Legends of large hairy men can be found virtually everywhere in North America and beyond. With so much advancement in technology I can’t believe these creatures remain as elusive as they were a 150 years ago when the first settlers started encroaching on the ‘wild country’. That being said, as humans start expanding their cities into the vast wilderness it comes as no surprise that many of these sightings have become more and more frequent in the past 20 years. It’s still a great debate whether or not these creatures known infamously as bigfoot or sasquatch really exist. Much of the genetic evidence collected from various scenes proved to be of local animals or to be undetermined in origin.
There has yet to be conclusive hard evidence of the existence of Bigfoot, the Skunk-Ape, or any of the countless names they are known by. On the other hand, it becomes a daunting task of arguing against people who have had legitimate experiences or run-ins with the elusive creature. Many Bigfoot research groups have filmed on various occasions yells that were clearly not human as well as well-documented ‘stone-throwing’ by which rocks are thrown at the researchers as a type of warning.
Could this be the largest hoax in history? People running around with fake plasters on their feet re-creating footprints throughout North America sounds a little far-fetched. Even the USDA jokingly wrote an article on ‘Loss of space threatening North American Sasquatch‘ in 2015. Since the infamous Patterson–Gimlin film cameras are now easily accessible from just your smartphone. Some of the footage captured since then is enough to make you think critically and at the same time raise the hairs up on your neck. I had the opportunity to camp as close as I could to where the original Patterson-Gimlin footage was taken and it was definitely an isolated region where anything could exist. Out there your imagination runs wild, even for me, being as skeptical as I am, I want to believe, but when you’re alone in the absolute wildness your imagination will get the best of you.
Read about similar legends about ancient giants in Mexico here: Giants of Ancient México
I want to share two pieces of historical stories that reference this beast in two contrasting terms. The first stories comes from the Yokut indigenous people in Central California who describe him as a lonely creature who weeps because humans fear him and almost like a protector. And the second account comes from past president Teddy Roosevelt who describes a terrible second-hand encounter where a party was violently attacked by a creature one of who was killed by having his neck torn back.
In the book Giants, Cannibals and Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture, Kathy Moskowitz Strain, an archaeologist and anthropologist with the U.S. Forest Service here in California, collected 55 indigenous stories pertaining to the legendary creature known as Bigfoot. Some of the stories originating from Central California are quite extreme in nature. In some instances you have references to them kidnapping and even cannibalizing people and in others they are seen within mystical or supernatural terms, as if they are to be revered above all.
The Yokut’s maintain the oldest cave painting representing the ‘hairy man’ dating back around 1,000 years. For them it’s a sacred place located within the Tule River Indian Reservation, east of Porterville, California. Among other depictions are animals as well as what looks like a Bigfoot family. This archaeological site is completely off limits to anyone.
1: How People Were Made (How Bigfoot came to be)
All the birds and animals of the mountains went to Hocheu to make People. Eagle, chief of all the animals, asked each animal how they wanted People to be. Each animal took a turn and said what they had to say.
Fish said, “People should know how to swim, like me, so let them be able to hold their breath and swim very deep.”
Hummingbird said, “People should be fast, like me, so let them have good feet and endurance.”
Eagle said, “People should be wise, wiser than me, so People will help animals and take care of the Earth.”
Turtle said, “People should be able to protect themselves, like me, so lets give them courage and strength.”
Lizard said, “People should have fingers, like me, so that People can make baskets, bows and arrows.”
Owl said, “People should be good hunters, like me, so give them knowledge and cunning.”
Condor said, “People should be different from us, so give them hair, not feathers or fur to keep warm.”
Then Coyote said, “People should be just like me, because I am smart and tricky, so have them walk on all fours.”
Hairy Man, who had not said anything yet, shook his head and said, “No, People should walk on two legs, like me.”
All the other animals agreed with Hairy Man, and Coyote became very angry. He challenged Hairy Man to a race, and they agreed who ever won could decide how People should walk.
