Bauman Story

[Guest]

Fascinating, hadn't come across that one before.

 

We do have several problems in interpretation, in that we can find first nations stories in which the protagonist has a conversation with a bear or coyote, so we are left unsure of the literal truth in that respect.

 

Then also, we may have difficulty separating "supernatural" attributes from merely extreme and obscure physical skills. I mean someone from the amazon jungle might on observing rednecks spotlighting deer say something like "They called the rays of the gods to freeze the prey then thunder dropped them dead." That's technologically assisted, but if one seeahtik could engage the attention of a deer while another crept round to the flank and then beaned it with a well aimed rock it might look "spooky". "Strange medicine, they rubbed on their bodies" might have been something as simple as a mild bleaching agent for black body hair such that they became more "tree trunk" colored. Heck, snipers have strange medicine they rub on their faces to dissappear..

 

Now a possibility I am open to is that what we see today is "post apocalyptic survivors" of a formerly more advanced culturally race/tribe/species. The apocalyspe being the late 19th/early 20th century overlogging, overhunting and overfishing which resulted in mass die off from habitat loss and loss of food sources. Hell, it could have been that the post WWI Flu epidemic really tore into them. The cases of "children raised by wild animals" in India, might be the sapiens analog to what has happened to the remnants of the seeahtik.... complete cultural loss.

 

Another possibility for the "apocalyspe" is their supposed liking for first nations women. If this became a strong preference, it would not be much of a stretch to think that the hybrids, if indeed possible, may have been less fertile, or may have had delivery problems (smaller pelvis etc) and thus their small societies disintegrated into smaller family units, which may not have fared so well if there was a reliance by then on "game drive" types of hunting.

 

Whatever the "Near extinction" event was, it could have left scattered pockets of survivors across the country who managed to preserve varying amounts of the former culture, some could have been too young and become compltely feral, some may have had smarter elders around long enough to preserve language and other skills.

 

Even "post discovery" as it were, much of this may remain an enigma.

[norseman]

Jerrywayne wrote:

Do you think the Indians mentioned in this article believe the “apes†said to attack the miners ARE apes, or do you think they believe the attackers are something else? Do you accept all the various attributes given to the Seeahtik tribe as factual? Do you think their stories about the giant, hairy ones are literally true, partially true, or not really true?

 

Well let's evaluate shall we?

 

By Indian accounts they are 7-8 feet tall, shaggy all over and can be mistaken for a Bear..............does this sound like a Homo Sapien to you? If it does? Can you anthropologically point to a race of our species some where on the planet that fits that description? Or do you have to broaden that search into our genus (both living and extinct) or order?

 

To the second part of your question:

 

Crow Legend of old man Coyote:

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/Old-Man-Coyote-Makes-The-World-Crow.html

 

In the myth story above?

 

Animals talk, and the Coyote creates other animals, and also offers sage advice to humans, and gives them weapons.
 

Obviously Coyotes exist as a flesh and blood animal, but do they possess the ability to speak? Or any of the other attributes attributed in the story?

 

As to your third question:

 

The legend of Ebu Gogo:

 

http://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2010/08/legendary-humanoids-ebu-gogo-flores.html

 

Wild men? Steals children? Raids crops? Lives in caves? Does not use tools? Native stories attributed to known animals by westerners (like a Bear)? Does any of this sound familiar to you?

 

Except this time Science has found fossil evidence to back up the myth.

 

Does this immediately make Sasquatch a real entity living in our century? Of course not.

 

But it does give us pause as to how readily we should summarily dismiss native myths holding some kernel of truth in them.

 

I have never advocated any skeptic to simply accept as fact what should be backed up by hard evidence. I cannot tell you Sasquatch exists, I've never seen one with my own eyes. But I would not take offense to you not believing me if I had had my own encounter. I've seen some compelling trace evidence though..........at least compelling to me. So unlike you I cannot simply rule out the possibility, no matter how improbable. Something made those tracks, and I do not believe it to be a hoax or a known animal, nor have I ever seen them again, in all of my back country travels.

 

Could an "ape" or archiac form of human throw rocks at a cabin? Yes. Could they steal people? Yes, we see this with extant apes. Could they vocalize and mimic words? According to the inhabitants of Flores Island, yes. Do primitive cultures assign supernatural explanations to known animals? Yes.

 

Is it improbable that a large undiscovered primate still exists in N. America? Yes. It's it an absolute impossibility? I don't think so. Is it an absolute impossibility that such a creature could have existed in N. America in the past? Again, I don't think so.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Fossil_Site

 

We know about Beringia and the mass migration of many species from E. Asia to N. America. We know about large extinct apes and also extinct hominids existing in E. Asia. Although we currently have no evidence of them also making the migration here.

