In Part 1 of his “Tales of the Bushmen,” Keith David Langston shared how it was that he found himself in the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.) and first learned of the bushmen. In this installment, he shares the first of three bushmen stories his fellow lodge coworkers told him while sitting around a campfire one night.
Coya’s Story
“Alright,” Coya said. “That girl who was found…It was right by my village. I know the people who interviewed her about what happened. Apparently, she had been missing for three years. She came from somewhere up near Great Bear Lake. How she got down this far on her own, nobody knows.
“Her family had put in a missing-persons report when she first disappeared, but there was no trace of her. No evidence anywhere. She had gone out to a lake with her friends, and for some reason, she started acting strange towards the end of the night. They said she started getting really nervous and was claiming she could hear noises in the woods, like something big might be following them. Her friends thought it could be a bear so told her to wait there, and they’d go check it out.
“When they got back. She was gone. They said they never heard a scream, or the sounds of a struggle. She had just vanished.
“She ended up being found wandering along the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. A driver passed by and saw her. She was covered in dirt, her hair was a mess, she had scratches and bruises everywhere. The driver tried asking her if she was ok, but she couldn’t speak. The driver called the police, and that’s when they brought her to our village.
“They tried asking her what had happened, but all she could do was mumble incoherent phrases. They asked what her name was and where she was from, and then, she suddenly said, ‘Bushmen.’
“They finally managed to identify her, and called her parents. To this day she can’t speak, and her parents don’t know what to do with her. She’s afraid to leave the house, has trouble sleeping, and they basically have to force her to eat. Nobody knows what actually happened…”
What Are Bushmen?
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe that not only did this story exist, but that multiple people in the group knew about it. Dené all the way from Hay River to Norman Wells had heard the story about the girl on the side of the road.
“So, what, they kidnapped her?” I asked. “And are Bushmen like people or like bigfoot?”
“They’re people that were kicked out of the tribe for doing bad things.” Riley said. “Then, from hundreds of years of living in the woods, they grew tall and strong, became covered in hair, and devolved into giant wild animals.”
“Tales of the Bushmen” continues in Part 3 with Riley telling his story…
About the Author
Keith David Langston currently writes for Travel Channel and Passport Magazine. When he isn’t traveling, he lives in New York City.
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