They gathered at the waterfall, below Hocheu, to begin the race. Coyote started and took a shortcut. Hairy Man was wiser than Coyote and knew that Coyote would cheat to win and People would have to walk on all fours, so Hairy Man stayed behind and helped Eagle, Condor, and the others to make People. They went back to the rock and drew People, on two legs, on the ground. The animals breathed on them, and People came out of the ground. Hairy Man was very pleased and went to People, but when they saw Hairy Man, they were scared and ran away. That made Hairy Man sad. When Coyote came back and saw what they had done, he was very angry and drew himself on the rock eating the moon (he is called Su! Su! Na). All the other animals drew their pictures on the rock as well, so People would remember them. Hairy Man was sad because People were afraid of him, so he drew himself sad. That is why Hairy Man’s picture is crying to this day. That is how people were made.
2. When People Took Over
People spread out all over the mountains, taking all the land and eating all the food. Animals didn’t have anyplace to go. Eagle, chief of all the animals, told the animals that they could not remain in their traditional places, because people had taken them. He asked them where they wished to go. Eagle said, “What are you going to become? What will you be? I myself am going to fly high up in the air and live on squirrels and sometimes on deer.”
Hairy Man said, “I will go live among the big trees (Giant Sequoias) and hunt only at night when people are asleep.”
Dog said, “I will stay with people and be their friend, I will follow them, and perhaps I will get something to eat in that way.”
Buzzard said, “When something dies I will smell it. I will go there and eat it.”
Crow said, “When I see something lying dead, I will pick out its eyes.”
Coyote said, “I will go about killing grasshoppers. That is how I will live.”
Hummingbird said, “I will go to the flowers and get my food from them.”
Condor said, “I will not stay here. I will go far off into the mountains. Perhaps I will find something to eat there.”
Woodpecker said, “I will get acorns and make holes in the trees [to store them in].”
Bluejay said, “I am going to make trees grow over the hills. I will work.”
Rat said, “I will go where there are old trees and make my house in them.”
Mouse said, “I will run here, there, and everywhere. I shall have holes, and perhaps I can live in that way.”
Trout said, “I will live in the water and perhaps I can find something to eat there.”
That was the time when animals stopped being like us and scattered.
3. Food Stealing
In the old days, women learned never to leave their acorn meal unattended. They would spend all day pounding on the big rocks near the river, making the acorn meal, and then take it down to the river to leech it. They would then leave it in the sun to dry, but they would come back and it would be gone. They would find big footprints in the sand where they left the meal and they would know that Hairy Man took it. He likes Indian food and knows to wait until the acorn is leeched of its bitterness before taking it. We always wondered if he liked the sound of women pounding acorn and knew when to come and get food.
4. Big Foot, the Hairy Man
Big Foot was a creature that was like a great big giant with long, shaggy hair. His long shaggy hair made him look like a big animal. He was good in a way, because he ate the animals that might harm people. He kept the Grizzly Bear, Mountain Lion, Wolf, and other larger animals away.
During hot summer nights all the animals would come out together down from the hills to drink out of the Tule River. Big Foot liked to catch animals down by the river. He would eat them up bones and all. It was pleasant and cool down by the river on hot summer nights. That is when grown ups liked to take a swim. Even though people feared that Big Foot, the hairy man, might come to the river, people still liked to take a swim at night.
Parents always warned their children, “Don’t go near the river at night. You may run into Big Foot.”Now Big Foot usually eats animals, but parents said, “If he can’t find any animals and he is very hungry, he will eat you. Big Foot, the hairy man, doesn’t leave a speck or trace. He eats you up bones and all. We won’t know where you have gone or what has happened to you.”
Some people say Big Foot, the hairy man, still roams around the hills near Tule River. He comes along the trail at night and scares a lot of people. When you hear him you know it is something very big because he makes a big sound, not a little sound.Children are cautioned not to make fun of his picture on the painted rock or play around that place because he would hear you and come after you. Parents warned their children, “You are going to meet him on the road if you stay out too late at night.” The children have learned always to come home early.
5. Excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt’s The Wilderness Hunter :
Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be very superstitious. They lead lives too hard and practical, and have too little imagination in things spiritual and supernatural. I have heard but few ghost stories while living on the frontier, and those few were of a perfectly commonplace and conventional type. But I once listened to a goblin-story, which rather impressed me.