 

But we are not talking about the mothman or purple winged dragons or pixies..........something that has no basis in scientific fact. We just as of yet, have not been able to connect all of the dots, such as time, location and distribution of known species in the fossil record. And I think there are more mysteries to be dug up from the earth in our future.

 

But you seem unmovable that Indian legend has any correlation what so ever to what European's called "apes".

 

So I really have no idea where we go from here.... But I can see the angle your working, if there is no correlation, then Indian myth can stay myth and the modern phenomenon can be simply dismissed as a modern hoax. It's certainly not an impossible hypothesis, although I still say your timing of events and who get's the credit for the modern myth is off, if indeed your correct.

[Guest]

Norseman,

I do not think Bigfoot is impossible. I once was a Bigfoot enthusiast too. For me, the saga of Bigfoot became increasingly less credible as it spread over the entire country and folks began having sightings in places hard to conceal a monster ape population. Since such a development mimicked the Pacific Northwest story, instead of giving it more credence, for me, it imparted upon the PNW saga less plausibility and removed any reason to accept the existence of Bigfoot.

It seems to me that enthusiasts want to umbrella various historical phenomena and look at this gathered data with squinted eyes, then see Bigfoot at the center of it. Concerning using Indian tales, I am cautious about them as evidence of an unknown American primate for two reasons. First, I have grown suspicious over the years of Bigfoot enthusiasts' treatment of the issues. I'm thinking they probably do not have the "Indians knew of Bigfoot all along" line of reasoning correct. Secondly, the Native American lore can be seen as just that: lore. Since the idea of "hairy giants" is universal, we can either assume there are real hairy giants all over the globe, including places like the British Isles, or we can assume Indian lore is, at some level, fundamentally like myths from around the world. Myths, not realities.

Indians still told of a race of giant humans long after they knew what apes were. You say what they described certainly weren't humans. O.K. But they weren't apes either. Only in Bigfoot lore do you have a striding, bipedal ape of great bulk, standing 6 to 8 or more feet tall, with a face often described as human looking, leaving tracks looking more akin to a giant human than a great ape. These attributes, taken together as a core description, are unknown in today's great apes, and are problematic if meant to be tied to any ancient ape.

We could say that modern Bigfootology is just the latest incarnation of the "hairy man" myth, gussied up with the modern knowledge of fossil finds and Darwinism. You would then be correct to see a continuous thread running through time, from the hairy giants of First Nations lore to the bipedal ape of today's Bigfoot enthusiast. It all represents a fundamental human myth. But then, if so, you can't really be gamming to literally shoot and kill the purely mythological.

My point about pre-Bluff Creek/pre-Green in B.C. beliefs, sightings, etc. is that if we look at the sources literally we find enough differences that preclude most of it from describing the same thing, or creature, that came out of the Roe/Ostman, Green/Dahinden/Sanderson, Bluff Creek, Patterson, Bigfoot tracks and film, etc. era of the 1950s and 60s California and B.C.

In my view, our differences of opinion lay in the fact that you take the body of historical sources and Indian beliefs, view it a bit opaquely and see a core similarity that points to an ape in America, and I view the same sources and see enough dissimilarities to dismiss the idea that this is a base of information pointing towards Bigfoot's existence. The greater consistency in Bigfoot lore is post Bluff Creek and Roe, and this is why I see the modern myth basically having originated in the 50s and 60s.

Another contention between us is the idea that people knew of "apes in the hinterland," in the PNW at least, prior to the 50s and 60s. You say you know people did hold to this knowledge because of your own family history. I won't dispute this, you know better than I. But--- I still think my view is valid. As I thought all along, we have a different perspective of what constitutes indigenous knowledge of apes in the hinterland.

I fished around in the Bigfoot literature to see if I could find something to bring to the table that would help explain this issue better. I found this in ecologist and reasonable Bigfoot enthusiast Robert Michael Pyle's book, WHERE BIGFOOT WALKS: Crossing the Dark Divide, concerning local Bigfoot belief in and around the Dark Divide:

"Measured rumors and murmurs around campfires, mutters and brags in taverns, cafes, and kitchens. Reluctant reports from the field, sighs under the breath. Whispered dispatches from travelers, leaks from workers on condition of anonymity. Legends and traditions passed on in dance, art, smoky stories by the fireside. No one seems to know the beast, yet few seem willing to discount it altogether -- at least among those who have had anything to do with the countryside."

