Did a mummy
prove the Wyoming legend?Read the entire
article: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_d360bb9a-ea9a-11df-91db-001cc4c002e0.html
Condensed by Native Village

Wyoming:
The Little People said to live in the Wind River Range
are good. Just don't make them mad. Eastern
Shoshone elder Morning Starr Moses Weed knows what
happens if you do.

Many years ago, Weed's father-in-law rode up a
thin trail into the Wind River mountains to check on his
cattle. One of the Little People appeared. He stood knee
high, but otherwise looked like normal human. He told
Weed's father-in-law that it was his trail, and the
rancher couldn't use it. But the Shoshone rancher went
ahead anyway.

The Little Person shot Weed's father-in-law with a
poisonous arrow, making his arm useless.

But they're not all bad, Weed says. Other stories
tell of the Little People saving lives or helping
Shoshones find their way home.

The Shoshones aren't the only people to describe a
race of Little People. For centuries, other American
Indians have had variations of their own.

But white settlers to the Wind River area believed
the stories were myths -- until the mummies were found.

In
1936, Eugene Bashor first saw one mummy in a circus tent
in Casper. It was said to be the remains of a
65-year-old man who weighed less than a pound.

Bashor saw it again in 1948. A used car dealer had
it sitting on his desk. Then a con-man swindled the
mummy away from the dealer. The dealer died a mysterious
death and the mummy disappeared.

Bashor spent the next 50 years searching for the
Pedro Mountain Mummy. He'd wander the Pedros, looking in
caves for signs of other mummies. And he advertised
nationwide for leads.

In 1971, the University of Wyoming hired its only
physical anthropologist, George Gill. Because of his
background in studying human remains, students told Gill
about the Pedro Mountain Mummy. They brought him
brochures of the mummy. Was it a human? Was it from a
race of knee-high people? They wanted to know

Soon, more people began investigating the mummies
and the Little People. Others came forward with
mummy-like
creatures. Gill found one perfect likeness, but analysis
showed it was a well carved potato head.

Then in 1994, Gill and Bashor went on Unsolved
Mysteries. Host Robert Stack explained the vague details
of the mummy and asked for help from the public.

A Cheyenne family who watched the episode produced
a family heirloom found by a great-grandfather. It was a
girl, slightly smaller, with striking features. Analysis
concluded the tiny mummy was most likely a premature
human baby. Carbon dating put her age around 300 years
old.

The family took its mummy back to Cheyenne and has
since moved. Gill doesn't know where.

Bashor, 84, no longer believes in a race of little
people. But Gill still believes in the mystery of the
mummies, the legends that preceded them, and the
possibility of some connection.

Weed says there are too many stories, with too
many details, for them not to be real. "They're good
little fellows," he said. "If you don't make them mad."

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