The Nimerigar – A Tiny Race of Cannibals

Tales of little people exist all over the planet. Stories involving Leprechauns, Dwarves, Hobgoblins, Imps, sprites…..the list is long. Just amongst different American Indian tribes there exist dozens of stories of “pygmy” people. For many, many years we assumed that stories of little people were just that, stories. Yarns. Tales to tell around the campfire on a dark evening.

Then, in 2003, we found the remains of a small hominin. Homo Floresiensis. An extinct species of small archaic human who lived around 50,000 years ago. So far, remains of around a dozen individuals have been found on the island of Flores, Indonesia. We know they stood around 110 centimetres tall (3 feet 6 inches), had small brains, sharp teeth and used stone tools.

Tales as old as time

The Shoshone Indians love to tell stories. It’s getting harder though. Only a thousand people on the planet now speak their native tongue. A number that is slowly ticking ever downwards. One of the most enduring stories is that of the Nimerigar, a race of small, bad tempered humans who the tribe had many run ins with. The name Nimerigar translates to “People Eaters”.

Nimerigar tales talk of small aggressive people who would shoot you with a tiny bow and poisoned arrow. They were also known to kill members of their society that became too ill and burdensome. Typically, they did this with a blow to the head.

Awareness in the wider world

David Zeisberger (1721 – 1808) was a missionary. Born in Moravia (Czech Republic), Zeisberger spent most of his life in America trying to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Due to this, he learned many of the native languages fluently and even managed to settle several Moravian Indian Villages.

In 1778 Zeisberger wrote about a burial ground close to Coshocton, Ohio (link should open on the correct page, if not, turn to page 16) that contained a race of pygmies’. These people when measured, stood around 3 feet tall (91 centimetres).

He also talks about other pygmy grave sites near St Louis and at the Keene-Bethlehem township line.

Unfortunately, all these graves have been lost to time. It would take another 150 years and a discovery at a gold mine to focus attention on the Nimerigar once again.

San Pedro Mountains Mummy

October 1932. Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr are prospecting for gold in Wyoming. Following a vein of gold in the San Pedro mountains, they blast a hole through thick rock. What they saw next was…. unexpected, to say the least.

The blast had revealed a small room, not tall enough to even stand up in. At the centre of the room sat the mummified remains of a small person.

What happened next to “Pedro” is unclear. Even this Casper Star Tribune article contradicts itself. Stating that Pedro vanished in 1950 in one half and then that he was used as an attraction until the late 70’s before his whereabouts becomes unknown.

What is known is that at some point Pedro was x-rayed. The picture is above. Depending on who you listen to, this showed Pedro to either be an infant with a cranial deformity or as quoted in the Casper Star Tribune article: ““After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years,” Goodman was quoted as saying in the March 5, 1950, edition of the Casper Tribune-Herald.” Ivan Goodman, a used car salesman quoted here is probably not the most reliable witness. He owned Pedro and showed him off from the 40’s onwards.

Without Pedro to study though, it all becomes irrelevant.

Chiquita – The Second Mummy

This second mummy came to light in the 1990’s. Shown to George Gill, a University of Wyoming anthropologist, he took it to the Denver Children’s Hospital to run tests.

Chiquita had sat in a Native American families attic for decades. Her arms and legs were folded in the same way as Pedro, giving a somewhat tenuous link.

According to the results of these tests, Chiquita was another child with anencephaly, where the head grows without large parts of the skull, leading to deformities. The same affliction that also allegedly impacted Pedro.

DNA tests proved that Chiquita was of Native American descent and a radiocarbon dating test put her as living around 1700 CE.

What’s the Truth?

Personally, I lean towards Pedro and Chiquita being the mummified remains of children, buried in a ritual pose.

What about the stories of the Nimerigar shooting poison arrows or the pygmy graves I hear you cry.

Let us begin with the graves. Unless one is rediscovered, just like Pedro, it cannot be proven either way. All we can do is speculate.

Reading about the Nimerigar just the other day, the tales kept pulling my thoughts back to Homo Floresiensis. Especially when you take into account that American Indians originated from Asia, crossing a land bridge at the Bering Strait sometime over 11,500 years ago. By 10,000 BCE, these tribes had occupied much of North, Central and South America.

With that context, the stories sound like echoes. Just as most communities have a flood myth dating back to the last ice age, I think (admittedly with no proof) that the Native Americans are retelling stories from before their ancestors crossed the land bridge. We know that there definitely was at least one race of small human like people in Asia 50,000 years ago. We know they used stone tools at the very least. Could they have used a bow and poisoned arrows?

The bow and arrow have been around a long time, one found in Sri Lanka dates to 48,000 years ago. So the technology existed in Asia at roughly the same time as Homo Floresiensis.

But would a story endure that long? Or did at least one of those races migrate into the Americas as well?

This is where it becomes less unclear. Until we find hard proof like we did with Homo Floresiensis, we won’t have a definitive answer.