WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD

A story, circulated since the 1830s in South Central Texas, contains enough truth to merit a Texas Historical Marker.  Residents along the Navidad River bottom in Lavaca and Jackson counties began seeing strange footprints along the riverbank, and at the same time they began missing small amounts of sweet potatoes and corn.  On moonlit nights half the food in their cabins disappeared even though an intruder had to step over sleeping dogs.  Tools vanished, only to be returned later, brilliantly polished and sharpened.  In fall around hog-killing time families stopped fattening hogs because a fat hog was invariably replaced with a scrawny substitute.  Valuables such as gold or watches were never taken although they were plainly visible when the food disappeared.

Everyone speculated about “it.”  Slaves called it “The Thing That Comes,” thinking it was a ghost.  Settlers, finding two sets of footprints, believed one of the intruders to be a man and the other a smaller companion, perhaps a woman or child.

Many people organized search parties trying to capture the “Wild Man of the Navidad.”  Sometimes they found his camp among the thick growth of trees, but he never returned to the site while the pursuers waited.

Texas folk author J. Frank Dobie in his book Tales of Old-Time Texas concluded that the phantom figure had to be a woman because several well-documented sightings reported that “it” had long, flowing hair and facial features more similar to a woman. Dobie writes of a near capture in 1846 during an intense search when a rider heard rustling of the brush just before “it” ran in the light of the moon onto the open prairie.  “She ran directly across the prairie in the direction of the main forest.  The man nearest her rode a fleet horse and it needed all the speed it had to keep up with the object in pursuit.  As the figure neared the dark woods, the rider was able to throw his lasso. But, as the rope neared the woman, the horse shied away and the lasso felt short.  The figure darted into the woods never to be seen again.”

Dobie said the rider claimed that the creature had long, flowing hair that trailed down almost to its feet and it wore no clothing.  Her body seemed to be covered with short, brown hair.

“As she fled to the woods, she dropped a club to the ground that was about 5 feet long and polished to a wonder,” Dobie said.

Finally, in 1851, with the help of dogs trained to hunt down runaway slaves, local residents following their baying hounds found a black man in a tree.  He wore no clothes and spoke no English.  Some accounts say he was put in jail where he remained for about six months until a sailor wandered through who was familiar with the native dialect of the captive’s African tribe.

The captive said his father, a chief of their tribe, sold his son into slavery for the price of a knife and tobacco.  The new slave and a companion escaped after their transport ship reached Texas. They settled in the Navidad River bottom because of the abundance of wildlife and fruit. His companion died from exposure.

The captured man, whom they called Jimbo, was sold back into slavery and lived in Victoria and Refugio counties.  Freed after the Civil War, he reportedly died in 1884.

J. Frank Dobie writes, “Of course all of this happened many years ago and in the telling you can always guarantee some build up in the information will take place.  If these things did happen, I cannot explain how.”