Yeti Legends — Oldways

The Yeti is the “abominable snowman” of the Himalayas, the great ape of the snows, the dweller of the high places. The Yeti is the subject of a rich and continuing tradition in the Lepcha, Sherpa, Tibetan, and Bhutanese folklore, in the Western cryptozoology of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the modern popular culture of Tintin in Tibet, Monsters, Inc., and the modern Sherpa religion.

The Yeti is a member of the wider forest spirits family, and is closely related to the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, the Yowie of the Australian bush, the Almas of the Caucasus, the Yeren of the Chinese mountains, the Skunk Ape of the Florida Everglades, the Mapinguari of the Amazon, and the Agogwe of East Africa. The Yeti is the most famous of the high-altitude forest spirits of the world.

The names of the Yeti

The Yeti is called by many names. The Lepcha of the Sikkim and the Doklam call him Chu-mung-awai-lho-thing (“that which lives in the deep snow”). The Sherpa of the Khumbu and the Solu call him Yeti or Yeh-teh (“little man of the snow”) or Rimi (“bear of the snow”). The Tibetan call him Michö (“man-bear”) or Chemo (“forest bear”) or Ting (“dweller of the high places”). The Bhutanese call him Migoi (“wild man”) or Migo (“big wild man”).

The Western name “Abominable Snowman” is a translation of a mistake. The phrase was coined in 1921 by a journalist mis-rendering the Sherpa term mè-ti-kang-mi (the man-bear of the snows) into English. The Yeti of the Western press is therefore a translation of a mistranslation of a Sherpa phrase, and the Yeti of the modern Western imagination is in part a figure of the mistake of the translation.

The Sherpa and the Lepcha traditions

The Sherpa and the Lepcha traditions describe the Yeti in detail. The Yeti is, in the Sherpa tradition, a tall, muscular, white-furred, ape-like being, with a high, pointed head, long arms, short legs, and large feet. The Yeti walks on two legs, lives in the high snows, in the glaciers, and in the rock faces of the Himalayas, and is seen by the Sherpa herders and the Sherpa hunters. The Yeti is described in the Sherpa oral tradition in the Sherpa language.

The Yeti is, in the Sherpa tradition, a spirit as well as a creature, and the Yeti is one of the three inhabitants of the high snows: the Yeti of the rocks, the Lung Mi-gö of the clouds, and the Sang of the sky. The Yeti is a member of the Sherpa religion, and the Yeti is honoured by the Sherpa in the rituals of the high mountains.

The Lepcha tradition describes the Yeti as a tall, muscular, white-furred, ape-like being, with a high, pointed head, long arms, short legs, and large feet. The Yeti of the Lepcha tradition is closely related to the Yeti of the Sherpa tradition, and the two traditions are closely related in the Himalayan oral tradition.

The Eric Shipton photograph and the Tom Slick expeditions

The Eric Shipton photograph of 1951 is the most famous photograph of the Yeti, and the photograph that introduced the Yeti to the Western modern public. The photograph was taken by Eric Shipton, the British mountaineer, in 1951, in the Menlung Glacier of the Nepal Himalayas, and the photograph shows a large set of footprints in the snow of the glacier. The footprints are 14 inches long, 7 inches wide, and the footprints are clearly visible in the snow. The footprints are clearly not human footprints, not bear footprints, not fox footprints, and not snow-leopard footprints.

The Shipton photograph of 1951 introduced the Yeti to the Western modern public, and the Shipton photograph sparked the Western modern enthusiasm for the Yeti. The Shipton photograph was followed by a series of Western expeditions to the Himalayas to find the Yeti, including the Tom Slick expeditions of 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, and 1959, the Sir Edmund Hillary expedition of 1960–1961, the Cronin expedition of 1972, the McIntyre expedition of 1986, and the Reinhold Messner expedition of the 1990s. The Tom Slick expeditions were funded by Tom Slick, the American oil magnate and adventurer, who believed in the existence of the Yeti, and who funded the expeditions to find it. The Tom Slick expeditions collected hair samples, footprint casts, photographs, and reports of Yeti sightings, and the Tom Slick expeditions resulted in the Slick Collection of the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin.

The 2013 DNA study

The 2013 Oxford-Lausanne DNA study is the most rigorous of the Western modern studies of Yeti hair samples, and the study that linked some Yeti hair samples to the Himalayan brown bear and the polar bear. The study was led by Bryan Sykes, the Oxford professor of genetics, and the study analysed Yeti hair samples from the Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes, and the Rockies. The study found that some Yeti hair samples are closely related to the Himalayan brown bear and to a previously unknown sub-population of polar bear that may survive in the high Himalayas. The study is not a conclusion that the Yeti does not exist. The study is a conclusion that some Yeti hair samples are closely related to the Himalayan brown bear and the polar bear, and that some Yeti sightings may be sightings of those bears in unusual postures.

The Yeti and the Bigfoot of North America

The Yeti is closely related to the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, the Bigfoot of the American tradition, the Yowie of the Australian bush, the Almas of the Caucasus, the Yeren of the Chinese mountains, the Skunk Ape of the Florida Everglades, the Mapinguari of the Amazon, and the Agogwe of East Africa. The Yeti and the Sasquatch are the two most famous of the world high-altitude forest spirits, and the Yeti and the Sasquatch are the two most famous of the world modern cryptids.

The two creatures are closely related in the Western modern fantasy, and the two creatures are the two figures of the Western modern fantasy of the creature that the modern Western science has not yet entirely replaced. The Mothman of Point Pleasant is a close cousin of the Yeti and the Sasquatch in the American tradition.

The Yeti in modern Sherpa religion and popular culture

The Yeti is a figure of the modern Sherpa religion, and the Yeti is honoured by the Sherpa in the rituals of the high mountains. The Yeti of the modern Sherpa religion is a figure of the older world of the Himalayas, and the Yeti is a figure of the new village of the modern Sherpa.

The Yeti is also a figure of the modern popular culture. The Yeti appears in Tintin in Tibet of Hergé (1960), a graphic novel in which Tintin and Captain Haddock travel to the Himalayas to find their friend Chang, who has crashed in the high snows. The Yeti of Hergé is a gentle, kind, tall, white-furred, ape-like creature that protects the lost and the traveller. The Yeti also appears in Monsters, Inc. of Pixar (2001), an animated film in which the Yeti is a gentle, kind, white-furred creature that is wrongly exiled from the city of Monstropolis. The Yeti of the modern popular culture is a figure of the gentleness of the older world of the Himalayas.

Sources and Further Reading

Sykes, Bryan. The Nature of the Beast: The First Scientific Evidence on the Survival of Apemen into Modern Times. Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.
Messner, Reinhold. My Quest for the Yeti. St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Tibet, Ralph. Frontier Tibet: Patterns of Change. Oxford University Press, 1992.
Bishop, Barry C. In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman. Dorrance & Co., 1974.