
It details that (paraphrased) the various spellings symbolized a hair-covered 'boss of the mountain' or in some instances local 'creek devils' that were once believed to poison streams in the Blue Creek region of the Siskiyou Wilderness of Northern California.
It goes on to state that "U'ma'a also means a kind of sorcerer and his bundle of poisoned arrows..."
The importance of that will soon make itself apparent.
In doing a linguistic search my first step was to consult UC Berkley's online Yurok Dictionary:
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~yurok/web/lexicon.html
Finding no luck with omah and various spellings I found what I was looking for after entering 'devil' as an English translation which produced the following entry (bolding mine):
'uma'ah ['ue-ma-'ah] • n • devil, Indian devil R272 JE41
Semantic domain: people
[Lexicon record # 4456]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Audio recording (click to listen)
'uma'ah ['ue-ma-'ah] "Indian devil" (spoken by Jessie Van Pelt)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Text examples (2 examples in 2 cited passages)
Wehlowaa chi hegok'w 'we- sa'awor noohl 'esi pkwecho'l ku 'uma'ah.
We-hlo-waa chee he-gokw' 'we-sa-'a-wor noohl 'e-see pkwe-chol' kue 'ue-ma-'ah.
Its shadow came ten times before the devil appeared.
— Various speakers, Sentences in R. H. Robins's Yurok Language, 1951
YL:416 | full context
Raak ni 'uma'ah.
Raak nee 'ue-ma-'ah.
Creek devil.
— Georgiana Trull, Yurok Language Conversation Book, chapter 16: "Where are you coming from?", 2003
GT3-16:26 | full context | Yurok audio: GT3-16-26.mp3
Doing a further search on 'creek devils' and the Yurok I came across the following site for the book
Cry for Luck
Sacred Song and Speech Among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok Indians of Northwestern California by Richard Keeling.
Citation (and link):
Keeling, Richard. Cry for Luck: Sacred Song and Speech Among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok Indians of Northwestern California. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1992.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008k8/
From part one 'Aboriginal Religion', chapter three 'The Sacred Landscape' under the heading 'Monsters and Creek Devils' (p.49,50):
Aside from beasts such as these, the Yuroks interviewed by Kroeber shortly after 1900 also believed that ghosts of dead could haunt the living and corpses sometimes came back to life (1925:47). This was not discussed in conversations I had during the 1970s, but Indians I knew often mentioned a creature known by the Yurok
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
― 50 ―
word uma'a and called "devil" or "Indian devil" in English. The uma'a were thought to live in dark, bushy thickets, and they had magical arrows of burning flint with which they could kill someone who passed nearby. The arrows (which come in sets of twelve or more) sometimes fell into the hands of humans, and then they could be used for sorcery.[3] A person who does this is also called an "Indian devil" and some are accused or suspected of practicing this form of black magic even today. Waterman cites at least one location that was known to have been frequented by uma'a around the turn of the century (1920:238).
Here it becomes clear that the omah/bigfoot correlary invented by bigfoot enthusiasts is truly nothing more than wishful thinking.
Incidentally, during my searches I came across a page at the Bigfoot Researchers Organization website devoted to native myths/traditions and bigfoot:
http://www.bfro.net/legends/penutian2.htm
I find it necessary to quote here (bolding mine):
Wappeckquemow and Omaha
From a letter just recieved from Judge Roseborough, I am enabled to close this chapter with some new and valuable facts regarding the religious ideas of certain tribes--not accurately specified--of the north-west portion of Upper California. The learned judge has given unusual attention to the subject of which he writes, and his opportunities for procuring information must have been frequent during ten years of travel and residence in the districts of the northern counties of California:--
Among the tribes in the neighborhood of the Trinity river1 is found a legend relating to a certain Wappeckquemow, who was a giant, and apparently the father and leader of a pre-human race like himself. He was expelled from the country that he inhabited--near the mouth of the Klamath--for disobeying or offending some great god, and a curse was pronounced against him, so that not even his descendants should return to that land. On the expulsion of these Anakim, the ancestors of the people to whom this legend belongs came down from the north-west, a direction of migration, according to Judge Roseborough, uniformly adhered to in the legends of all the tribes of north-west California.
