The tail is a symbol of the animal nature. Stories of tailed humans are found all over the world. They signify a belief that certain races of men are descended from the apes, or that the apes are descended from certain races of men. Both beliefs have been stressed in the modern debate on evolution; yet neither is new. They are almost the oldest of the philosophical myths. They trace back to primitive animism—to the notion that animals are endowed with human intelligence, can understand the speech of men, and may well be propitiated with worship. Early man accepted them as cousins. He could change natures with them, and sometimes it seemed to him he did. Père Lafitau said of his American flock, “These men are living in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”

Sometimes men were content enough with this kinship, erecting it into totemism, wearing the tail of the buffalo or horse as an emblem of power. Sometimes they were ashamed of it. They plucked off all hair from their bodies, because animals were hairy, and resented it when their women bore them twins, because the young of animals came in litters instead of singly. Constantly they confused brute and human nature, using identical terms of neighbor folk, whether these were apes or men. The confusion was carried over into literature. One African tribe was said to have an ape king. There are passages in which travelers seem to themselves to be speaking of men while to their readers it is evident they are speaking of monkeys. There are other passages in which they set out to describe monkeys, yet draw pictures of men like themselves, but of more primitive cast. The creatures called satyrs embody this confusion and the sense of kinship behind it.

According to Isidore, the satyrs have done something to make their own nature clear. One of them, he says, appearing to St. Anthony in the desert, explained, “I am mortal, one of the inhabitants of the waste, whom the heathen, misled by error, worship as the Fauns and Satyrs.” He pictures them as manikins with upturned noses, horns on their foreheads, and goat feet.

The heathen world, however, never was quite sure what it meant by the satyrs. If it be true that the fable began with ritual mummers who donned the nature of fertility dæmons when they put on the heads of asses, horses, or goats, and danced in them—as men still do—the memory of this was forgotten. The satyrs were supposed to be spirits, half human, half bestial, that haunted woodland and mountain side and fellowshipped with Pan and Dionysus. They had bristly hair, flat noses, and pointed ears, with two small horns, and a tail like that of a horse or goat. Earlier Greek art represented them as ugly, withered, and ape-like. But Attic sculpture in the time of Praxiteles shows them with the beast nature well-nigh submerged—graceful figures instinct with poetry. They took over the attributes of the kindred sileni, and as Roman influence grew they were confounded with the fauns and were depicted as half men and half goats. In Scripture they are the “hairy ones” of Hebrew folklore, a sort of demon of waste places. So is the word intended in the prophecy of Isaiah as to Babylon: “Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.”

Satyrs, as the ancients conceived them, were a wanton, music-loving, merry-hearted and yet timid folk, their symbol the hare. They roved about, drinking, dancing to the pipe and cymbal, pursuing the nymphs, killing the cattle of men and making love to their women. Men feared them, as embodying the loneliness of waste places, feared them with the sudden panic fear, which the apparition of their leader, the leering goat-god, always excited. Equally, the shy creatures feared men, but not women. Gradually these timid spirits moved out of mythology into geography. There were satyr isles, and there were satyr tribes in distant mountains and deserts, alike in Africa, India, and the spaces of the sea. Always they were described as avoiding contact with men, screening themselves in the thickets and seen only from afar. The satyrs of western Africa, says Pliny, “beyond their figure have nothing in common with the manners of the human race.” Ælian speaks of Indian satyrs that have human features, that go sometimes on four feet and sometimes on two and are too swift to be caught.

Thus the classic conception of this creature passes from spirits of the waste to tailed men, to apes, retracing the path which Greek art followed from simian beings to spirits of the waste. These were the wild men and wild women whom Herodotus locates in western Africa. Hanno, the Carthaginian explorer, had been before him. His narrative tells of finding an island full of wild people on the west coast of Africa: “For the greater proportion were women, whose bodies were covered with hair, and whom our interpreters called Gorillæ. Though we pursued the men, we could not catch any of them, since all fled from us, escaping over the precipices and defending themselves with stones. However, we took three women, but they attacked their conductors with their hands and teeth, and could not be prevailed on to accompany us. We therefore killed and flayed them and brought their skins with us to Carthage,” where they were hung up in the temple of Juno.

This narrative betrays the ancient confusion as to the satyrs’ real nature. They are described as wild men and women, and it would even seem that the Carthaginians undertook to reason with their captives; but their captors killed and skinned them, as they certainly would not have done to creatures they deemed to be of their species. The terms gorilla and orang-utan both mean men-of-the-woods. They are borne by large apes, but when the Malays speak of the orang-utan they mean a savage and not a simian.

