A. 1645 Dutch records in Albany, NY and corresponding Iroquois oral tradition written down speak of giant pterodactyl-like birds swooping down along the Mohawk River in the early 1600`s and snatching women and children from the banks. With the advent of Dutch-supplied muskets to the Mohawks, these stories quickly disappeared.[2 separate sources for the same phenomenon.]
-cf
O’Callaghan, E.B., ed., ``History of New Netherland,`` 2 vols., New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1848; The Reprint Company, Spartanburg, SC, 1966
B. Late 1890`s Deseret News has a front-page photo of 2 prospectors standing over the carcass of a giant ``serpent-bird`` in the Mojave.
C.Two friends of mine, Native American mother and daughter, were terrorized by a giant pterodactyl-like bird in remote eastern Texas flying over them in the early 1980`s. [cf. newspaper reports of other sightings in Texas.]
You might want to inform your two Indian friends that smoking that Peyote sh&^%$%t does strange things to the mind.
Heard stories similar to that.
Go talk with some of the old hands on the High Plains. You get some interesting stories.