by Scott Harper
Think about the state of Hawaii,
and a lot of things come to mind—beaches, palm trees, pineapples, and luaus.
Sasquatch probably don't make the list for most people. However, in recent years
there have been sightings.
The earliest one I've found
is from 1973. A group of people laid out catfish traps in a river at night. The
next morning they went to gather the traps, and the fish. They heard something
screaming in nearby bushes. They ran, and encountered an 8-foot-tall, male,
hairy being walking toward them. Turning back toward the river, they spotted a
7-foot-tall female coming toward them from that direction—presumably what had
been screaming at them moments earlier. The friends changed direction, running
away, and leaving the creatures behind to help themselves to the fish in the
traps.
It's only in the past few
decades that sightings of what we think of as Sasquatch have been coming from
the state of Hawaii. Why? The leading thought seems to be that the creatures
have stowed away aboard cargo vessels traveling from the mainland United States
to Hawaii. Though such ships are inspected in an effort to keep invasive
species from reaching the sandy shores of Hawaii, not everything is kept out.
Recently, a 15-pound female raccoon was discovered walking across a desk on
board a cargo vessel bound for Hawaii. If such an animal can, it's assumed,
simply walk on board undiscovered, why couldn't an intelligent, curious
creature such as a Sasquatch sneak aboard once in a while?
Historically, though, in
keeping with the main theme of these articles, Hawaii has other things to take
the place of Sasquatch. These are called the Menehune (meh-neh-HOO-neh), or
Little People. They're said to be short-statured humanoid beings, roughly 2-feet-tall,
and hairy. They are said to hide in the lush forests during the day, and only
come out at night.
While there are many who do
not believe in the Menehune, it's interesting that a census from 1820 listed 65
people as Menehune. And many structures are credited to having been built by
the Menehune—roads, ponds, temples, dams, etc. It seems possible that the
Menehune were on the islands before modern man, and may still exist as a very
small population, hiding out, not wanting to be rediscovered.
One hypothesis is that the Menehune
were, or are, actually modern-day descendents of the so-called
"hobbits" of the island of Flores. Skeletal remains of Homo Floresienses were discovered on Flores in 2003. Some people think that they had, at some point in the past, migrated to the Hawaiian Islands. Once there, they became known as the Menehune.
Despite a tiny handful of
modern-day sightings, though, nothing much historically seems to be found
regarding the Menehune beyond a handful of legends that get told over and over
again. Strangely, nothing at all regarding the Menehune seems to appear prior
to the late 1700s. Is this evidence of arrival of the beings on the islands
then? Is this cause to believe that the Menehune are, as so many people think,
nothing more than a myth? Or has the apparent arrival of Sasquatch on the
islands had something to do with the disappearance of the Menehune in recent
years?
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