Creature record / 1868
1868. One of the Manitou Islands in Lake Michigan. Six men and two boys came ashore with guns and dogs, hunting a creature one of them had already described in an earlier letter. About 2 o'clock, a gunshot. Two of the party had chased something or somebody into a tall beech tree. He was naked and covered with hair, his beard descending nearly to his stomach. When the guns came up, he howled and ran like a monkey higher up the tree. After an hour or more of talk, he came down. Then a dog ran at him. What followed ended at the water's edge. The only record is a single reprinted newspaper letter.
In 1868 the Manitou Islands were a small, shrinking world. On North Manitou Island the cordwood trade for steamers was fading, because "the vast majority of the trees had been cleared." Its population fell from 269 in 1860 to 94 in 1870. Woodcutters, farmers and fishermen lived among beech and maple forest. Today the islands belong to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.