Jim Corbett. A hunter-saint and cats-cannibals. Champawat tigress. Historical facts and fiction of filmmakers The hunter becomes a defender of nature
Edward James "Jim" Corbett was an English hunter, conservationist, naturalist, and writer.
Known as a hunter of cannibals and the author of a number of stories about the nature of India.
Corbett held the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army and was repeatedly invited by the government of the United Provinces to exterminate man-eating tigers and leopards in the regions of Garhwal and Kumaon. For his success in saving the inhabitants of the region from cannibals, he earned the respect of the inhabitants, many of whom considered him a sadhu - a saint.
Jim Corbett was an avid photographer and film lover. After his retirement, he began to write books about the nature of India, the hunting of cannibals and the life of the common people. british india. Corbett also actively campaigned for the defense wildlife India. In his honor in 1957 was named national park.
Youth
Jim Corbett was born to an Irish family in Nainital, Kumaon, in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India. He was the eighth of thirteen children in the family of Christopher and Mary Jane Corbett. The family also had a summer home in Kaladhungi, where Jim spent a lot of time.
Jim was fascinated by wildlife since childhood, he learned to distinguish between the voices of birds and animals. Over the years, he became a good hunter and tracker. Corbett attended Oak Openings School, later renamed Philander Smith College, and St. Joseph's College with Nainital.
Before reaching the age of 19, he left college and began working in the Bengal and Northwest railway, first as a fuel inspector in Manakpur (Punjab) and then as a reloading contractor at Mokameh Ghat station in Bihar.
Hunting for man-eating animals
Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett is documented to have hunted down and shot 19 tigers and 14 leopards officially documented as cannibals. These animals have been responsible for the deaths of more than 1200 people. The first tiger he killed, the Champawat man-eater, was the cause of the documented death of 436 people.
Corbett also shot a Panar leopard, which, after being wounded by a poacher, could no longer hunt its usual prey and, having become a cannibal, killed about 400 people. Other cannibals killed by Corbett include the Talladesh Ogre, the Mohan Tigress, the Tak Ogre, and the Chowgar Man-Eating Tigress.
The most famous of the cannibals shot by Corbett was the Rudraprayag leopard, which for eight years terrorized local residents and pilgrims bound for Hindu shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath. An analysis of the skull and teeth of this leopard showed the presence of gum disease and the presence of broken teeth, which did not allow him to hunt for his usual food and was the reason that the beast became a cannibal.
After skinning a man-eating tigress from Taka, Jim Corbett discovered two old gunshot wounds in her body, one of which (in the shoulder) became septic, and, according to Corbett, was the reason for the transformation of the animal into a cannibal. Analysis of the skulls, bones, and skins of man-eating animals showed that many of them suffered from diseases and wounds, such as deeply pierced and broken porcupine quills or gunshot wounds that did not heal.
In the preface to The Kumaon Cannibals, Corbett wrote:
"The wound that forced the tiger to become a cannibal may be the result of an unsuccessful shot by a hunter who then did not pursue the wounded animal, or the result of a collision with a porcupine."
Since sport hunting of predatory animals was widespread among the upper classes of British India in the 1900s, this led to the regular appearance of man-eating animals.
In his own words, Corbett only once shot an innocent animal in the deaths of people, and he was very sorry about it. Corbett noted that man-eating animals themselves are capable of chasing the hunter. Therefore, he preferred to hunt alone and pursue the beast on foot. He often hunted with his dog, a spaniel named Robin, about which he wrote in detail in his first book, Kumaon Cannibals.
Corbett risked his life to save the lives of others, thus earning the respect of the population of the areas in which he hunted.
Participation in the First and Second World War
During World War I, Jim Corbett went to France at the head of a 500-man detachment he had formed and led the 70th Kumaon Labor Corps. His leadership was very successful, and of the people who arrived with him from India, only one person died during the whole time, and even then because of seasickness. In 1918, Corbett was promoted to the rank of major.
When did the second World War, Jim Corbett was already about 65 years old and was not subject to the draft. But he still offered his services to the government and was elected vice president of the district military assistance fund.
