FIELD FILE · PEDRO-MOUNTAIN-MUMMYHUMANOIDHOAX / DEBUNKED

Pedro Mountain Mummy

Also known as Pedro, San Pedro Mountains mummy, Nimerigar (Shoshone little people)

Pedro Mountains near Pathfinder Reservoir, Carbon County, WyomingFIRST REPORTED: 1932HUMANOIDS & STRANGE BEINGS

A tiny seated mummy found by Wyoming gold prospectors in the 1930s and promoted as proof of a race of little people – later identified as an infant.

In the early 1930s, two amateur gold prospectors, Cecil Main (sometimes spelled Mayne) and Frank Carr, were blasting for gold in the Pedro Mountains near Pathfinder Reservoir, about 55 miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming. When the dust settled, they said, they found a small hidden chamber with a tiny human figure sitting cross-legged on a ledge, arms folded over its knees. Seated, it stood about six and a half inches tall and weighed around a pound. A Casper newspaper reported the find in 1932, though Main later swore in an affidavit that it took place in June 1934.

The little body passed from owner to owner as a curiosity. It was shown in a tent in Casper, sat in a drugstore window in Meeteetse, and in the 1940s was bought by Casper car dealer Ivan Goodman, who displayed it under a glass dome and advertised it as a 65-year-old “pygmy.” Newspapers linked it to the Shoshone tradition of the Nimerigar – small, strong, fierce people said to live in Wyoming’s mountains and to shoot poisoned arrows from tiny bows – and to other stories of vanished little people.

Science told a sadder story. In the late 1940s physical anthropologist Harry Shapiro of the American Museum of Natural History studied the mummy and its X-rays, and archaeologist Paul Martin of Chicago’s Field Museum examined it in 1950. They concluded it was real but was the naturally mummified body of a Native American infant, probably born with anencephaly, a condition that leaves the head misshapen and can make an infant look like a tiny adult. Decades later University of Wyoming anthropologist George Gill reviewed the surviving information and agreed.

After 1950 the mummy dropped from public view. Goodman took it to New York, and it reportedly passed to a man named Leonard Wadler, who is said to have shown it privately in Florida into the 1970s; it has not been seen since his death in 1980, and a 2005 reward for its return went unclaimed. A second small Wyoming mummy that surfaced after a 1994 Unsolved Mysteries episode was tested and found to be an anencephalic Native American infant girl as well. These were human children, and both they and the Shoshone traditions of little people deserve to be treated with respect rather than as sideshow curiosities.

Type: Humanoid
Status: Hoax / debunked
First reported: 1932
Best-known location: Pedro Mountains near Pathfinder Reservoir, Carbon County, Wyoming
Also called: Pedro, San Pedro Mountains mummy, Nimerigar (Shoshone little people)
Reported in: Wyoming

What witnesses describe

A tiny, dark, seated figure about 6.5 inches tall (an estimated 17 inches standing), with a flattened head, heavy-lidded eyes, a wide mouth and folded arms, giving the look of a wizened old person. In Shoshone tradition the Nimerigar are small but very strong people armed with bows.

Where and when it’s seen

The rocky Pedro Mountains of central Wyoming, between Casper and Rawlins; in tradition, the little people live in remote mountain country.

Notable sightings

1932 (or 1934)Prospectors find the mummy Pedro Mountains, Wyoming
Cecil Main and Frank Carr reported finding the seated figure in a small chamber after blasting a hillside. The exact year is disputed between newspaper reports and Main’s affidavit.
Late 1940s – 1950Scientific examination New York and Chicago
Harry Shapiro and Paul Martin concluded the mummy was a naturally mummified infant, most likely with anencephaly. The mummy dropped out of public view soon afterward.
1994<em>Unsolved Mysteries</em> and a second mummy Cheyenne, Wyoming
After a TV segment on Pedro, a family came forward with a similar small mummy. DNA and X-ray tests identified it as an anencephalic Native American infant.

What could explain it?

X-ray studies by museum scientists identified the mummy as a human infant with anencephaly, which explains its adult-looking face and proportions.
The dry, cold climate and rock shelters of Wyoming can naturally mummify remains.
Sideshow-style promotion as a “pygmy” and the loss of the original remains allowed myths to grow unchecked.
The Nimerigar belong to Shoshone tradition; the mummy was linked to them by outsiders and does not prove or disprove that tradition.

Legend, culture and tourism

Pedro is a fixture of Wyoming oddity lore, featured on Unsolved Mysteries, in books on Western mysteries and in countless online articles. The Shoshone and other Plains and Mountain nations have their own traditions of little people, which exist independently of the mummy story.

Where it’s reported

Wyoming