Not so much the text, as to the fact that he singled out that experience and wrote it down. I think your right, I think he was thinking through all the plausible explanations. But if he believed 100 percent it was a bear track I don't think we would know of it now, it would have been forgotten.
That's what a overlap looks like for a bear. Maybe? With native American trackers there? Not likely.
I disagree, while it's certainly plausible that Mr. Thompson had no idea what the legends said? If you take a Grizzly bear hind foot track, make it bigger, take away the claws, and broaden the heel? Well...........you have a Sasquatch track. That's what the man IS describing.
I think Mr. Thompson was conflicted about what he saw, the Indian guides were insisting it wasn't a Bear, and Mr. Thompson felt that it was important enough to write the report down.
Whether it was a Squatch or not is irrelevant, the point I'm trying to make is that early explorers did record some things they deemed "strange" concerning the subject.
Here is another one:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/legends/spokanes.htm
Transformer is completely wrong with the hypothesis that nothing was observed or recorded by early Europeans about the subject. As if it was somehow a invention of the last century. It's also completely wrong to think that the Native Americans themselves didn't draw or carve or record their myths of the creature other than by oral tradition.
Interestingly enough I just posted a thread about "straw bears" in Europe. It would seem that the Europeans THEMSELVES had their own myths and legends about a similar creature. Better known as wildemann or woodwose, whatever.