That there was an exceptionally dangerous man-eating tiger in Kumaon, and that it was finally killed by Jim Corbett in 1907, the historical record leaves little room for doubt. The most explicit and detailed evidence I was able to find to corroborate Corbett’s account from Man-Eaters of Kumaon came in the form of an article that appeared in the Dehradun edition of the Indian periodical The Pioneer, published on June 7, 1907. The article makes mention of the tiger that was killed in April by Wildblood and that was mistakenly believed to be the Champawat, but goes on to state quite clearly that it was not “till the 12th of May that Mr. Corbett of Naini Tal succeeded in shooting it.” The story upholds Corbett’s claim that other hunters had tried to kill the tiger without success, that he was assisted by the Tahsildar as well as the Tahsildar’s assistant patwari, who are both identified by name, and it gives an account, very similar to Corbett’s, of the tiger’s final victim and the beat that was organized to flush it out of the ravine. The fact that the tiger had lost “both the upper and lower canine teeth on one side” is mentioned as well.
There is also journalistic evidence of the tiger’s attacks prior to Corbett’s final hunt—including those attacks mistakenly attributed to the tiger that Wildblood killed just before Jim Corbett’s involvement. In an article from The Times of India, dated April 15, 1907—almost a full month before Corbett killed the Champawat—mention is made of a man-eating tiger that had been killed near Lohaghat during the “cold weather” by an “English shikari” who would have been Wildblood. The article blames man-eating tiger(s) for having “kept the villages scattered over a wide range of country in a state of continual terror.” It goes on to admit that the tiger Wildblood killed, although possibly a man-eater as well, was not the creature being sought, as “the depredations have not ceased” and “another tiger of the same kind is at large.” The article emphasizes the unusually high number of victims attributed to the tiger, and the fact that it was published in Bombay (today Mumbai) shows that the news of the Champawat’s work was clamant enough to have spread well beyond the hills of Kumaon, all the way to the press clubs of major Indian capitals.
In addition to the periodicals of the day, there is also evidence to be found in official government records specifically regarding the engraved rifle that was given to Corbett as a reward for killing the Champawat. A British report titled “United Provinces, Agra and Oudh Proceedings” dated 1907 shows an expenditure of “Rs. 463·6·0” specifically for the “purchase of arms for presentation to certain persons for killing a man-eating tiger at [Champawat].” This would have included the ornamental knife given to the patwari who accompanied Corbett during his initial pursuit of the tiger, the engraved gun presented to the Tahsildar for his brave service during the final beat, and the .275 Rigby rifle that was presented to Jim Corbett by “Sir J. P. Hewett,” who was lieutenant governor of the United Provinces at that time. The Rigby rifle still exists, and it is in the possession of the gunsmiths at John Rigby & Company in London, where it is frequently put on display. The engraved silver plaque on its stock states that it was given to Jim Corbett “in recognition of his having killed a man-eating tigress at Champawat in 1907.” The United Provinces government gazette from the same year makes mention of the engraved arms as “special rewards” that were offered “for the destruction of a known man-eating tiger” in Champawat; additionally, the gazette’s report on the destruction of wild animals and venomous snakes from 1907 records an offering of “special rewards in the shape of firearms” that were given out by the lieutenant governor for dispatching a man-eater in Champawat’s vicinity. It warrants mention that an engraved sporting rifle of this quality, presented to a domiciled railroad employee like Corbett by a lieutenant governor, was a highly unusual gift—its very existence is evidence not only of Corbett having finally killed the tiger, but also of this particular tiger’s unique notoriety. That an engraved gun was also gifted to an Indian Tahsildar from a historically rebellious region is also unusual, perhaps even more so. High-ranking government officials rarely concerned themselves with specific man-eaters, let alone the lowly shikaris who dispatched them, so it stands to reason that this man-eater in particular was exceptionally lethal, a tiger unlike any they had ever dealt with before.
As far as the actual number of victims the Champawat claimed in Kumaon, while there is no doubt that it was sizable, there is some variance as to just how sizable it actually was. As previously noted, Corbett claimed that the tiger was responsible for 436 human kills, 236 of which he attributed to its time in Kumaon. The Nepalese portion is essentially impossible to verify with documentary evidence, as virtually none exists. There are, however, Indian records which do indeed show that the tiger was unusually prolific, although each account seems to provide a slightly different number of victims. In the aforementioned Times of India article from April 15, 1907, the claim is made that “about a hundred women are known to have been killed and that the total number is probably much higher.” This account, attributing at least a hundred victims to the Champawat in Kumaon, and likely many more, seems to lend some credence to Corbett’s account of the Indian portion of the Champawat’s spree. However, the version provided by The Pioneer article from June 7, 1907, gives a slightly lower figure, attributing the loss of “about 70 persons, nearly all females” to the tiger, or possibly even multiple tigers, as the idea of a single animal causing so much carnage was evidently hard to believe.
