Grootslang

Grootslang Category Giant snake Proposed scientific names Other names Great serpent, great snake, grote slang, groot slang, 'koo-be-eng, kayman, ki-man, kyman, Orange River monster Country reported South Africa First reported 1838 Prominent investigators • Lawrence G. Green • Bernard Heuvelmans

The grootslang (Afrikaans: "big snake"), groot slang, or grote slang is a cryptid reported from South Africa's Orange River. Sightings of giant snakes, thought to be rock pythons (Python sebae), and other serpentine animals in South Africa have been lumped together under the name of grootslang, which Bernard Heuvelmans equated with his long-necked sea serpent (Megolotaria longicollis).

Attestations

According to journalist Lawrence Green, writing in 1948, sightings of the grootslang have been reported from almost all of the Orange River—which rises in the Lesotho Drakensberg and flows west, across Africa, into the Atlantic—particularly its most remote stretches. The grootslang is often synonymous with the 'koo-be-eng, a long-vanished creature of Bushman myth. The 'koo-be-eng was a horned serpent, a monstrous creature of great size which lived in the water, lurking in the reeds around the water's edge. It is also sometimes synonymous with a more ambiguous Bushman myth, the kou-teign-'koo-rou.

When Sir Edward James Alexander (1803 — 1885) traveled through what is now South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia from 1836 to 1837, he heard that a giant snake was alleged to live in the Orange River:

“

[...] an immense snake is occasionally seen whose trace in the sand is a foot broad. The natives say, that when coiled up, the circumference of this snake is equal to that of a waggon [sic] wheel; and when it visits the Orange River mouth it is a sign of a good season for rain.

”

Bernard Heuvelmans also counts Alexander's claims of "alligators" existing in the Orange River as a possible reference to the grootslang, as wild Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) have never been recorded in that river:

“

That there are alligators in the Orange River I have little doubt, for the dread leviathan [...] occurs in rivers under the same parallel of latitude on the east coast; and through I am not aware that any white man has seen an Orange River alligator, the natives on the banks told me that at night they heard occasionally cries from the river like those of children, such as I heard on the banks of the Mississippi; and that a short time before I visited the Orange River, a cow calved on the banks near the mouth, and that a creature crawled out of the water and devoured the calf.

”

Prospector Frederick Carruthers Cornell (1867 — 1921) collected information on the grootslang in the Richtersveld region, close to the confluence of the Fish and Orange Rivers at the border with Namibia. He recorded that every Khoikhoi in the area firmly believed in the grootslang, and that many of them, alongside some Europeans, claimed to have seen either it or its 4'6'' wide trail. A Father Wolf of the Pella Mission also regularly received reports from Khoikhoi of a huge snake preying on their livestock, but, although he took the stories seriously, his expeditions to find the monster were all unsuccesful. J. L. B. Smith (1897 — 1968), co-discoverer of the coelacanth, also recalled hearing stories of giant snakes in the Orange River during his youth.

During the 1960s, there were relatively frequent rumors of monsters in the Vaal River Dam, but only one sighting, from 1960, is recorded from early on. However, throughout late 1963, there was a spate of well-publicized sightings of an alleged giant water-snake in the Vaal River Dam, into which the Vaal, Wilge, and Klip Rivers flow. The monster was described as a snake-like animal with a flat, 8'' wide head armed with fangs and a forked tongue. Its body was never seen, but it was estimated that it may have been between 20' and 25' long. During the publicity, a large number of people offered rewards for hard evidence of the monster, and the provincial government eventually issued a decree forbidding anyone to shoot at the animal, and attempted to enlist the aid of J. L. B. Smith in identifying it.

Sightings

Undated

Archivist Reverend H. C. V. Leibbrandt, who was born and raised on the Orange River, claimed to have had a possible personal grootslang encounter, in which locals showed him a spot on the river where one had been resting:

“

There was a clear impression of a great body, for the reeds had been flattened. However, there were still elephants in those parts, and they may have been responsible.