The Hindu term for man-of-the-woods is bunmanus, and here is a Hindu sketch of him. “The bunmanus is an animal of the monkey kind. His face has a near resemblance to the human; he has no tail and walks erect. The skin of his body is black, and slightly covered with hair.” Then the account proceeds to enumerate the dialects of the peninsula and includes among them “the jargon of the bunmanus.” These animals of the monkey kind are really the dark-skinned, non-Aryan aborigines.

A Portuguese manuscript cited by Tylor tells of an Indian tribe in Brazil called the Cuatas. “This populous nation,” it says, “dwells east of the Juruena, in the neighborhood of the rivers San Joao and San Thome. It is a very remarkable fact that the Indians composing it walk naturally like the quadrupeds, with their hands on the ground; they have the belly, breast, arms, and legs covered with hair, and are of small stature; they are fierce, and use their teeth as weapons; they sleep on the ground, or among the branches of trees; they have no industry, nor agriculture, and live only on fruits, wild roots, and fish.” The author of this account seemed not to know that the coata he was describing was an ape and not a man.

Customs of speech and sometimes motives of self-interest have shaded the differences between the two species. The belief is widely held, both in Africa and in South America, that apes know how to talk, but hold their peace lest they be put to work, as it seems they were put to work in gathering the fig harvest in ancient Egypt and perhaps in ceremonial processions as torch-bearers. On the other hand, sailors, pioneer colonists, and slave dealers betray a tendency to rate the savages among whom they are thrown, and whom they may wish to exploit, as little, if any, above the brutes.

It has become almost a principle of ethnology, wherever a story of a neighboring race of tailed men is current, to look for a tribe of aborigines who have been dispossessed by men of a higher culture. Thus the conqueror asserts his contempt, and justifies his treatment, of the conquered. The latter may accept it in good part and admit a monkey descent. The Marawars of South India trace their lineage back to Rama’s monkeys, and the Kathkuri avow an ape ancestry. Even the Jaitwas of Rajputana, although classed as Rajputs, derive, they say, from the monkey-god, Hanuman, and allege that their princes have still a vestige of tails. There are tribes in Tibet and in the mountains of the Malay peninsula whose traditions tell of ape progenitors.

By a sort of poetic justice, savages sometimes tell a like story about civilized men. Why should these wear so much clothing if there were not something they wanted to conceal? In the Land of Lamary, says Maundeville, men and women go all naked, “and they scorn when they see any strange Folk going clothed,” hinting that these are not formed as are other men. Captain Cook was not the only explorer to tell of natives demanding that the white men strip so that it might be seen if they were everywhere of the human kind. Buchanan gives this account in his Indian travels:

“When I passed through among the gardens near houses, I have observed the women squatting down behind the mud walls, in order to satisfy their curiosity by viewing a stranger. When they thought that I observed them, they ran away in a fright. This does not arise from the rules of caste in Malabar requiring the Hindu women to be confined, for that is by no means the case; but in the interior parts of North Malabar the Nairs, being at enmity with Europeans, have persuaded the women that we are a kind of hobgoblins who have long tails, in order to conceal which we wear breeches. The women and children are therefore afraid of Europeans.”

Stories of man’s descent to the ape match stories of the ape’s ascent into man. One of these is recited in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, where for their treachery Jove degrades the Cercopes. A Moslem legend tells of Solomon passing through the Valley of Apes, between Jerusalem and Mareb, and finding monkeys dwelling in the houses, wearing the clothes, and using the speech of men. The river which flowed by their city had been full of fish, they said, and these showed themselves freely on the Sabbath day, trusting to the Jewish fishermen to keep the Commandments. The temptation proved too strong, and for their offense of Sabbath-breaking Jehovah turned all the citizens into apes.

There is a Zulu story of a lazy tribe of negroes who would not dig the soil. Their chief led them into the wilderness, where the pick handles which had hung useless at their backs became tails, and they themselves baboons.

In both hemispheres there are legends of cross-breeding between the human and the simian species. The Quoyas Morrov, or wood-man of Angola, which was sent to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, was supposed by his age to have an ape father or an ape mother. The First People of Central American myth were manikins who became monkeys, and Count Castelnau repeats a story by Father Ribeiro, a Carmelite missionary, of a tribe of tailed Indians in the Amazonian region, whose descent was from both apes and men. In British Central Africa, says Sir Harry H. Johnston, the negro women profess to go in terror of the large male baboons, and it is a fact that these animals will descend upon parties of unarmed women, but only if they are carrying well-filled market baskets.

The forests of South America are haunted by two legendary creatures of related natures, in whom the myths of tailed men return to their Greek originals. One of these is the salvaje, or hairy man-of-the-woods, of whom Humboldt first heard among the cataracts of the Amazon. This creature, the natives, planters, and missionaries were agreed, carried off women, constructed huts, and sometimes ate human flesh. For five years, everywhere the explorer traveled in the Americas, the story followed him, and he was censured for doubting it. He surmises that the legend is decked out with features taken from African ape-lore, but adds that it may be that the man-of-the-woods, if not some rare ape, is one of the large bears, the footsteps of which resemble a man’s, and which are believed in every country to attack women.

