Certain tribes native to Venezuela speak of mysterious, monkey-like creatures living in the secluded jungles surrounding their communities. They call these the 'Salvaje', and although we may initially assume that these creatures are naught but myths - there are several real reports which suggest otherwise...
Fernando Nives Meets the Salvaje[]
Illustration by Harry Trumbore
It was roughly 1980, and Fernando Nives was presumably soaking up the Venezualan sunshine as his boat drifted down the Orinoco River. He was just 25 miles north of Puerto Ayacucho - the largest city in Amazonas State, and had been enjoying a pleasant day of hunting. However, his peace would come to an end when he caught sight of a large hairy creature on the shoreline.
Curious about the hirsute hominoid before him, he guided his boat closer to the shoreline and began to become increasingly more aware of the noxious odour seemingly emitted by the anomalous critter. Soon, he noticed that there were two more creatures visible among the forest foliage. He described them as standing over 5ft tall and as being covered in reddish hair. What happened next is unclear, but it can be assumed that Nives left the scene swiftly - as any sensible person would presumably do when confronted with three monkeys of almost human size.
Bulldozers, Bad Luck and Big Feet - Other Salvaje Encounters[]
The source for this article provides me with three other cases in which people have seemingly come face-to-face with these allegedly-mythical primates, but sadly the details about these incidents are rather scant and so I am grouping them all together into a single article.
The first case took place some time around 1985, and involves another resident of Puerto Ayacucho. He was clearing an area of forest using a bulldozer in order to make space for a new section of road at the time. When he stopped the machinery for a breather, he was suddenly caught off-guard by the loud cry of the Salvaje. A while later he was confronted with a 5ft primate-like creature with red hair.
The second case is one of the many recorded by Marc and Khryztian Miller in their innumerable books and articles on cryptozoology. While moving down the Orinoco River, the intrepid pair decided to stay at an unnamed village, where they were told by the chief of the community about a time when he had encountered a giant monkey while out hunting with his blow-gun. He said that it was roughly as tall as he was - which would make it approximately 5ft tall, and was covered in red hair. He allegedly actually killed the creature, but refused to take its corpse back to his village for fear of it being a bad omen.
Finally, a jungle pilot by the name of Rodriguez - who was quite famous around the area - said that he found a trail of Salvaje tracks in the sand on his airstrip. This seems to have taken place in roughly 1989. The prints were apparently turned inwards, and Rodriguez was able to estimate that the animal that had made them must've been between 80-100 pounds in weight. A posse of locals had allegedly followed these clear tracks into the forest, but no more information about where they led is available.
Analysis[]
Apologies for the lacklustre nature of some of these cases. They are taken from notes from the Millers, who were writing about their investigation of the creature in 1990, and so I guess they must've been simply field notes, thus explaining their somewhat piecemeal nature. Frankly, I was somewhat disappointed as I moved through the source and found that it wasn't all about Fernando's encounter - which I was expecting to progress into a closer encounter, so to speak. Also, I would like to draw attention to the similarities between the description of the entities involved and those reported to have attacked two Venezuelan men after disembarking from a UFO in 1954. It seems Venezuela is something of a hotspot for hairy abominations.
Source[]
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/miller.htm
'The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates' by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe