GIANT FOOTPRINTS IN THE GLACIAL SNOWS! FRIGHTENING GLIMPSES OF HAIRY, MANLIKE BEINGS! STRANGE HALF-HUMAN LAUGHTER HEARD IN THE NIGHT! For centuries the Indians of British Columbia and the Northwestern United States have made the Sasquatch a part of their legends. For decades reliable witnesses have reported encounters with these eight-to-ten-foot-tall man-apes, which appear suddenly near highways, homes, or camp sites and then vanish again, striding swiftly off into the darkness. Fully documented footprints measuring up to eighteen inches in length and separated by six-foot strides have been found all over the Northwest. Here is the incredible story, presenting us with all the evidence compiled by Rene Dahinden in the twenty years he has spent on the trail of the Sasquatch.
You can purchase this must have book "Sasquatch" by Don Hunter and René Dahinden here.
Chapter 1
The earliest known "recorded" references to the Sasquatch are found on the carved totem poles and masks of the coast Indians of British Columbia, particularly on those of the Kwakiutls. A main feature on the poles is a representation of the Dsonoqua (Cannibal Woman) with her son sitting on her lap and held close to her body, while one of the popular masks of their culture is a ferocious-looking and remarkably detailed face of the Bukwas, or Wild Man of the Woods. Each of the carvings, in its stylized way, suggests a creature that is considerably more human in appearance than it is animal.
The Kwakiutls believed the Dsonoquas to be people who lived, in houses, deep in the woods and mountains. They described them as being black, hairy, with deep-set eyes, and twice as big as a man. The female seems to have dominated the Kwakiutl stories and frequent reference is made to her large, pendulous breasts (a feature remarked on by a number of those involved in sightings in recent years).
Kidnapping and cannibalism by the Dsonoqua are common themes in the Kwakiutl stories, as they are in tales of the Sasquatch told by the Salish Indians of British Columbia's Fraser Valley and those of the western part of the state of Washington. And the creatures' intrinsic malevolence is perhaps further attested to in the legend winch describes how a group of Indians was able to burn alive a family of the cannibals: the remaining ashes turned into mosquitoes, and such was the beginning of that source of torment.
With minor variations in behaviour and appearance, the creature under its many names plays a major role in western Indian lore from northern B.C. to California, and a somewhat lesser though similar role in native culture across the continent. Hairy giants, with human attributes of varying degree, are ubiquitous.
To the Indians there was nothing terribly mythical about the creature. It existed in their day-to-day world and it was not something to be messed about with.
Some native attitudes are recorded in the notes and diaries of the early explorers, such as this extract from Noticias De Nutka by Jose Mariano Mozino (published in Spanish in 1782, and translated by Iris Higbie Wilson. University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1970):
I do not know what to say about the matlox (Sasquatch), inhabitant of the mountainous districts, of whom all have an unbelievable fear. They imagine his body as very monstrous, all covered with stiff black bristles; a head similar to a human one but with much greater, sharper and stronger fangs than those of the bear; extremely long arms; and toes and fingers armed with long curved claws. His shouts alone (they say) force those who hear them to the ground, and any unfortunate body he slaps is broken into a thousand pieces.
When David Thompson crossed the Rockies near the present site of Jasper, Alberta, in the winter of 1811, he kept a daily journal. Years later this was incorporated into the publication of his "Narrative", in which he notes:
(January 5) ... we are now entering the defiles of the Rocky Mountains by the Athabasca River ... strange to say, here is a strong belief that the haunt of the Mammoth is about this defile ... I questioned several (Indians), none could positively say they had seen him, but their belief I found firm and not to be shaken. I remarked to them, that such an enormous heavy animal must leave indelible marks of his feet, and his feeding. This they all acknowledged, and that they had never seen any marks of him, and therefore could show me none. All I could say did not shake their belief in his existence....
(January 7) Continuing our journey in the afternoon we came on the track of a large animal, the snow about six inches deep on the ice; I measured it; four large toes each of four inches in length to each a short claw; the ball of the foot sunk three inches lower than the toes, the hinder part of the foot did not mark well, the length fourteen inches, by eight inches in breadth, walking from north to south, and having passed about six hours. We were in no humour to follow him; the men and Indians would have it to be a young Mammoth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzled bear; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a bear, otherwise that of a very large old bear, his claws worn away; this the Indians would not allow....
Thompson makes no suggestion that the tracks were made by a quadruped, and it has to be significant that the Indians rejected the bear theory. The dimensions given are considerably bigger than those normal for a grizzly (though they are not inconceivable for a particularly big bear), and the grizzly has five short toes, not four long ones. Exactly what the Indians means by "Mammoth" is not detailed, but from the references I think we can reasonably speculate that it is our mystery creature. Another explorer, the artist Paul Kane, also comments on the Indians' recognition of a strange creature, in his book, The Wanderings of An Artist, published in 1925. His entry for March 26, 1847, reads:
When we arrived at the mouth of the Kattle-poutal River, twenty-six miles from Vancouver (Washington), I stopped to make a sketch of the volcano, Mt. St. Helens, distant, I suppose, about thirty or forty miles. This mountain has never been visited by either whites or Indians; the latter assert that it is inhabited by a race of beings of a different species, who are cannibals. and whom they hold in great dread ... these superstitions are taken from the statement of a man who, they say, went into the mountain with another, and escaped the fate of his companion, who was eaten by the "skoocooms", or "evil Genii." I offered a considerable bribe to any Indian who would accompany me in its exploration but could not find one hardy enough to venture there.
Kane's comments make no reference to the "skoocooms" being ape-like, but they are especially interesting in light of the events which occurred much later on Mt. St. Helens and which we deal with in this chapter and later ones.
Another story of a quite gruesome experience with a bipedal giant is related by Theodore Roosevelt in his book, Wilderness Hunter, and concerns events of about the raid 1800's. Roosevelt writes:
(The story) was told (to me) by a grizzled, weather beaten old mountain hunter named Baumann, who was born and had spent all his life on the frontier. He must have believed what he said for he could hardly repress a shudder at certain points....
When the event occurred Baumann was still a young man and was trapping with a partner in the mountains dividing the forks of the Salmon River from the head of the Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, he and his partner decided to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream said to contain many beaver. The pass had an evil reputation because the year before a solitary hunter who had wandered into it was slain, seemingly by a wild beast, the half-eaten remains being found afterwards by some mining prospectors who had passed his camp only the night before.
The memory of this event however weighed very lightly with the two trappers, who were as adventurous and hardy as others of their kind ... they reached a little open glade where they concluded to camp, as signs of game were plenty.The story describes the pair building a brush lean-to, and making a check of the stream and setting a few traps before returning to camp....
They were surprised to find that during their absence something, apparently a bear, had visited and had rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and . . . destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were quite plain but at first they paid no particular heed to them. . . .
When Baumann's partner finally did check the print, his response was: "Baumann, that bear has been walking on two legs." Roosevelt's story continues:
. . . Bauman laughed at this but his partner insisted that he was right, and upon again examining, the tracks with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made by but two paws or feet. However it was too dark to make sure. After discussing whether the footprints could be possibly those of a human being, and coming to the conclusion that the.7, could not be, the two men rolled up in their blankets and went to sleep....
At midnight Baumann was awakened by some noise and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong wild-beast odor and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle he fired at the vague, threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately afterwards be heard the smashing of the underwood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and night.
The pair sat up most of the night, and stayed close together the next day as they set more traps. They came back to camp as evening approached....
On nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment, that the lean-to had again been torn down. The visitor of the preceding day had returned and in wanton malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding and destroyed the shanty. The ground was marked up by its tracks and on leaving the camp it had gone along the soft earth by the brook, where the footprints were as plain as if on snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing was, it had walked on but two legs.
The men ... kept up a roaring fire throughout the night, one or the other sitting on guard most of the time. About midnight the thing came down through the forest opposite ... and stayed there on the hillside for nearly an hour. They could hear the branches crackle as it moved about and several times it uttered a harsh, grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sinister sound. Yet it did not venture near the fire.
The trappers decided it was time to leave and began preparations....
The whole morning they kept together, picking up trap after trap, each one empty. On first leaving camp they had the disagreeable sensation of being followed. In the dense spruce thickets they occasionally heard a branch snap after they had passed, and now and then there were slight rustling noises in the small pines to one side of them.
At noon they were back within a couple of miles of camp. In the high bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were through long years of lonely wandering in the wilderness to face every kind of danger from man, brute, or element. There were still three beaver traps to collect from a little pond ... Baumann volunteered to gather these and bring them in, while his companion went ahead to camp and made ready the packs.