A grizzled, weather beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman who, born and had passed all of his life on the Frontier, told it the story to me. He must have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a shudder at certain points of the tale; but he was of German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore. So that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by the Indian medicine men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers, and the specters, [spirits, ghosts & apparitions] the formless evil beings that haunt the forest depths, and dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes through the regions where they lurk. It may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say.When the event occurred, Bauman was still a young man, and was trapping with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of the Salmon from the head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, he and his partner determined to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream said to contain many beavers. 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 afterwards found by some mining prospectors who had passed his camp only the night before.
The memory of this event, however, weighted very lightly with the two trappers, who were as adventurous and hardy as others of their kind. They took their two lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass where they left them in an open beaver meadow, the rocky timber-clad ground being from there onward impracticable for horses. They then struck out on foot through the vast, gloomy forest, and in about four hours reached a little open glade where they concluded to camp, as signs of game were plenty.
There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and after building a brush lean-to and throwing down and opening their packs, they started upstream. The country was very dense and hard to travel through, as there was much down timber, although here and there the somber woodland was broken by small glades of mountain grass. At dusk they again reached camp. The glade in which it was pitched was not many yards wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs rising round it like a wall. On one side was a little stream, beyond which rose the steep mountains slope, covered with the unbroken growth of evergreen forest.
They were surprised to find that during their absence something, apparently a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds and stores and lighting the fire.
While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his companion began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the fire to follow them up, where the intruder had walked along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the brand flickered out, he returned and took another, repeating his inspection of the footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood by it a minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked, “Bauman, that bear has been walking on two legs.”
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 possibly be those of a human being, and coming to the conclusion that they could not be, the two men rolled up in their blankets, and went to sleep under the lean-to. At midnight Bauman 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 he heard the smashing of the under wood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.
After this the two men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled fire, but they heard nothing more. In the morning they started out to look at the few traps they had set the previous evening and put out new ones. By an unspoken agreement they kept together all day, and returned to camp towards evening. 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. 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 off on but two legs.
The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a great heap of dead logs and 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, across the brook, 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. In the morning the two trappers, after discussing the strange events of the last 36 hours, decided that they would shoulder their packs and leave the valley that afternoon. They were the more ready to do this because in spite of seeing a good deal of game sign they had caught very little fur. However it was necessary first to go along the line of their traps and gather them, and this they started out to do. All the 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 among 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 in a wide ravine near by. Bauman volunteered to gather these and bring them in, while his companion went ahead to camp and made ready the packs.
On reaching the pond Bauman found three beavers in the traps, one of which had been pulled loose and carried into a beaver house. He took several hours in securing and preparing the beaver, and when he started homewards he marked, with some uneasiness, how low the sun was getting. As he hurried toward camp, under the tall trees, the silence and desolation of the forest weighted on him. His feet made no sound on the pine needles and the slanting sunrays, striking through among the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in which objects at a distance glimmered indistinctly. There was nothing to break the gloomy stillness which, when there is no breeze, always broods over these somber primeval forests. At last he came to the edge of the little glade where the camp lay and shouted as he approached it, but got no answer. The campfire had gone out, though the thin blue smoke was still curling upwards.
Near it lay the packs wrapped and arranged. At first Bauman 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-creature, printed deep in the soft soil, told the whole story.
The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, and his back to the dense woods, to wait for his companion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, which must have been lurking in the woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long noiseless steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man, and broke his neck by wrenching his head back with its fore paws, while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had not eaten the body, but apparently had romped and gamboled around it in uncouth, ferocious glee, occasionally rolling over and over it; and had then fled back into the soundless depths of the woods.
Bauman, utterly unnerved and believing that the creature with which he had to deal was something either half human or half devil, some great goblin-beast, abandoned everything but his rifle and struck off at speed down the pass, not halting until he reached the beaver meadows where the hobbled ponies were still grazing. Mounting, he rode onwards through the night, until beyond reach of pursuit.