In February 1944, Corbett was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and assigned as chief jungle warfare instructor. In March 1944, he was sent to Burma to study a potential theater of operations. Later, he was engaged in the training of fighters in the Chhindwara region of the Central Provinces and at various military bases. About a year later, due to an aggravation of malaria, Corbett was forced to leave the army and return home.
Retired in Kenya
In 1947, Jim Corbett and his sister Maggie moved to Nyeri, Kenya. Corbett continued to write books and work as a conservationist, speaking out against the deforestation of the jungle.
Jim Corbett was at the Tree Tops Hotel, built on the branches of a giant ficus, when Princess Elizabeth stayed there on February 5-6, 1952, on the day of the death of her father, King George VI. Corbett left an entry in the hotel register:
“For the first time in world history, a young girl, once climbing a tree as a princess, descended from it the next day as a queen - God bless her!”
Jim Corbett died of a heart attack on April 19, 1955 at the age of 79, days after completing his sixth book, Tree Tops. He is buried in the cemetery of St. Peter's Anglican Church in Nyeri, Kenya.
Heritage
Corbett's home in the Indian village of Kaladhungi, Nainital, has been turned into his museum. The 221-acre piece of land that Corbett bought in 1915 is still in its original state. Also preserved in the village are the house that Corbett built for his friend Moti Singh, and the Corbett Wall, a 7.2 km long stone wall that protects the village fields from wild animals.
In 1957, Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, India, was renamed in honor of Jim Corbett. In the 1930s, Corbett played a key role in establishing this protected area.
In 1968, one of the surviving subspecies of the tiger, the lat, was named after Corbett. Panthera tigris corbetti, the Indochinese tiger, also known as the Corbett's tiger.
In 1994 and 2002, the long neglected graves of Jim Corbett and his sister were renovated by Jerry A. Jalil, founder and director of the Jim Corbett Foundation.
Jim Corbett
CUMAON MAN-EATERS
INSTEAD OF AN EPICGRAPH
“…shortly after moonrise, the tigress began to roar near Chuk and, having roared there for two hours, went in the direction of the workers’ camps near Kumaya-Chak. The workers, hearing the approach of the tigress, began to shout to scare her away. But the expected result did not follow: the tigress only became furious and did not leave until the people were silent.”
J. Corbett. "Kumaon Cannibals"
A man-eating tiger is a tiger that is forced, under the pressure of circumstances beyond its control, to switch to unusual food. The reason for this transition in nine cases out of ten is wounds, and in one case - old age. The wound that forced the tiger to become a cannibal may be the result of an unsuccessful shot by a hunter who then did not pursue the wounded animal, or the result of a collision with a porcupine. Humans do not represent natural prey for the tiger, and only when, due to injuries or old age, the animals become unable to continue their usual way of life, do they begin to eat human meat.
When a tiger kills its prey by sneaking up on it or from ambush, the success of the attack depends primarily on speed, as well as on the condition of its teeth and claws. If a tiger suffers from one or more painful wounds, if its teeth are damaged or its claws are worn out, as a result of which it can no longer hunt the animals that it has always eaten, it has to kill people. I think that the transformation of a tiger into a cannibal usually happens by chance.
To clarify what I mean by "accident", I will give an example. A relatively young Muktesar cannibal tigress lost an eye when she met a porcupine, about 50 needles from one to nine inches long stuck into her forearm and armpit of her right front paw.
Some of these needles, when they hit the bone, bent back in a U-shape, with the tip of the needle and its broken end coming together quite close. Festering wounds formed where the tigress tried to remove the needles with her teeth. While she was lying in the thick grass, licking her wounds and suffering from hunger, a woman decided to mow just this grass to feed her cow. At first, the tigress did not pay attention to her, but when the woman was very close to her, the beast jumped and struck - the blow fell on the woman's skull. Death came instantly; when the woman's corpse was found the next day, the dead woman held a sickle in one hand, and a bunch of grass in the other, which she cut at the time of the tigress's attack. Without touching the corpse, the tigress hobbled over a mile and hid in a small hole under fallen tree. Two days later, a man came there to chop wood, and the tigress killed him too. He fell across the trunk, and as the tigress tore his back with her claws, the smell of blood, apparently for the first time, inspired her with the idea that she could satisfy her hunger with human meat. Whatever it was, but before leaving, she ate a small piece of meat from the back of the murdered. A day later, she "deliberately" and without any reason killed her third victim. Since that time, she has become a real cannibal and, before she was destroyed, she managed to kill 24 people.