“Father Gili,” says Humboldt, “gravely relates the history of a lady in the Llanos of Venezuela, who so much praised the gentle character and attentions of the man-of-the-woods. She is stated to have lived several years with one in great domestic harmony, and only requested some hunters to take her back because she and her children (a little hairy, also) were weary of living far from the church and sacraments.” A Spanish author wonders, however, if the fable of the man-of-the-woods has not sprung from the artifice of Indian women who pretended to have been carried off in default of a better excuse for long absences from their husbands.

The other legendary creature is the Curupira, or Diable Boiteux. Among the noises of the Brazilian forest that used to startle Bates was “a sound like the clang of an iron bar against a hard, hollow tree, or a piercing cry.” This was never repeated, and the silence that followed tended to deepen the unpleasant impression. With the natives it was always the Curupira, the wild man or spirit of the forest, that made these inexplicable sounds. “Sometimes,” says Bates, “he is described as a kind of orang-otang, covered with long, shaggy hair, and living in trees. At others he is said to have cloven feet and a bright red face. He has a wife and children, and sometimes comes down to the rocas to steal the mandioca.”

All accounts agree that the Curupira is not footed like normal men. He is lame, with one foot larger than the other, or his feet turn backward so that his trail deceives. He is bald and dwarfish, with hairy person, huge ears, and blue-green teeth, and he rides a deer, a rabbit, or a pig. The spirit of the wood, the guardian of all wild things, he is beneficent or mischievous, as occasion or mood offers. He insists that game shall be killed, not maimed, merely, and for a gift of tobacco he will return lost cattle. Where the forest is darkest, sometimes he will appear in friendly but treacherous human guise, luring hunters from the path and at last vanishing in mocking laughter. When the hunter sees footprints of unequal size on the woodland trail ahead, if he is well advised he will hasten back, and avoid the forest for weeks afterward.

Farther north one finds again the tracks of this strange old man, or of beings like him. The Maidu Indians of California tell of the Chamlakhu, a bearded ancient with clawlike hands and feet who lived in trees; running on the ground, his gait was shambling and his arms fanned the air like wings. The Indians of Costa Rica tell of a king of the tapirs, a man of stately bearing, who rebukes hunters that kill out of wantonness. Among the Indians of Guatemala there are stories of a forest sovereign and protector of game whom the ladinos call the Sombreron, from the enormous hat which he wears. Short and sturdy of figure, he rides his domain astride a deer. He has a rustic stronghold, and a hunter following a wounded deer once came upon it. The Sombreron was swinging in a hammock in the courtyard. He led the hunter to an inclosure in which were many deer. Pointing out the wounded animal, he said, “Kill it, but another time shoot better and do not torture my subjects.”

This creature is Arcadian Pan, master of the satyrs, generative dæmon of the flocks and herds, somehow an emigrant to the New World. The Filipinos call him the Tig-balang, picture him with long ears, legs of grasshopper slenderness, and goat hoofs, and know him for a treacherous jungle guide. The Russians call him the Lesiy. He guards their forests, misleads wanderers, removes boundary stones and sign-posts. It is he that makes the echo. Shouting and whistling in his domain he cannot abide. A bearded, shaggy, green-eyed old man, he yet entices girls into his thickets, whence after a long time they may escape, but with honor forfeited; and he substitutes his stupid changelings for the children of men. The same or a like figure is Tapio, “the golden king of the forest” in Finnish magic songs. Wild animals are his flocks and herds, his queen is the charcoal wife, the bear is his bastard son, and he lives in Brushwood Town.

Satyr geography covers a good many countries and centuries and specifically includes at least one civilized race. It was long the vulgar belief upon the Continent that Englishmen had tails. This was first the story that the people of one shire told about another, and its birthplace was Kent. Kentishmen, according to their neighbors, were tailed, as a punishment for one or the other of two acts of sacrilege. Their first offense was committed, says Bailey, when they were still pagans. They abused “Austin the monk and his associates, by beating them and opprobriously tying fish tails to their backsides; in revenge of which such appendants grew to the hind parts of all that generation.” The second offense was against Thomas À Becket when it was noised abroad that he was out of favor with Henry II. The inhabitants of Strood cut off the tail of his horse, and by the will of God, says Polydore Vergil, “all their offspring were born with tails like brute animals”; not until their race was extinct did tailed men pass from Kent.

Pliny numbers among the nations of India “men born with long hairy tails, and of remarkable swiftness of foot. In Indo-China, southwest of Yunnan, were the Tailed Pu mentioned in the Sung Geography. Ma Tuan-Lin allows them tails from three to four inches long and classes them among anthropophagi who eat their aged relatives. The Yao, a subtribe of the Miaotze, have tails like monkeys, their neighbors say. They live in leaf lodges or caves in the Lipo district south of the Nanling range, and access to their habitations is by bamboo ladders. Yet they are skillful weavers and musicians.

