Little Eagle, South Dakota, Mid-September 1977
The crescent moon hung low in the clear night sky, casting shadows across the field. Chris Hawiatow walked casually, with the two other men following close behind. They had come to check the cattle, as they did every night. They’d lived on the Standing Rock Reservation their whole lives and were familiar with the threats to their livestock. Creatures of all shapes and sizes lurked on the edge of the darkness, waiting for a sign of weakness in one of the cows or for an inattentive mother to let her calf stray too far. Mostly, the men worried about coyotes.
Although a couple of men came armed with rifles, they had little intention of using them to kill. They preferred to shoot warning shots to scare off predators, if necessary, which usually wasn’t. This was a time of the day that Chris looked forward to: a moment of general peace, when he could take in the nighttime chirps of crickets and the sparkling Milky Way that could be seen on clear nights, like this one.
The steady sound of crickets aside, all was quiet, except for an occasional cattle hoof smacking against dirt. So when an eerie screech filled the air, the men were noticeably startled. They froze in their tracks.
“Did you hear that?” one of them asked. His long ponytail whipped against his back as he looked from one side of the pasture to the other.
“Yeah,” Chris replied, looking around to see where the noise might have come from.
“That wasn’t a coyote,” another man said, pulling his rifle to his chest.
“I’d agree. That sounded like something in pain, but not a coyote,” Chris said.
“What do you suppose …” the ponytailed man began, but his words stopped when a large creature appeared from behind the thick line of cottonwoods that ran along the field.
It stood about nine feet tall. Its thick chest was covered in sandy brown fur, and its legs were the size of a grown man’s torso. Chris estimated that the beast must have weighed nearly 900 pounds.
“Taku-He,” Chris said quietly.
Taku-He was what the residents of the reservation had called bigfoot-like creatures for many generations.
The man with the rifle pointed his weapon toward the creature. He wasn’t willing to pull the trigger on the beast at that moment, but he wanted to be prepared if it charged toward them.
Chris gazed at the creature in awe. “Jim Douglas said he saw a Taku-He dragging a dead deer through his alfalfa field three years ago, just after that mutilated cow was found. Let’s see if we can frighten it away.”
The men began to walk toward the creature, shouting as they drew closer. The furry beast saw them coming, bellowed loudly, then retreated into the woods.
The men watched it lumber away. The sound of the underbrush cracking beneath its enormous weight grew quieter as the ape-like creature fled deeper into the trees.
“Should we follow it?” the man asked, lowering his rifle.
“No,” replied Chris. “What would we do if we caught up with it? We don’t want to harm it, but we have to protect the livestock.” He paused. “All who’ve seen the Taku-He say it fears man as much as we fear it—maybe more. I think we have scared it away from making our livestock its dinner. But let’s stay in the pasture a while longer to make sure it doesn’t come back.”
The creature did not return that evening or any other as far as Chris could tell. But it would appear to many other residents over the next three months.
October 13, 1977
Phoebe Little Dog squinted as she looked out the window. She’d heard the same strange screeching sound coming from the pasture that was heard the week before. That time, when she’d looked out the window, she saw the creature right away. Now she squinted into the field, certain the Taku-He was out there somewhere. She saw it lumbering across the pasture, sending the cows running in every direction. Covered in thick, sandy fur from head to toe, the monster looked about nine feet tall.
Phoebe ran to the front door, and holding it open with one foot behind her, she reached out and rang the dinner bell attached to the pillar just above the top step.
The bigfoot startled at the sound and then fled into the nearby woods.
“You’re not getting one of our cattle for dinner,” Phoebe said as she pulled the door shut firmly behind her. She watched through the front window a while longer to be sure the Taku-He did not return. She was relieved not to see it again that evening.
On November 29, 1977, several newspapers, including The Toledo Blade and the St. Petersburg Times, ran articles about the influx of reported Taku-He sightings in Little Eagle. These included 28 such sightings in only three months. Many were reported by well-respected residents in the community, including local law enforcement.
Fearing a creature they’d heard screeching throughout the night in the woodlands around their homes, several area residents moved away, including a local pastor: Rev. Angus Long Elk and his wife. Others armed themselves with rifles or tranquilizer guns, despite authorities asking them to leave their weapons at home.
The reports seemed to indicate that there were three different Taku-Hes: Two taller creatures, one with light fur and the other with darker fur, stood between 6 and 9 feet tall and weighed between 600 and 900 pounds. A third, smaller bigfoot was reported to be 6 feet tall, weighing around 400 pounds.
With all the sightings, the general store in town, which was owned by Gary Alexander, became a makeshift bigfoot information center. One local resident, Ed Meller, even set up a recording station in an RV on a property where multiple sightings had occurred.
With so much media coverage, a bigfoot investigator from New York came to Little Eagle to see what he could find. He was confident that with so many sightings of the creature, it could not be a hoax, and based on the descriptions, it could not be a bear or any of the other local wildlife.
Unfortunately, the gentleman from New York left with no tangible evidence. But the sightings continued on until December 5, 1977. After that date, the Taku-He reports stopped completely. What happened to the beasts and where they went remain a mystery. But one thing is for certain: Something lived around Little Eagle, something unlike any animal we’ve scientifically identified. It is one that has lived in folklore for centuries and will most likely continue to do so for generations to come.