A tiger with prey, a wounded tiger, or a tigress with small cubs can accidentally kill a person who disturbs them. But with all the desire, these tigers cannot be considered cannibals, although they are often called that. As for me personally, I consider it necessary to always carefully check all the circumstances before declaring this or that tiger (leopard) a cannibal. Examining the corpses of people who are believed to have been killed by tigers or leopards, or - on our plains - by wolves and hyenas, is very important.
I will not give examples, but I know of cases where the murder was quite erroneously attributed to predatory animals.
It is a common misconception that all man-eating tigers are old and itchy, as excess salt in human flesh supposedly causes itching. I am incompetent on the issue of the amount of salt in human and animal meat, but I argue that eating human meat not only does not spoil the hair of cannibals, but, on the contrary, gives the opposite result. All the cannibals I saw had excellent fur.
Many also believe that the cubs of man-eating animals themselves automatically become cannibals. This assumption at first glance sounds quite reasonable, but it is not supported by the facts. At the same time, the fact that humans are not natural prey for tigers or leopards suggests otherwise.
The cub eats what his mother brings him, and I even know cases when tiger cubs helped their mother in her attack on people. However, I do not know of a single case where a tiger, after its cannibal parents were killed or it became an adult and left their care, became a cannibal itself.
The question often arises, whose victim was the killed person: a tiger or a leopard. General rule, of which I am not aware of exceptions, says that all daytime kills are committed by the tiger, and all nighttime kills by the leopard. Both these inhabitants of the forests have many of the same habits, kill their victims in a similar way and are able to drag the people they kill over long distances. Therefore, it would be natural to assume that they hunt during the same hours. In fact, this is not so, because the tiger is bolder than the leopard. Having become a cannibal, the tiger loses all fear of man, and since people move much more during the day than at night, the man-eating tiger kills its prey in daylight, without resorting to attacking a person at night in his dwelling.
A leopard, even after killing dozens of people, never ceases to be afraid of a person. Avoiding meeting people during the day, he kills them at night, catching them on the way or even entering houses. Thanks to these features, the man-eating tiger is easier to shoot than the man-eating leopard. The number of kills committed by a man-eating tiger depends, firstly, on the presence of natural prey for him in the area where he lives, secondly, on the nature of the mutilations that turned the tiger into a man-eater, and, thirdly, on whether we are dealing with a male or a female with cubs.
When it is not possible to make our own judgment on any issue, we tend to rely on someone else's opinion. This is especially striking when it comes to tigers, and not only about man-eating tigers, but about tigers in general. The writer, who first used the expressions "cruel as a tiger" or "bloodthirsty as a tiger" in order to emphasize the disgusting properties of the villain he described in the play, not only showed regrettable ignorance about the beast he so stigmatized, but also created an incorrect image , which is the most widely used. It is these expressions that have contributed to the creation of the wrong opinion about tigers in most people, with the exception of a few who managed to form their own, independent judgment based on real facts.
Edward James "Jim" Corbett is a famous cannibal hunter in India.
Corbett held the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army and was repeatedly invited by the government of the United Provinces to exterminate man-eating tigers and leopards in the regions of Garhwal and Kumaon. For his success in saving the inhabitants of the region from cannibals, he earned the respect of the inhabitants, many of whom considered him a sadhu - a saint.
Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett is documented to have tracked down and shot 19 tigers and 14 leopards officially documented as cannibals. These animals have been responsible for the deaths of more than 1200 people. The first tiger he killed, the Champawat man-eater, was the cause of the documented death of 436 people.
The Champawat Tigress (Champawat Ogre) is a Bengal tiger killed in 1911 by Jim Corbett. The Champawat tigress is said to have killed 436 people in Nepal and the Kumaon region of India.