I think this passage aptly sheds light on our dispute. For your view, all the "measured rumors" and the "reluctant reports" and "traditions passed on..." etc., point to a knowledge of native apes. My view is expressed in this: "No one seems to know the beast." This means to me that no one has real, hard knowledge of apes, as opposed to the nebulous frame of "rumors," "mutters and brags," "whispered dispatches," "leaks," "legends and traditions," "smoky stories," etc., and this would be the same as my point of view: No knowledge of indigenous apes. I hope this helps clear up one aspect of our dispute, at least concerning my view.

Edited September 29, 2013 by jerrywayne

[norseman]

I think we need to define "knowledge" within the context of this debate.

If around a campfire I muttered to you that I had robbed a bank, would this confession be admissible in court? And if you purposefully omitted this testimony on the stand could you be guilty of perjury?

To me that is knowledge of a event, that also happened to be a illegal activity.

But instead of muttering to you I robbed a bank? I instead tell you that I saw a mountain devil......what then? Do you now have knowledge of a mythological ape like creature living in the hinterland? Also......

No one thought a freighter of African gorillas crashed off the coast of Washington 200 years ago so I don't know how the term "indeginious" has any value here.

Lastly your story of becoming dis enfranchised with the myth of Bigfoot is a common story and I hear it often. What boggles my mind is that skeptics made decisions about the veracity of the myth based solely on human behavior.

This is not about how compelling the evidence is.....but the fact that granny in NJ is reportedly feeding Bigfoot apple slices on her back porch.

So since granny's story is hogwash.....one must simple proclaim its all hogwash?

What about the logger in bc that had a sighting? What about tracks found deep in the Gifford Pinchot forest?

What does human opinion have to do with whether or not a small relic population of hominids or apes still lives in

North America? Nothing........

Humans have a bad habit of forming opinions based on a all or nothing strategy. I suppose because in our busy lives this is easier than sitting down and trying to seperate the wheat from

The chaff.

[Guest]

"Bigfoot" could have been a condensation nucleii for all the local reports of anything vaguely similar. However, I think you (jw) are playing semantics, when pre-1950 the world at large was semantically unsophisticated, and had not developed the media mono-culture that gives modern man common references. Does it disprove the existence of the car that the engine cover is called the hood in US and bonnet in UK??? (Conventions that developed pre-1950)

 

Caucasians do not look much like "apes" but nevertheless a derogatory term for them is "white ape" in parts of asia. Also the name orangutang translates to "old man of the forest". Accordingly I say it's no stretch that the observed phenomena  got named ape or man at the whim of the observer, or maybe the circumstances of the observation.

 

That book mentioned by the way, I found a total waste of time... even as a non-bigfoot book it's a total waste of time... just some hikers self important meanderings.

[Guest]

norseman, on 29 Sept 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

I think we need to define "knowledge" within the context of this debate.

If around a campfire I muttered to you that I had robbed a bank, would this confession be admissible in court? And if you purposefully omitted this testimony on the stand could you be guilty of perjury?

To me that is knowledge of a event, that also happened to be a illegal activity.

But instead of muttering to you I robbed a bank? I instead tell you that I saw a mountain devil......what then? Do you now have knowledge of a mythological ape like creature living in the hinterland? Also......

No one thought a freighter of African gorillas crashed off the coast of Washington 200 years ago so I don't know how the term "indeginious" has any value here.

Lastly your story of becoming dis enfranchised with the myth of Bigfoot is a common story and I hear it often. What boggles my mind is that skeptics made decisions about the veracity of the myth based solely on human behavior.

This is not about how compelling the evidence is.....but the fact that granny in NJ is reportedly feeding Bigfoot apple slices on her back porch.

So since granny's story is hogwash.....one must simple proclaim its all hogwash?

What about the logger in bc that had a sighting? What about tracks found deep in the Gifford Pinchot forest?

What does human opinion have to do with whether or not a small relic population of hominids or apes still lives in

North America? Nothing........

Humans have a bad habit of forming opinions based on a all or nothing strategy. I suppose because in our busy lives this is easier than sitting down and trying to seperate the wheat from

The chaff.

Your hypothetical bank robbery would not be my knowledge; your confession would be. In a court of law, my testimony would be hearsay testimony and such testimony is considered weak.

As to the spread of Bigfoot phenomena, I understand your point. However, you contrast habituation sightings in the east with lumberjack sightings in the PNW. What if we tighten it up and compare a logger sighting in east Texas with a logger sighting in Washington state? What if we compare the "ape attack" at Ape Canyon in Washington with the activity currently engaged in at "The Valley of the Wood Apes" in Oklahoma?