By the time Baumann had finished his chores with [he beaver traps, the sun was going down....
He came to the edge of the little glade where the camp lay, and shouted as he approached it, but got no answer. The camp fire had gone out, though the thin blue smoke was still curling up-wards.
Near it lay the packs, wrapped and arranged. At first Baumann could see nobody; nor did he receive an answer to his call. Stepping forward he again shouted, and as he did so his eye fell on the body of his friend, stretched beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing towards it the horrified trapper found that the body was still warm, but that the neck was broken, while there were four great fang marks in the throat.
The footprints of the unknown beast, printed deep in the soft soil, told the whole story.... It had not eaten the body, but apparently had romped and gambolled around it in uncouth and ferocious glee, occasionally rolling it over and over; and had then fled back into the soundless depths of the woods...
Baumann fled the area, pursued by grim and horrible imaginings of what kind of creature he had been up against.
The outstanding aspect of both Kane's and Baumann's stories is the element of violence, something which, with two exceptions that we shall deal with shortly, had played little part in the accounts of meetings with the creature in this century. Perhaps an explanation for this is that while man has extended his boundaries into the territories concerned, he has at the same time for the edification of all creatures, amply displayed his own boundless potential for destruction and slaughter. Any creature that has watched the performance of a modern day Nimrod, armed to the eyebrows with enough explosive power to clear out a healthy part of any forest, surely would have sensed, if not reasoned, the wisdom of avoiding combat.
Reports of sightings of the Sasquatch during the last century were not limited to the Pacific Northwest. One which originated in the Memphis Enquirer, was subsequently printed in the New Orleans Times Picayune and the Galveston Weekly Journal. It gives a description of the appearance and behaviour of a creature that bears a close resemblance to our subject. The story tells of a "wild man" spotted by hunters in Greene County, Arkansas. The hunters saw a herd of cattle fleeing from something, then saw the cause of the cows' concern: "... an animal bearing the unmistakable likeness of humanity. He was of gigantic stature, the body being covered wills hair and the head with long locks that fairly enveloped the neck and shoulders. The wild man, after looking at them deliberately for a short time, turned and ran away with great speed, leaping twelve to fourteen feet at a time. His footprints measured thirteen inches each."
The story added that the same creature had been reported by hunters for the past seventeen years and that ". .. a painter indeed saw him very recently but (and here's a familiar cry) withheld his information lest he should not be credited, until the account (of the hunters) placed the existence of the animal beyond cavil." No doubt the painter and the hunters would be surprised to know the extent of the objections to their wild man's existence that still exists today.
Similar stories to this are found in yellowing clippings from old newspapers in towns spotted the length and width of North and South America.
A familiar call from Sasquatch dissenters is: "Show me one and I'll believe it." Had one of them been in the small British Columbia railroad town of Yale in the Fraser Canyon during the year 1884, his call would have been answered. It was there that the only recorded instance of the capture of a Sasquatch took place. The incident was recorded in a telegraph dispatch which was printed in the Victoria (B.C.) Colonist on July 4th of that year. Under three banks of headlines: "What is it? A strange creature captured above Yale. A British Columbia Gorilla," it reads as follows:
In the immediate vicinity of No. 4 tunnel, situated some twenty miles above this village (Cale), are bluffs of rock which have hitherto been insurmountable, but on Monday morning last were successfully scaled by Mr. Onderdon's employes (sic) on the regular train from Lytton. Assisted by Mr. Costerton, the British Columbia Express Company's messenger, and a number of men from Lytton and points east of that place who, after considerable trouble and perilous climbing, succeeded in capturing a creature which may truly be called half man and half beast. "Jacko," as the creature has been called by his capturers, is something of the gorilla type standing about four feet seven inches in height and weighing 127 pounds. He has long, black, strong hair and resembles a human being with one exception, his entire body, excepting his hands (or paws) and feet are covered with glossy hair about one inch long. His forearm is much longer than a man's forearm, and he possesses extraordinary strength, as he will take hold of a stick and break it by wrenching it or twisting it, which no man living could break in the same way. Since his capture he is very reticent, only occasionally uttering a noise which is half bark and half growl. He is, however, becoming daily more attached to his keeper, Mr. George Tilbury, of this place, who proposes shortly starting for London, England, to exhibit him. His favorite food so far is berries, and he drinks fresh milk with