The Billings Gazette from Billings, Montana • 15

The Billings Gazette Sunday, Apr. 25, 1882 3-B r-Sunday Sequel- Little people mystery still unsolved 'Littl ilk am People' ong us? i 'C -f; A if: Gill said the fetuses, if they were not stillborn, probably didn't live more than a day or two. In some cases of anencephaly, there is no cranial vault, or skull to house and protect the brain (usually very tiny), while in others, a piece or pieces of skull might be present. His opinion is corroborated by Dr. Harry Shapiro, a mummy expert from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who examined one of the mummies, possibly the Pedro Mountain mummy, about 15 years ago.

Gill said he still finds the phenomena a mystery in some respects. He does not agree with those who claim the mummies represent Wyoming's first inhabitants and estimate their age to be about 9,000 years. Part of the problem is a lack of organic material to perform tests on a radio-carbon test, he said, would probably use up nearly a whole mummy, destroying a valuable specimen. Neither has it been explained why some of the mummies are not of animal origin at all, but were carved out turnips or potatoes to look like the mummies. Gill said a significant number of the specimens he's seen were made up of vegetable fiber.

It is still unknown why numbers of infants in the region were stricken with anencephaly, or whether there was an abnormally high incidence among inhabitants of the area. And what about the people claim to have seen the little ones? "Well, I don't joke about the matter, because I don't have all the answers," Gill said. By LAURIE LeMAUVLEL Of The Gazette Staff The mystery of the "little people" said to inhabit the mountains of Montana and Wyoming, appearing in a Gazette story April 24, 1977, remains unsolved in many respects. The Gazette story, by John Bonar, mentioned six mummies, all about two feet in length, found in a Wyoming cave in 1932 and at later dates in other places in Wyoming. The mummies' sizes and appearances, as Bonar said, correspond with Indian legends about knee-high people, or a race of pygmies, said to inhabit the mountainous regions of Montana and Wyoming.

"Yeah, they existed," Dixon Goodman of Casper, Wyo. told the Gazette recently. Dixon is the son of Ivan Goodman, the fifth owner of the Pedro Mountain mummy, probably the most renowned specimen in the region. Though he was a young man when his father had the mummy, he remembers it well his mother wouldn't allow it in the house, he said. Dixon describes the mummy as having long grey hair, and dirt under the finger nails and toe nails.

He said undigested meat was detected in the mummy's stomach and numerous X-rays done by a Dr. Whiston of Casper, indicated the mummy had the bone structure of an adult. Whiston is now dead as is Ivan Goodman and all the prior owners of the Pedro Mountain mummy. Oddly, according to Dixon, each died of "premature and unnatural" causes. Ivan Goodman died from a brain tumor soon after taking the mummy to New York in 1950 to be examined, Dixon said.

In New York, someone named Leonard Wadler, claiming to be an interested doctor, asked to examine it, Dixon said. Wadler turned out to be a "con artist," he said, rather than a doctor. He disappeared with the mummy and as far as Dixon knows, no one has seen it since. The Goodman family spent considerable money in the years after Ivan's death on lawyers and trips to New York, he said, trying to recover the mummy. Though it has now been over 30 years, he still hopes it will surface, since Walder is either very old or dead by now.

Goodman has other evidence, which he said proves the existence of the little people. Dixon said he has some tiny arrowheads, one-sixth of an inch in length by one-eighth of an inch in width, that were found in an eagle's nests along with some tiny skulls. "No regular-sized man would cut arrowheads that tiny even if he could," Goodman said. Though believers in the little folk apparently dot the map throughout Montana and Wyoming, and some people swear that little folk still amble about the caves and crevices of the mountains, archeologists and anthropologists who have studied the tiny beings have their own opinions. A number of anthropologists believe the mummies to be anancephalic monsters, or infants having severe birth defects.

This is the belief of Dr. George Gill, of the University of Wyoming at Laramie, who has examined several of the specimens. rl -t scared the wits out of in. 7 i Away at School Receives award Scott Hill of Mosby, son of Phil Hill, has received the Gamma Sigma Delta sophomore honor award at Kansas State University, Manhattan. He is majoring in animal sciences and industry.

J- "ami I Honor roll Students on the honor roll at Northern Montana College include Ann Leppanen of Joliet and Michael Holliday of Rapelje. Elected Phoebe Agocs of Bozeman was elected to her second term as student senator at Concordia College, Moor-head, Minn. A 1981 graduate of Bozeman High School, she is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Agocs.

Tennis player Sue Slocum, a junior at Carlton College in Northfield, is a member of the varsity tennis team which has won two of its three conference matches. She's the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Laurie Slocum of 7435 Charolais Lane. i 4 i n.

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