These new settlers, however like their predecessors of the giant race, quarreled with the great god and were abandoned by them to their own devices, being given over into the hands of certain evil powers or devils. Of these the first is Omaha2, who poesessing the shape of a grizzly bear, is invisible and goes about everywhere bringing sickness and misfortune on mankind. Next there is Makalay, a fiend with a horn like a unicorn; he is swift as the wind and moves by great leaps like a kangaroo. The sight of him is usually death to mortals. There is, thirdly, a dreadful being called Kalicknateck, who seems a faithful reproduction of the great thunder-bird of the north: thus Kalicknateck "is a huge bird that sits on the mountain-peak, and broods in silence over his thoughts until hungry; when he will sweep down over the ocean, snatch up a large whale, and carry it to is mountain-throne, for a single meal."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
1 The Trinity/Klamath river region of Northern Calfornia will be recognized by many as the site of many Bigfoot sightings, including the famous Patterson film.
2 "Omaha" bears a resemblance to the word Yurok term for Bigfoot "Omah", so perhaps the judge is referring to the Yurok as originators of the legend?
The word "Omaha" indeed seems to be a variant of "Omah" in this case. Omaha (as in the Nebraska city name) is the name of a native tribe known as
U-Mo'n-Ho'n "dwellers on the bluff".
When ones looks at this BFRO page it is immediately apparent they are encouraging the reader to consider both "Wappeckquemo" and "Omaha" as bigfoot candidates.
Again we return to 'Cry For Luck', same chapter under the heading 'Heroic Beings' (p.47,48)(bolding mine):
Heroic Beings
In this and the sections that follow, the multitude of spiritual beings which animated the environment are divided into categories for descriptive purposes. This is only a convenience and does not reflect a classification that Indians themselves would be likely to express. The discussion focuses mainly on characters of Yurok mythology, but similar beings were also known by the Hupa and Karok. For example, Wohpekemeu figures in several Hupa myths, where he is identified as Yumantuwinyai. In Karok mythology Wohpekemeu is sometimes equated with Coyote, as shown by a text in which Coyote invents childbirth (Harrington 1932:25-27), and other times equated with a character called Yeruxbihii (Kroeber and Gifford 1980:288-289).
While Wohpekemeu is generally portrayed as having the physical appearance of a human being, another heroic figure called Pulekukwerek ("At the North End of Creation Sharp One") was a monstrous creature, covered with horns or spines, who smoked tobacco but never ate food. Like Wohpekemeu, he lived across the ocean, but Pulekukwerek avoided females altogether and spent all of his time in the sweathouse. Thus, as character models, these two superheroes seem to represent opposing tendencies toward virility
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
― 48 ―
on the one hand and asceticism on the other. In Yurok mythology, Pulekukwerek is mainly known for having killed off the sea serpents who inhabited the estuary at the mouth of the Klamath (Waterman 1920:228). The physical characteristics of these beings often seem fantastic and contradictory from a modern American perspective. Thus, for example, Pelintsiek ("Great Dentalium") was conceived as a dentalium shell as large as a sturgeon, but in narrative texts he is also able to speak and walk like a man (Kroeber 1976:200-204).
Other Yurok deities included Megwomits, the bearded dwarf known mainly as a provider of acorns and other vegetable products, and imposing natural entities such as Sun, Moon, Earthquake, and The Thunders. Like Pelintsiek, each of these awesome beings had human qualities despite the apparent contradictions this sometimes implied, and each was responsive to the thoughts and deeds of human beings. The Thunders, for example, were known as patrons of men who wanted to become stronger and more fearsome. To obtain their help, one would go to a mountain lake in the dead of night; he would dive to the bottom, holding his breath until he nearly lost consciousness, and then the man would not only obtain power for fighting but would also get luck for obtaining wealth (Spott and Kroeber 1942:163).
While the heroes described here are identified in narratives collected early in this century, not all were mentioned by Yuroks I knew during the 1970s. Wohpekemeu is by far the most important heroic figure in mythic tales or anecdotes told by modem Yuroks.
It is clear in reading these two sources that "Wappeckquemo" and "Wohpekemeu" are the same - a godlike figure to which no correlary to bigfoot can be made as is the case with omah.