evident relish. By advice of Dr. Hannington raw meats have been withheld from Jacko, as the doctor thinks it would have a tendency to make him a savage. The mode of capture was as follows: Ned Austin, the engineer, on coming in sight of the bluff at the eastern end of the No. 4 tunnel saw what he supposed to be a man lying asleep in close proximity to the track, and as quick as thought blew the signal to apply the brakes. The brakes were instantly applied, and in a few seconds the train was brought to a standstill. At this moment the supposed man sprang up and, uttering a sharp quick bark, began to climb the steep bluff. Conductor R.J. Craig and express messenger Costerton, followed by the baggageman and brakemen, jumped from the train and knowing they were some twenty minutes ahead of time immediately gave chase. After five minutes of perilous climbing the then supposed demented Indian was corralled on a projecting shelf of rock where he could neither ascend nor descend. The query now was how to capture him alive, which was quickly decided by Mr. Craig, who crawled on his hands and knees until he was about forty feet above the creature. Taking a small piece of loose rock he let it fall and it had the desired effect of rendering poor Jacko incapable of resistance for a time at least. The bell rope was then brought up and Jacko was now lowered to terra firma. After firmly binding him and placing him in the baggage cue, "off brakes" was sounded and the train started for Yale. At the station a large crowd who had beard of the capture by telephone from Spuzzum Flat were assembled, each one anxious to have the first look at the monstrosity, but they were disappointed, as Jacko had been taken off at the machine shops and placed in charge of his present keeper.
The question naturally arises, how came the creature where it was first seen by Mr. Austin. From bruises about its head and body, and apparent soreness since its capture, it is supposed that Jacko ventured too near the edge of the bluff, slipped, fell, and lay where found until the sound of the rushing train aroused him. Mr. Thos. White and Mr. Gouin, C.E., as well as Mr. Major, who kept a small store about half a mile west of the tunnel during the past two years, have mentioned having seen a curious creature at different points between Camps 13 and 17, but no attention was paid to their remarks as people came to the conclusion that they had seen either a bear or a stray Indian dog. Who can unravel the mystery that now surrounds Jacko? Does he belong to a species hitherto unknown in this part of the continent, or is he really what the train men first thought he was, a crazy Indian?The newspaper account of Jacko has since been confirmed by an old man, August Castle, who was a child in the town at the time. He was not taken to see the creature but he remembers clearly that the events were as the newspaper reported them. The unfortunate thing about the Jacko story is that the captive's ultimate fate is not known. Washington State University anthropologist Grover Krantz who has done, and still is doing, considerable research into the Sasquatch phenomenon (Chapters 8 and 9), received information from a game guide named Chileo Choate at Clinton, B.C. Choate said his grandfather, who was a judge in Yale at the time, saw Jacko and that the creature, accompanied by Mr. Tilbury, was shipped east by rail in a cage, on the way to an English sideshow. Neither Tilbury nor Jacko was ever heard from again in Yale and it was presumed the creature had died in transit and had been disposed of. Choate's grandfather described Jacko as "an ape." Certainly from the description of the covering of glossy hair alone, the "crazy Indian" thesis seems improbable. The North American Indian is conceded to be of Mongolian derivation, a people of whom a particular characteristic is a sparsity of facial and body hair.
The next documented incident was reported in 1901, again in the Victoria Colonist. Mike King at that time was one of the best known timber cruisers (men who search out good, accessible stands of timber for the logging companies) in the province and was, according to the Colonist, "a fine type of man with an enviable reputation for reliability." He was working on Vancouver Island, near Campbell River, about one hundred miles northwest of Vancouver. Mr. King was working alone as his Indian packers had refused to accompany him into the woods at that place, because of their fear of what they called the "monkey men" of the forest. It was late in the afternoon when he saw the "man beast," bending over a pool of water, washing roots which it then placed in two neat piles. The creature finally either heard or saw King. It gave a startled cry and ran swiftly up a hillside, finally stopping at some distance and looking back at the man, who prudently kept his rifle trained on the thing. King described the creature as: "Covered with reddish brown hair, and his arms were peculiarly long and were used freely in climbing and in brush running; while the trail showed a distinct human foot, but with phenomenally long and spreading toes."
Three years later, on December 14, 1904, the Colonist reported that "four credible witnesses will attest that (the Sasquatch) is no myth or phantom of Indian imagination. "
You can purchase this must have book "Sasquatch" by Don Hunter and René Dahinden here.
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