As for the reason for the divergence, there are all manner of possibilities—and the possibility that Corbett was mistaken (or even exaggerating) should at least be considered, although it seems he would have been in a much better position to get honest and accurate firsthand data from the field than would most big-city reporters, and he definitely wasn’t known as a teller of tall tales. One plausible explanation for the variance in numbers could simply be the source of the journalist’s data—specifically, if it was coming from government sources, including the official administrative gazettes. Evidence of the Champawat Tiger does indeed appear in the colonial government’s documents regarding deaths from wild animals and venomous snakes in Kumaon. However, such records are notorious for their inaccuracy when it comes to the true number of attacks, for a simple reason: a very large number of tiger attacks, especially those that occurred in remote mountain regions where anti-British sentiment was strong, went unreported to the government. And even attacks that were reported and were strongly suspected to be the work of a tiger were often dismissed by authorities if an eyewitness or bodily remains could not be found. With tangible verification so difficult to procure, it hardly seems likely that a deputy commissioner interested in preserving his reputation would go out of his way to prove that a tiger attack occurred and risk looking incompetent. After all, given the symbolic associations unruly tigers had to the colonial mind, few government officials would have had any interest in advertising their inability to control their “tiger problem.” Accordingly, the underreporting of fatal tiger attacks was rampant—the government numbers are useful, as they are often the only records available, but they should always be taken with a healthy grain of salt.
With that in mind, what follows are the annual recorded tiger fatalities in the Kumaon division, as reported by the United Provinces government gazettes from each year:
1900: 3 victims
1901: 3 victims
1902: 6 victims
1903: 6 victims
1904: 4 victims
1905: 4 victims
1906: 20 victims
1907: 39 victims
Given the tremendous leap in the number of victims, these figures make the Champawat’s presence all but undeniable. Clearly, something out of the ordinary was happening in the hills of Kumaon. Worth noting, however, is that while Corbett claimed he first heard mention of the tiger four years prior to killing it, the government records only show a sharp increase in fatal attacks the final two years, providing a total tally and time line that seem more on par with what the The Pioneer,
and to a lesser extent The Times of India, reported. Does this mean that Corbett was simply mistaken? Or could it also be that the colonial government was simply unaware of—or even initially reluctant to report on—a large number of fatal tiger attacks that occurred in a remote and historically hostile region of the Empire? Indeed, is it even possible that the actual numbers Jim Corbett heard whispered in confidence from government officials like Deputy Commissioner Charles Henry Berthoud were drastically different from the more palatable totals that the colonial government allowed the newspapers to print and the public to see?
It’s difficult to say, although historians and conservationists alike have cited Jim Corbett’s estimate of 436 total deaths in Nepal and India as credible over the years, and the hunter-turned-naturalist was always respected for his honesty when it came to his reporting on tigers. The fact that scientific studies of tiger populations still cite many of his findings close to a hundred years on bears witness to that fact. Some of his later man-eater hunts from the 1920s and ’30s are much better documented, going so far as to catalog tiger attacks by village and date. The hunt for the Champawat Tiger, however, occurred very early in his career, and when writing about the encounter nearly four decades later (Man-Eaters of Kumaon wasn’t published until 1944), such details were simply unavailable. Modern-day man-eaters, such as the tiger that stalked Baitadi, Nepal, in 1997, and the tiger that escaped India’s Jim Corbett National Park in 2014, have clearly shown that man-eating on a large scale, over extended periods of time, is certainly possible in the region, even in the present day. If a man-eater could still cause one hundred human fatalities at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it only makes sense that in the early 1900s, in an era without electric lights, telecommunications, or motorized transportation, such a tiger would have been that much more lethal, and that much harder to find and kill.
