August 13, 2007

Wild Woman of the Navidad

‘Wild Woman’ lives on in lore

After winning independence in 1836, Texans had time to notice oddities such as the dainty footprints that appeared sporadically in the sweet potato patches of Lavaca and Jackson counties.

Planters styled the caller “The Wild Woman of the Navidad.” She came at night, took a few spuds and left a few slender footprints, but never a trackable trail. She liked roasting corn, too.

An enchantress who could charm guard dogs, she was a ladylike burglar who shopped farmhouse kitchens, taking only half a loaf from the breadbox and never a whole plate of butter.

Historian-journalist Henry Wolff Jr. of Victoria briefed me on the wildly fictionalized “Wild Woman” who once haunted the Navidad bottoms.

Mr. Wolff is researching wild, wild women and wild men for the Texas Folklore Society.

The nymph of the Navidad was eccentric. She would pass up gold watches and silverware to make off with a pitcher of cream and then, days or weeks later, return the pitcher, washed. She would steal tools – handsaws, hammers – polish them to a high luster and then surprisingly return them to their workbench.

Her most spectacular caper was swapping a feral piglet from the woods for a giant hog a farmer had fattened up.

Confessing that he had heard Baptists and Methodists cuss, a farmer claimed he had never heard a Presbyterian cuss until a plowman discovered that the Wild Woman had made off with one of his trace chains just as weeds were threatening his cotton crop. (Trace chains transmitted mule power to his plow.) He had to make do with a frazzled rope for plowing until, a few nights later, she returned a newly polished chain.

The Wild Woman evaded traps and ambushes. A pursuer once got close enough to see a nude, long-haired figure dash into a shadowy thicket.

When victims found books missing – novels and a Bible – they reasoned there was a good chance that the Wild Woman could read.

Matchmakers agreed that the Wild Woman would be a perfect fit for red-bearded Moses Evans, a bachelor in a rattlesnake-skin vest who was widely known as “the Wild Man of the Woods.”

Editors had fun creating a hot-blooded romance by mail between the Wild Man and his “Dear Forestina.”

Mr. Evans or some penman wrote: “My heart shall be ever thine – May thine be ever, ever mine.” She responded: “I am weary, my darling, of being alone, come take the Wild Woman and make her your own.”

Their woodsy mush is found in an 1800s compilation, A Texas Scrap Book, published in 1991 by the Texas State Historical Association. Newspapers in the “Old States” reprinted this stuff.

In 1850, woodsmen spotted a campsite of the Wild Woman. A posse encircled her leafy pad, closing in from all sides. A fleeting figure scampered up a tree. Surprise! Instead of a wood nymph, the trembling creature staring down at the searchers was a black man. The Wild Woman proved to be a runaway African slave.

In 1924, folklorist J. Frank Dobie wrote, “A wandering sailor came that way who had been at a Portuguese mission on the coast of Africa.” He said members of the captive’s tribe were known for their tiny hands and feet. He couldn’t explain the fugitive’s seemingly mystic powers, or his interest in books he couldn’t read.

Mr. Dobie wrote that the captive was publicly auctioned to a planter who housed him among other slaves. “He remained in his new home. The Wild Woman was never afterwards heard of. The abolishment of slavery put an end to runaways in the woods; only dimming tradition remained.”Kent Biffle
Dallas Morning News

Filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Eyewitness Accounts, Folklore, Sasquatch