In the Beginning: Native American Tales

 
Described as everything from a spiritual "big brother" to a baby-stealing cannibal. Sasquatch was known by many different names among North America's indigenous peoples. But its physical description was almost always the same—seven to twelve feet tall, covered in brownish hair.

You can purchase "In Search of Sasquatch" by Kelly Milner Halls here.

"He is seen as a special kind of being, because of his obvious close relationship with humans," wrote the Kootenai Indian author Gayle Highpine in the Western Bigfoot Society newsletter, the Track Record, in July 1992. "Some elders regard him as standing on the 'border between animal-style consciousness and human-style consciousness, which gives him a special kind of power."

In the Kootenai tradition, Sasquatch is an animal of the natural world—a beast clever enough to escape capture, but no more mystical than any other animal. Modern Sasquatch hunters agree. In other tribal stories it is a creature of supernatural strength. In addition, "Among many Indians... the Hopi, the Sim., the Iroquois and the Northern Athabascan, he is seen as a sort of spirit being whose appearance to humans is meant to convey some kind of message," Highpine wrote in the Track Record.

What kind of message? It could be a warning to resist human evils, she explained. Our move away from kindness and common sense may have upset the natural harmony of life on Earth. Sasquatch sightings may be a call to restore balance before ifs too late.
 

The author-anthropologist Kathy Moskowitz Strain retold stories and compiled a list of more than 130 unique "hairy man" names from Indian folklore in her book, Giants, Cannibals and Monsters Bigfoot in Native Culture. The stories are not always as kindhearted as Gayle Highpine's account.

0o-wel'-lin, the Me-wuk Indians' "hairy giant," reportedly traveled the California countryside, eating people. The Yokut tribe's "Hairy Man" listened for the sound of women pounding' acorn meal so he could steal it from their mortar bowls.

A Comanche medicine woman named Sanapia described a fur-covered cannibal, twelve feet tall, called Mu pitz. To keep him happy—and full—tribal elders set out food for him. When they found the bones of Mu pitz on the plains of Texas and Oklahoma, they ground them into a powder to treat bone injuries.

Colville Indians in Washington State saw their Skanicum, or "Stick Indian," as a clever shape-shifter, able to take the form of a tree to escape capture. Though he ate roots and other ordinary foods, he was known to kidnap humans for companionship, including a young bride in one story.

Did the regional creatures really have a taste for kids, or did native parents simply use the stories to scare their children into more cautious behavior? "It's hard to say," said Strain, "but it is still a part of their culture today. And tribes that believed Sasquatch to be helpful—even a creator—still practice the songs and dances designed to honor it, too."

You can purchase "In Search of Sasquatch" by Kelly Milner Halls here.