There are numerous reports of tailed tribes in the large islands of the East. Marco Polo speaks of “a kind of wild men” in Sumatra, in the kingdom of Lambri, with hairless tails a palm in length. The Merveilles de L’Inde tells of tailed cannibals on the west coast of Sumatra, and Galvano has an account of Sumatrans with tails like a sheep’s. The fifteenth century History of the Ming Dynasty pictures the Borneo village of Wu-lung-li-tan and its tailed citizens. When they see other men approaching they flee with their hands over their faces. The resemblance of the name to orang-utan, or “wild men,” will not escape notice. Colonel Yule tells of a trader who had examined the tails of a tribe on the northeast coast of Borneo. These appendages were long and so stiff that the natives had to use perforated seats; Arab, Malay, and native travelers report having seen them squatting on these little stools. John Struys, a Dutch traveler in Formosa, saw there in 1677 a man with a tail “more than a foot long, covered with red hair, and very like a cow’s.” The man said the tail was the effect of climate and all the natives on the southern side of the island had them.

There were two archipelagoes known as the Satyr Islands. Ptolemy mentions one of them, and Gerini identifies it with the Northern Anambas lying off the Indo-Chinese mainland. Hsi-tung, supposed to be a transcript of Syatan, was their name of old; the resemblance of Syatan to the Greek Satyron may have led Levantine sailors to make this jest at the expense of ill-favored little people living then in the Anamba group. To reach the other archipelago one must steer through the Pillars of Hercules in company with a Carian sailor of the second century. Him Pausanias asked what he knew about the satyrs. The Carian replied that in a voyage to Italy he was driven from his course to a distant sea whither people no longer sail. Here were many islands which the crew did not care to touch, and these they called the Satyr Islands. Their inhabitants were red-haired and had tails not much smaller than a horse’s.

Many African tribes wore animal tails for ornament, and explorers were sometimes misled by the custom. The Duir of the northeast attached two antelope tails to their girdles. The Wa-Kavorondo, east of the Nyanza, go naked or wear only a waist-cloth, and the women attach to it a tail of bark. In the same quarter of Africa the Bongo women, with their large hips and lubricious gait, have had a share in propagating fable, for they, too, ornament themselves with tails; and as they stride along they swing these about in conscious emulation of the flocks and herds. Schweinfurth likens them to “dancing baboons.”

Other African satyr stories do not yield their secret so easily. The Ba-Kwambas of the northwest, report said, had tails which they inserted in holes in the ground when they sat down. In his Travels and Adventures (1861) Doctor Wolf asserted that in Abyssinia were men and women “with tails like dogs and horses,” some of these so large that they were able to knock down a horse with them. About the Niam-Niams, a cannibal people with filed teeth that live in French Equatorial Africa, legends have multiplied, and these Baring Gould has assembled.

Horneman was the first to describe them as tailed anthropophagi. In 1849 M. Descouret reported that this was the common belief among the Arabs. In 1851 M. de Castelnau told of a Houssa expedition in which a band of Niam-Niams was slaughtered to a man. All, including the women, had hairless tails about fifteen inches long. These people were otherwise a handsome race, of a deep black, using clubs and javelins in war, and in peace cultivating rice, maize, and other grains. An Abyssinian priest, seemingly speaking of the same tribe, told M. d’Abbadie in 1852 that only the men had tails, and these were covered with hair and the length of a palm. Doctor Hubsch, physician to the hospitals of Constantinople, examined in 1852 a tailed negress of the Niam-Niams who was offered for sale in the slave market. She was black as ebony, with frizzled hair, bloodshot eyes, large white teeth, and a smooth, hairless, pointed tail two inches long. Her clothes fidgeted her, she ate meat raw, and was an avowed cannibal. The slave dealer said all her tribe was as herself.

In Cuba Columbus heard of a province called Mangou, lying farther west, and it sounded like Mangi, the rich maritime province of the Grand Khan. Its inhabitants had tails, and wore garments to conceal them. Columbus recalled the Maundeville story, related above, of the scorn of certain naked Asiatics for clothing, and their belief that garments hid bodily defects. So he pressed onward in the thought that Mangi and the robed peoples of Tartary lay just below the horizon.

Despite witness from Asia, Africa, and the eastern and western Indies, there are no tailed races of men. But there have been tailed individuals. Hottentot women come nearest meeting the requirements of legend. Without a tail, they yet have a development of the posteriors that amounts to a natural shelf, on which, as on a pillion, their infants may ride. The mandril and certain other monkeys living in the same latitudes show a like enlargement.