Admittedly, ironclad proof of the Champawat’s egregious number will likely remain elusive. It will probably always be an alleged number, albeit one provided by one of the few English-speaking individuals who lived in the Kumaoni hills, understood the local languages, had a vast knowledge of tigers, and had direct access to high-ranking officials and indigenous community leaders alike—essentially, the most credible source on man-eaters available from that time and place. Additionally, it was a number that Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India from 1936 until 1943, was comfortable attaching his name to—he vouched for the accuracy of Corbett’s accounts in the preface he wrote for Man-Eaters of Kumaon. Nevertheless, it is still a number that ought to be scrutinized and authenticated to whatever extent the historical record allows, and new archival sources could readily change the story. There is always the possibility that an old government report or newspaper article could turn up that adds more clarity to a narrative that time and distance have conspired to obscure. Just in researching this book, details were discovered in the British Library’s ample store of colonial records regarding the hunt for the Champawat that had previously been lost to the ages. So the possibility always exists.
There is, however, one other potential way of authenticating the number that at least deserves mention—one that ultimately relies less on dusty libraries than sterile laboratories, and involves the location of the tiger itself. While conducting research in India, I visited the famous Gurney House, which once served as the Nainital residence of the Corbett family. The current owners keep some of Jim Corbett’s old possessions and assorted memorabilia on display to preserve the house’s history. Among the many framed pictures, there is a black-and-white photograph of what appears to be the Champawat Tiger’s taxidermied head, damaged teeth and all—evidence that the preserved skin was indeed brought back and kept by Corbett. The same photo also appears in the second printing of a book published in India in 1999 titled Jim Corbett of Kumaon. It was authored by D. C. Kala, whose own father had known the famous hunter personally, and it clearly identifies the tiger head and skin in question as belonging to the Champawat Man-Eater. And if that weren’t enough, the photograph’s authenticity appears to be verified by a second photo, taken in 1926 and currently in the possession of the Ibbotson family (Sir William “Ibby” Ibbotson was a close friend of Jim Corbett), which shows the same stuffed head from another angle, alongside the skins of other man-eaters outside of Corbett’s home. Locating the current whereabouts of the Champawat skin, however, has proven more difficult than authenticating the photograph. Most of Corbett’s trophies were either given away as gifts, or sold at auction in Africa shortly after his death, with the proceeds going to various charities in Kenya and Kumaon. The location of only a few of them are known today, and many have been lost or destroyed over the years. But if the head and skin of the Champawat do still exist, and if they were to be located, it is theoretically possible that a laboratory test could provide an answer as to how many human victims the tiger actually ingested, based on the chemical signatures of its bones and hair. It was precisely this sort of scientific analysis that was used to determine the number of railway workers that the infamous Lions of Tsavo consumed in 1898, and it’s entirely possible that a similar test performed on the preserved head of the Champawat Tiger could provide insight into its own human tally. Until that day, however, it is probable that the estimate of its total kills will remain just that. Credible, perhaps even likely, but impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But that the Champawat Tiger existed, hunted and ate human beings by the dozens, and was eventually shot by Jim Corbett in 1907 is an established fact. The number may beg further study, but the story is true. And at the bottom of the Champa Gorge, near the village of Phungar just outside of Champawat proper, the projecting rock where Corbett killed the man-eater still stands today—just as he described it—a mute witness to the dramatic events that transpired there well over a century ago.
Acknowledgments
Uncovering and re-creating the exploits of a man-eating tiger more than a century later is a challenging endeavor, and this book only exists thanks to the encouragement and support of some exceedingly generous individuals. For their archival work, particularly in regards to the India Office Records of the British Library, I would like to thank Justine Taylor and MacKenzie Gibson. For their assistance in Nepal, I owe a tremendous debt to Sanjaya Mahato, Dr. Gisèle Krauskopff, the guraus Sukh Lal Chaudhary and Kanan Chaudhary, the patriti Hwae, and the pujari Bashanta. In India, the expertise of Kamal Bisht and the hospitality of the Dalmia family was crucial for researching historic sites, and many thanks are owed to them as well. In parsing out the details of Jim Corbett’s life, the counsel of Jerry Jaleel, Peter Byrne, Dr. Joseph Jordania, and Kotetcha Kristoff proved extremely helpful. And in terms of actually transforming all of this into a published work, I could not have done so without the backing of my agent, Jim Fitzgerald; my editor, Peter Hubbard, who suggested the Champawat Tiger as a subject; and the rest of the team at William Morrow/HarperCollins, including Liate Stehlik, Nick Amphlett, Lauren Janiec, and Ryan Cury. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to offer a warm and heartfelt dhanyavaad to the many Tharu and Kumaoni people who were kind enough to share their lives, their homes, and their stories with a stranger. A portion of the proceeds of this book will be donated to Chitwan’s Tharu Cultural Museum & Research Center, as well as the local Tharu Wildlife Initiative—both of which are committed to preserving the region’s natural heritage, including its tigers.
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