Cold Case Files: Bigfoot tale from over 165 years ago still resonates with some longtime Leflore County residents

In the summer of 1855 the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory faced a series of quiet thefts that at first drew little alarm. Vegetables vanished from gardens at night. Livestock disappeared from pastures without tracks or broken fences. The thieves struck only when watchmen slept or turned away, never entering camps when guards stood alert.

Settlers in the hills that would later form LeFlore County and nearby Anglo farmers in what is now Arkansas set traps and posted extra sentries, yet the raiders slipped past every measure. Some families began to speak of the bandits with a grudging respect for their skill.

The thefts turned deadly when women and children started to go missing. Entire households woke to empty beds and no sign of struggle beyond a few dragged footprints that ended at the tree line. Search parties returned empty-handed. Fear spread through the scattered Choctaw settlements along the rivers and into the Ouachita foothills.

After weeks of unanswered losses, the Lighthorsemen organized a response. Thirty mounted warriors gathered under the command of Joshua LeFlore, a respected leader of mixed Choctaw and French ancestry whose family held influence across the Nation. Among them rode Hamas Tubbee and his six sons, each standing over seven feet tall and weighing more than three hundred pounds.

The Tubbee men were known for their size and their skill on horseback in the mounted police force that kept order in the Territory.

The party rode eastward from the capital at Tuskahoma into the dense wilderness that stretched toward the future McCurtain County line. They followed faint trails and reports of strange nighttime sounds. On the second day LeFlore halted the column on a rise and scanned the land through a spyglass.

He pointed toward a stand of pines roughly five hundred yards distant and gave the order to charge. The warriors spurred their horses forward. As the riders closed the distance a thick stench of decay rolled over them. Most horses bucked and reared, throwing their riders to the ground. the mounts carrying LeFlore and the Tubbee family kept their footing and pressed through the pines.

On the far side the men emerged onto a broad earthen mound. Bodies of women and children lay scattered across its slopes in every stage of decomposition. Many showed clear signs of having been partially eaten.Several figures fled into the opposite tree line at the sight of the horsemen.

Three remained in place.

The warriors drew closer and saw that these were not men. The figures stood well over eight feet tall, covered head to foot in coarse dark hair, with broad shoulders and arms that reached nearly to their knees. They snarled and beat their chests, exposing teeth and long claws. T

The creatures had human shaped hands but moved with the power and posture of animals built for the deep woods.

LeFlore drew his pistol in one hand and his sabre in the other. He spurred his horse straight at the nearest creature. The beast swung one arm and struck the horse across the head, killing it instantly. LeFlore rolled clear, rose to his feet, and emptied his revolver into the creature’s chest at close range.

With the pistol spent he closed the remaining distance and slashed repeatedly with the sabre, opening deep wounds across the torso. The creature roared and staggered.The Tubbee men, stunned by the sight, held their fire for a moment too long. One of the other creatures lunged behind LeFlore, seized him by the shoulders, and tore his head from his body in a single motion.

The shock broke the Tubbees’ hesitation. They raised their fifty caliber Sharps buffalo rifles and fired. Two of the creatures dropped dead where they stood. The third, wounded in the side, turned and ran toward the trees.

Robert Tubbee, the youngest son at eighteen years old and still six feet eleven inches tall, wheeled his horse and gave chase. He caught the fleeing creature on open ground, leaped from the saddle, and drove his hunting knife into its neck and chest until it stopped moving.

The surviving warriors walked the mound in silence. They gathered the remains of the women and children and buried them in a common grave. They placed Joshua LeFlore beside them. The three creature bodies were stacked on a large bonfire and burned to ash because the smell made it impossible to leave them intact. The men then returned to Tuskahoma carrying the news.

The story traveled through Choctaw families by word of mouth. It was never entered in any official ledger of the Lighthorsemen or reported to federal authorities in the Territory.

The Tubbee men themselves spoke little of the day afterward, though they suffered repeated nightmares for years. Over time the account passed into the oral history of the region, sometimes called the LeFlore County Bigfoot War or the Battle at the Mound. Details varied slightly in each telling, yet the core sequence remained fixed: thefts that grew into abductions, the discovery of the feeding ground on the earthen mound, the three hair covered giants, the charge led by LeFlore, his death by decapitation, and the final rifle and knife work that ended the threat.

LeFlore County itself received its name decades later in honor of the broader LeFlore family, prominent Choctaw leaders who shaped the Nation after removal from Mississippi. No contemporary document from 1855 records the battle or Joshua LeFlore’s death in this manner.

Historians who have examined the tale note that similar accounts of hair covered man eaters appear in other tribal traditions across the Southeast and Plains, often tied to periods of hardship after forced relocation.

The LeFlore story stands alone as the most detailed version set in what became eastern Oklahoma, preserved solely through generations of spoken memory rather than written record.