These tiny, and allegedly vicious, humanoids have been stalked by big game hunters and are believed by some to be a relic ancestor of the human race.
Primarily hailing from Tanzania – on the eastern coast of Africa – these small, fur covered, human-like creatures have been seen in Zimbabwe, where they are known as Kakundakari or Kilomba. They have also been spotted on the Ivory Coast, where natives refer to the beasts as Sehite. That having been said, many east Africans claim that this specific breed -which the natives refer to as the Agogwe – are supposedly more grotesque in features and aggressive in action, than most of their primate kin.
First chronicled in the early 1900s by big game hunter Captain William Hitchens – who came across the creatures while on a lion hunt in east Africa – these animals have been described as being between three and four-feet in height, bipedal, long armed and covered with a scraggly coat of thick, rust colored hair over an epidermis, which is said to have reddish-yellow pigmentation. Hitchens recorded his encounter thusly:
“While waiting in a forest glade for a man eater, I saw two small, brown, furry creatures come from the dense forest on one side of the glade and then disappear into the thicket on the other side. They where like little men, about 4 feet high, walking upright, but clad in russet hair. The native hunter with me gazed in mingled fear and amazement. They were, he said, Agogwe, the little furry men whom one does not see once in a lifetime.”
Hitchens native gun bearers told the famed hunter that the creatures he had seen were known as the Agogwe. Although Hitchens attempted to pursue the two micro-humans into the jungle, the speed of these creatures, combined with the impenetrable thickness of the brush, proved too overwhelming and he quickly returned to his feline quarry.
When Hitchens returned to the so-called “civilized” world, he told the press of his encounter with the Agogwe and was met (as so many eyewitnesses are) with a tremendous amount of skepticism and public ridicule.
That was until 1938, when Cuthbert Burgoyne wrote a letter to the London magazine “Discovery.” in which he detailed an encounter that he and his wife had had while traveling along the coast of Portuguese Africa in a Japanese cargo boat in 1927. According to Burgoyne’s account, these unique primates were completely at ease with their simian cousins:
“We were sufficiently near to land to see objects clearly with a glass of twelve magnifications. There was a sloping beach with light bush above upon which several dozen baboons where hunting for and picking up shell fish of crabs, to judge by their movements. Two pure white baboons were amongst them. These are very rare but I had heard of them previously. As we watched, two little brown men walked together out of the bush and down amongst the baboons. They were certainly not any known monkey and yet they must have been akin or they would have disturbed the baboons. They were too far away to be seen in great detail, but these small human-like animals were probably between four and five feet tall, quite upright and graceful in figure. At the time I was thrilled as they were quite evidently no beast of which I had heard or read. Later a friend and big game hunter told me he was in Portuguese East Africa with his wife and three other hunters, and saw mother, father and child, of apparently similar animal species, walk across the further side of a bush clearing. The natives loudly forbade him to shoot.”
The father of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans, believed that these animals may well have been a relic humanoid, saying that it was most likely a surviving Gracile Australopithecine. Whatever these creatures were, there have not been any confirmed Agogwe reports in quite some time.