”

A police sergeant told Green that he had once arrested a shepherd wandering in an out-of-bounds diamond area, who claimed that he dared not follow the river because he had just seen a grootslang in it. The sergeant made inquiries among his patrols, and found that they also claimed to have seen the grootslang among the trees.

~1860s

South African pioneer Doctor Hans Sauer (1857 — 1939) claimed in his book Ex Africa (1937) to have encountered a grootslang when he was around ten years old (during the 1860s), at Aliwal North, close to the Drakensberg and the source of the Orange River. His publication of the incident was provoked by his reading of the grootslang in Frederick Cornell's book:

“

One afternoon a group of schoolchildren, including myself, were swimming in the river, as we used to, when suddenly we saw a very large black snake swimming stubbornly against the tide, with its neck pricked up out of the water. The reptile was almost in the middle of the current, some distance from us. It was impossible to determine how he swam: if it was by means of legs or by undulating movements of the body. We all got dressed in a hurry and went home to tell the adults what we had seen. Hearing my story, my father and our neighbour, Wolf Levy, grabbed their guns and bounded in a rowboat in pursuit of the animal. They could still clearly see it advancing upstream [...] before they could catch up with him, the mysterious creature disappeared among the rock and islets, and they did not see him again.

”

1899

A general dealer named G. A. Kinnear claimed to have seen a grootslang in 1899, while trading in the the vicinity of Upington, Northern Cape, where he was shipping his goods across the Orange River in a flat-bottomed ferry boat. According to Lawrence Green's account, featuring an unsourced quotation:

“

The boat had just been fully loaded with goats and was about ten yards from the bank when the head of a monstrous serpent emerged from the stream. The head, in which were set two large blinking eyes, was from seven to eight inches in width, and the eight to ten feet of body it reared out of the water could only have been about a quarter of its length. Only for an instant did its head appear before it dived again. I waited in suspense for its reappearance as I naturally expected it would make for the boat, but that was the last I saw of it. Hendrik, the boatman, was terror-stricken, and the other natives holding the goats were screaming in their fear.

”

1910

In 1910, according to Green, Cornell was camped some twenty miles below the Augrabies Falls with two companions, including an American named Kammeyer, who claimed to have seen a grootslang there. When the Orange River was in flood, Kammeyer, who had been bathing in a quiet backwater near a herd of cattle, returned to the camp in terror, claiming that an enormous snake-like monster had emerged from the water, reaching a height of 12', and dragged one of the calves into the river. Cornell confirmed that a calf was missing from the heard, and Kammeyer stuck to his story.

1929

A prospector named Ernest Heyes told Lawrence Green that he had seen a grootslang in 1929, at the confluence of the Gooiniet and Orange Rivers, some miles east from Sendeling's Drift. Heyes could not describe the animal, which was three hundred yards from him.

1949

According to reports from December 1949, a number of people recently claimed to have seen a "Kafferskraal Dam monster," described in composite as a black-haired, finned animal the size of a bull, with a bulldog's face, staring eyes, and horns. D. J. Dahms and C. A. Van Niekerk claimed to have encountered such an animal, with a long neck, an oddly-shaped head, fins, and long ears. They dragged the beast out of the water and left it on the shore, but by the time more people came to investigate, it had crawled back into the water.

1950

In June 1950, a G. K. Atherstone of Piet Retief claimed that local people had showed him to a spot on the Orange River where a huge snake had been seen. Some hundred yards out on the water, a black serpent's head appeared ahead of the undulating rings of a large body.

1960—1963

In January 1960, Oranjeville locals Mr and Mrs C. J. Reyneke, and their two children, claimed to have seen a pair of "swimming monsters" in the Vaal Dam. Reyneke noticed "a huge, strange object" moving in the water, and, by the time his wife and children had been summoned, a second, similar object was crossing the water "at an incredible speed". The Reynekes estimated that the animals were some 200' long, but only around 4' in diameter. The two animals, which the Reynekes believed were playing, eventually dived underwater and disappeared.