After killing more than 200 people in Nepal, the tigress, pursued by the Nepalese army, moved to Kumaon, where she continued to attack people. She was so bold that she roared along the roads around the villages, terrorizing the locals, and often tried to break into their huts.
After she killed a 16-year-old girl during the day, she was shot by Jim Corbett.
In the city of Champawat, there is a "cement slab" that indicates the place of death of the tigress.
Corbett also shot a Panar leopard, which, after being wounded by a poacher, could no longer hunt its usual prey and, having become a cannibal, killed about 400 people. Other cannibals destroyed by Corbett include the Talladesh Ogre, the Mohan Tigress, the Tak Ogre, and the Choguar Ogre.
Jim Corbett and the tiger Povalgarsky bachelor shot by him
The most notorious of the cannibals shot by Corbett was the Rudraprayag leopard, which terrorized pilgrims on their way to the Hindu shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than a decade. An analysis of the skull and teeth of this leopard showed the presence of gum disease and the presence of broken teeth, which did not allow him to hunt for his usual food and was the reason that the beast became a cannibal.
Jim Corbett at the body of a man-eating leopard from Rudraprayag he shot in 1925
After skinning a man-eating tigress from Taka, Jim Corbett discovered two old gunshot wounds in her body, one of which (in the shoulder) became septic, and, according to Corbett, was the reason for the transformation of the animal into a cannibal. Analysis of the skulls, bones, and skins of man-eating animals showed that many of them suffered from diseases and wounds, such as deeply pierced and broken porcupine quills or gunshot wounds that did not heal.
In the preface to The Kumaon Cannibals, Corbett wrote:
The wound that forced the tiger to become a cannibal may be the result of an unsuccessful shot by a hunter who then did not pursue the wounded animal, or the result of a collision with a porcupine.
Since sport hunting of predatory animals was widespread among the upper classes of British India in the 1900s, this led to the regular appearance of man-eating animals.
In his own words, Corbett only once shot an innocent animal in the deaths of people, and he was very sorry about it. Corbett noted that man-eating animals themselves are capable of chasing the hunter. Therefore, he preferred to hunt alone and pursue the beast on foot. He often hunted with his dog, a spaniel named Robin, which he wrote about in detail in his first book, Kumaon Cannibals.
Corbett risked his life to save the lives of others, thus earning the respect of the population of the areas in which he hunted.
Perhaps there is not a single person interested in big cats who would not know the name of Jim Corbett. Corbett's views on the tiger and its place in nature were far ahead of their time. But first, a few words about life path native-born Englishman, as Rudyard Kipling called such a breed of people.
Jim Corbett was born in 1875 in India, in the town of Naini Tal, where his parents had a summer cottage in the mountains; the house was located 25 kilometers below, in the town of Kaladhungi, in the Terai zone of the foothills of the lowland forests. This area was called Garhwal and Kumaon and became famous thanks to Corbett and his man-eating tigers. Big family was of average income. His father passed away when Jim was four years old. The burden of care fell on the shoulders of the mother. The boy was introduced to the world of the jungle by Tom, his older brother, and also by the poacher Kunwar Snngh. Tom brought up his brother in a Spartan way: he took the baby once on a bear hunt and left him alone for several hours in a gloomy, dark ravine. Jim was convinced that the bear would certainly eat him, and when he first saw the beast, he was ready, by his own admission, to die of fear. But he did not leave the place until the arrival of Tom.
By the end of his Jungle Book training, Jim was no longer confusing the tracks of a sambar or a nilgai with those of a wild boar, but a track of a red wolf with a hyena. He could even recognize the tracks of snakes. To move silently, Jim walked through the jungle barefoot; he learned to climb trees without branches, that art allowed him to maintain excellent physical shape even in adulthood.
In his youth, Corbett hunted for pleasure, and when he was poor and starving (and his life was like that), he shot game, not really adhering to hunting ethics. With maturity, knowledge, his inherent love and respect for all living things, the conviction came that one should not take life unnecessarily. He began to hunt only man-eating animals.
