Within the world of cryptozoology there is perhaps no other mystery creature that is as widely talked about and discussed as the Sasquatch. The massive, ape-like wild men have become synonymous with the world of cryptids, and have produced countless weird tales that range from the somewhat plausible to the completely insane. Hovering here in the realm of the latter is a case that I am embarrassed to say I only recently stumbled across, but which struck me with its spectacular imagery and near absurdity. In a very intriguing historical oddity there have been reports of an actual war between humans and Bigfoot, which seems to have been mostly forgotten, yet in some circles much talked about. If it sounds truly insane it is because it is. Let’s take a look.

The very bizarre account begins in 1855, in the region of the present U.S. states of Oklahoma and Arkansas, where the once mighty Choctaw Nation of Native Americans once ruled over all they saw. In this year there was an apparent scourge of unseen bandits venturing forth from the wilderness to steal vegetables and even livestock. This might have been the end of it if it were not for the claim that the trespassers are said to have soon graduated to kidnapping people, mostly children, which provoked a fierce reaction in the tribe.

A search party was allegedly formed, composed of a group of uncommonly large cavalry warriors called the “Lighthorsemen,” the largest of whom was the towering Hamas Tubbee and his six sons, who were widely reported as standing at around 7 feet or more in height. These real giants, along with a contingent of 30 other very large and fierce horseback riding warriors, headed out led by a part French, part Choctaw general by the name of Joshua LeFlore, and their mission was to find the culprits and put an end to their reign. As they headed out into the wilderness in the early morning hours from the tribal capital in Tuskaloma, fully armed with high powered rifles and pistols and thirsty for vengeance, these menacing, proud warriors no doubt thought that this would be a simple matter of routing some ragtag group of bandits, yet they were in for quite a bizarre surprise, to say the least.

The group of warriors penetrated deep into the region which is now known as the “McCurtain County Wilderness Area” of present-day Oklahoma, and after 8 hours of riding nonstop through the blazing June sun they stopped at a spot near the Clover River to rest and eat, before remounting and continuing on the last leg of their tiring journey. It was after nearly 14 hours of almost nonstop riding that the men reached the area where the bandits were said to be most active, and it was here that LeFlore suddenly gave the order to halt, as if he has seen something that had caught his attention.

Using a crude telescope, LeFlore peered off into the distance as the men rumbled amongst themselves and the horses huffed and chuffed. The general claimed that he could see something moving about ahead, and voiced his confidence that it was the enemy before putting the telescope aside and giving the warriors the order to charge. The massive, bloodthirsty warriors must have been quite a sight as they howled and rushed their horses through the trees in a mad dash into battle, weapons drawn and ready to fight. Yet their powerful drive forward was soon brought to a halt when the unbearably stench of decay hit them like a wall and their steeds began to inexplicably buck and rear in an abrupt, profound panic, knocking several of them to the mossy ground to writhe around hacking and coughing, such was the intensity of the supposed olfactory assault.

Some of the warriors, including the Tubbees and LeFlore himself, were allegedly able to control their animals and advance past this nauseating wave of rotting stink to rush towards the bandits, and as they exploded out into a forest clearing the source of the stygian stench was clear. There in the center of the clearing they found what was described as some sort of earthen mound that had embedded within it and strewn about it numerous corpses in varying levels of decomposition, drawing a fog of flies that droned all about the startled warriors. Of human bandits there was no sign, but looming nearby were three enormous, ape-like creatures covered with hair, so tall as to dwarf even the most statuesque of the Tubbees themselves. These beast-men purportedly stood there glaring in their direction, completely unafraid of the tribal warriors.

What purportedly followed next is just as dramatic and over-the-top as any action movie. LeFlore is said to have charged the strange beasts without hesitation, pistol and saber in hand and howling the whole time. One of the creatures stepped forward and lashed out with a massive hand to swat the general’s horse to the side of its head with a thunderous blow that sent it sprawling to the ground dead. LeFlore was ejected to the ground but was soon on his feet with pistol blazing, managing to hit the wildman several times but barely slowing it down at all. Even after sustaining several gunshot wounds it barely bled at all, seemed to have not even felt it, and lunged forward to grab the man by the head and rip it clean off.

All of this had happened before the others had even had any time to react, nor indeed even process the situation at all, and they had witnessed it in a wide-eyed stupor. Upon seeing their general slump to the ground without a head as this vicious ape-creature loomed over his carcass, they produced their rifles and launched a withering volley of bullets at the monsters, which managed to drop all but one of them. The grievously injured creature purportedly limped off in a bid to escape, but was set upon by one of the Tubbee brothers, who pounced and apparently cut its head off with his hunting knife.

In the aftermath it was just a few scattered Native warriors, poised and ready for the next attack that would never come, the smell of gun smoke and that fetid stench of dead bodies, feces, and urine lingering all around them, in the background that Tubbee brother crouched over the hulking beast with blood on his knife and hands. The Natives then went about the grim work of burying the dead, finding the bodies of at least 19 children among them, and the bodies of the hulking beasts were burned on a bonfire.

It is without a doubt a harrowing, terrifying tale, filled with mysteries, monsters, and sheer, otherworldly bizarreness. The tale has been passed around the Internet quite a lot, it seems, and if it seems too good to be true then it may be because it perhaps is. The tales does indeed incorporate various historical facts, as LeFlore seems to have indeed been a real person who did die in 1855, and the Tubbees are apparently real as well, but this means little in the larger picture, as any historical figure can be inserted into any wild story you like, sort of like a fan fiction.

Not helping matters is that, while the story has made the rounds on the Internet, the best source I can truly link it back to is a book with the rather unwieldy title of True Bigfoot Horror: The Apex Predator – Monster in the Woods: Cryptozoology: Terrifying, Violent, and True Encounters of Sasquatch Hunting People (Cryptozoology, Sasquatch, Paranormal) (Volume 1), by Jeremy Kelley, which seems to have just a collection of unconfirmed Bigfoot anecdotes, as well as reviews that are, well, shall we say, not kind. This is not to say it is all bunk, but there is also very little in the way of actual verification or corroboration of this amazing tale, and for all intents and purposes it may as well have come from the depths of the imagination. Nevertheless, from this source has sprung a persistent Bigfoot legend, all without any way to know just how believable it is, further cementing its power in the world of the weird. Is this a case of an urban legend in the making and a twisting of history, or is there something more to it? Whatever the case may be, it is a damn strange account.