A spate of snake-monster sightings near the Vaal Dam occurred in late 1963. Sergeant Rottcher of Oranjeville claimed to have seen the monster on three separate occasions, while his commander, D. B. J. J. Van Tonder, claimed to have shot at it without effect, as did salesman Jack Schutte. A Sasolburg traffic officer, Flip Coetzee, also claimed to have shot it, this time to greater effect, as it writhed violently in the water before disappearing, and was nto seen again. Farmer G. J. A. Du Toit also claimed to have observed it, through binoculars, four times, and an Annatje Lombard came forward claiming to have seen it with her husband two years previously. Farmer Sybrand Westerman also reported a sighting, from about four miles upstream from Oranjeville, some weeks later.

Theories

Africa's largest known snake is the African rock python (Python sebae).

Heuvelmans believed that his long-necked sea serpent (Megalotaria longicollis) could explain some grootslang sightings (Monique Watteau).

Africa's largest known snake, the semi-aquatic African rock python (Python sebae), which may grow up to 20' or much larger, is found in isolated regions of South Africa, and Lawrence Green believed that sightings of very large individuals could probably explain the grootslang. Cornell's colleague F. R. Paver, while supporting this theory, was open to the possibility that the grootslang represented some unknown giant species of water-snake. Bernard Heuvelmans also felt that some grootslang stories, such as Alexander's claims, could likely be explained very large rock pythons, but that others seemed very different, perhaps mammalian. He subsequently considered the grootslang to be a composite cryptid.

Heuvelmans recognized his long-necked sea serpent (Megalotaria longicollis) in the description of the freshwater Kafferskraal Dam monster, which, unlike the more typical grootslang, was clearly not aggressive. The longneck, which Heuvelmans theorised was a giant "giraffe-necked" species of pinniped, was one of the nine sea serpent types in the Heuvelmans system, developed in Le Grand Serpent-de-Mer (1965) and In the Wake of Sea Serpents (1968), and the only type capable of moving over land. Longnecks have frequently been cited as explanations for similarly-long-necked freshwater lake monsters, and Heuvelmans theorised that the animals had once ventured into fjords, which became isolated lakes and lochs when sea levels fell. Heuvelmans argued that, historically, longnecks could have swam up the course of the Orange River as far as the Vaal and its affluents, becoming trapped by the formation of cataracts along the rivers.

During the 1963 monster flap, a number of naturalists wrote to the newspapers offering possible identities for the Vaal Dam monster. Veld Trust director T. C. Robertson believed that it may have a large pike (Hepestus sp.), as he himself, while fishing, had seen a strange animal in the water which turned out to be such a fish. On the other hand, R. C. Bigalke, Scientific Director at the Transvaal Conservation Department argued that it was probably a giant eel, whereas V. FitzSimmons, director of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, identified it as a giant catfish, which have the wide head reported of the Vaal Dam monster. An anonymous zoologist suggested it could have been a monitor lizard, the only proffered identity to have a forked tongue. However, Coetzee, Van Tonder, Du Toit, and Lombard were all certain that the animals they saw had been snakes.

In popular culture

• By the 1950s, the grootslang had entered into South African urban legend. In modern times, it is often described as a legendary monster inhabiting a "Wonder Hole" or "Bottomless Pit" in the Richtersveld. This belief originated with a 30 November 1947 report, in which a traveller named Clift claimed to have seen "a large crocodilian creature about twenty feet long, with an unusually large head and a light brown body covered with scales that sparkled in the moonlight," in the "Big Hole," a former diamond mine in urban Kimberley.
• According to a report in The Augusta Chronicle, while searching for treasure in the Richtersveld in 1917, English businessman Peter Grayson disappeared after members of his party were attacked and injured by lions, prompting legends that the grootslang had killed him.
• The grootslang appears in The Secret Saturdays, where it is depicted as an elephant with horns and a tail.