From 1907 to 1939, Jim Corbett killed 12 tigers and man-eating leopards, which accounted for 1,500 people. Corbett did his work disinterestedly (he constantly feared that he would be considered one of the many hunters for the award) and during the holidays: he was still working on the railroad then. Immediately after high school, Jim joined the railroad as a fuel inspector and later worked as a contractor at the Mokameh Ghat junction station.
The archives have preserved a family photograph of the Corbetts: on a veranda lined with pots of flowers, Jim was located at the feet of his mother with a boater hat, his idol brother Tom and sister Maggie, as well as a certain Mary Doyle, were right there. Corbett did not have his own family, in any case, he never wrote about it. Maybe the reason for this was the hunt, which lasted months and years! Corbett completely surrendered to them, having retired in 1924, settling in Kaladhungi among the peasants who rented the land belonging to the Corbetts.
We are waiting for your feedback and comments, join our VKontakte group!
Edward James "Jim" Corbett(Eng. Edward James "Jim" Corbett; July 25, 1875, Nainital, United Provinces, British India - April 19, 1955, Nyeri, Kenya) - English hunter, conservationist, naturalist, writer.
Known as a hunter of cannibals and the author of a number of stories about the nature of India.
Corbett held the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army and was repeatedly invited by the government of the United Provinces to exterminate man-eating tigers and leopards in the regions of Garhwal and Kumaon. For his success in saving the inhabitants of the region from cannibals, he earned the respect of the inhabitants, many of whom considered him a sadhu - a saint.
Jim Corbett was an avid photographer and film lover. After his retirement, he began to write books about the nature of India, the hunting of cannibals and the life of the common people of British India. Corbett also actively campaigned for the protection of Indian wildlife. A national park was named in his honor in 1957.
Life and activities
Youth
Jim Corbett was born to an Irish family in Nainital, Kumaon, in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India. He was the eighth of thirteen children in the family of Christopher and Mary Jane Corbett. The family also had a summer home in Kaladhungi, where Jim spent a lot of time.
Jim was fascinated by wildlife since childhood, he learned to distinguish between the voices of birds and animals. Over the years, he became a good hunter and tracker. Corbett attended Oak Openings School, later renamed Philander Smith College, and St. Joseph's College with Nainital.
Before the age of 19, he left college and began working for the Bengal and North Western Railway, first as a fuel inspector in Manakpur, Punjab, and then as a reloading contractor at Mokameh Ghat station in Bihar.
Hunting for man-eating animals
Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett is documented to have hunted down and shot 19 tigers and 14 leopards officially documented as cannibals. These animals have been responsible for the deaths of more than 1200 people. The first tiger he killed, the Champawat man-eater, was the cause of the documented death of 436 people.
Corbett also shot a Panar leopard, which, after being wounded by a poacher, could no longer hunt its usual prey and, having become a cannibal, killed about 400 people. Other cannibals killed by Corbett include the Talladesh Ogre, the Mohan Tigress, the Tak Ogre, and the Chowgar Man-Eating Tigress.
The most notorious of the cannibals shot by Corbett was the Rudraprayag leopard, which for eight years terrorized locals and pilgrims on their way to Hindu shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath. An analysis of the skull and teeth of this leopard showed the presence of gum disease and the presence of broken teeth, which did not allow him to hunt for his usual food and was the reason that the beast became a cannibal.
After skinning a man-eating tigress from Taka, Jim Corbett discovered two old gunshot wounds in her body, one of which (in the shoulder) became septic, and, according to Corbett, was the reason for the transformation of the animal into a cannibal. Analysis of the skulls, bones, and skins of man-eating animals showed that many of them suffered from diseases and wounds, such as deeply pierced and broken porcupine quills or gunshot wounds that did not heal.
In the preface to The Kumaon Cannibals, Corbett wrote:
Since sport hunting of predatory animals was widespread among the upper classes of British India in the 1900s, this led to the regular appearance of man-eating animals.
In his own words, Corbett only once shot an innocent animal in the deaths of people, and he was very sorry about it. Corbett noted that man-eating animals themselves are capable of chasing the hunter. Therefore, he preferred to hunt alone and pursue the beast on foot. He often hunted with his dog, a spaniel named Robin, about which he wrote in detail in his first book, Kumaon Cannibals.