My point is that we may find the same kind of phenomena nation-wide that we find in the PNW. Virtually identical. You may want to view the location remoteness of "encounters" and deduce plausibility, and that is fine. What I am looking at are earnest accounts that are similar in every other way. If they are not real in the open plains, for instance, then they just might not be real too in the coastal rain forest of the PNW. If someone can make it up, dream it up, or mistake it in Texas, the same holds true in Washington state.

[norseman]

Sure it would be your knowledge, and if you lied about knowing about the confession under oath you could be charged with perjury....... is it as strong as being a witness? No. But it certainly wouldn't help the defendants case.......

 

Let me put it another way, if I told you that I kept a wild Tiger in my bathroom and instructed you not to open the door.......and you defied my warning and opened the door anyhow? You had knowledge that a wild Tiger was in my bathroom.........the clincher is that you simply thought the story was untrue.

 

I'm not using the term "knowledge" in the same context as you and this has lead us on about a three page waltz. Did people in the PacNW have "knowledge" about ape like creatures prior to the 1950's? I say yes. Again? How many of them believed this "knowledge"? Is open to conjecture, but I've never advocated that it was the majority. But if we are using the term "knowledge" to mean that Biologists went out and declared there was an unknown species of Ape in the wild during the turn of the century? Well, no of course not.

 

Second portion of your post:

 

I've said all along...........that I've been skeptical of a eastern Bigfoot. With that said, Bipto seems like a straight shooter and has had some unexplained experiences. I'm not there to weigh the evidence of something happening in the dense forests of Eastern OK and TX. So I'm OK with saying? I don't know. If Bipto's area X was a suburb of NYC though, I would be much more skeptical...........much more.

 

Your close to the area........if you once were open to the subject of their existence, but became skeptical simply based on anecdotal accounts and hoaxing? I think you are a prime subject to go check it out for yourself and make up your own mind as to what is going on. 

 

I remain skeptical of their existence based on my time in the forest during my life with only one encounter of a track way. I have two very close friends that had vocalization events that scared them.........both of them are very familiar with Cougars. And my own father claimed to have a sighting.........this is a man that taught me how to hunt, fish and read sign in the woods.

 

But I do tend to look myself in areas as remote as I can get.........with each step further of the beaten path? The less chance of a hoax. And I'm not going to hear a Coyote or a Cougar and claim it's a Bigfoot. Or look at Bear tracks and claim it's a track. For me to find the truth, if it's out there is to cut the human element out of it. If Sasquatch exists? Not all of the hoaxers and skeptics in the world can change that fact. Either I'll find the evidence and hopefully follow it to it's conclusion or I'll have some fine experiences in nature.

 

Last paragraph:

 

Why do you think it's virtually identical? This is where your point becomes more valid, but this is even post Green era stuff. Did John Green ever wood knock? Or whoop in the woods? Does the people on finding Bigfoot do that? And what is the coverage of that show? Without a doubt......... humans copy each other, monkey see/monkey do. In a completely unrelated field? Look at hunting........... my father never had a Elk cow call in his life, now your not considered an Elk hunter without one. Elk themselves are becoming increasingly silent..........because the more vocal ones are ending up on meat poles. If Jim Shockey uses it? Then by golly I got to have one too..........and off to Cabelas they go.

 

What if it's as simply as they don't like dry areas? Because you would think that the imaginations of impressionable people SHOULD be as viral in Omaha Nebraska or Bismark North Dakota as they are in Portland Oregon........yes?

 

Here is a cool map:

 

 

Look at Las Vegas Nevada on that map........if it's completely a human invention of the mind? Why do people in Las Vegas not see it? It does seem that the sighting do follow mountains and trees, with a few exceptions, but looking at Canada........it looks like only the people in Vancouver BC for the most part have impressionable minds. OR a logical explanation if we are dealing with a real creature is that it takes people to report the sighting of the creature..........no people no sighting. And I think the timeline of the graph shows a similar trend.

 

The US population has quadrupled in the last century.

Edited September 30, 2013 by norseman

[Guest]

Flashman2.0, on 29 Sept 2013 - 11:27 AM, said:

"Bigfoot" could have been a condensation nucleii for all the local reports of anything vaguely similar. However, I think you (jw) are playing semantics, when pre-1950 the world at large was semantically unsophisticated, and had not developed the media mono-culture that gives modern man common references. Does it disprove the existence of the car that the engine cover is called the hood in US and bonnet in UK??? (Conventions that developed pre-1950)

Caucasians do not look much like "apes" but nevertheless a derogatory term for them is "white ape" in parts of asia. Also the name orangutang translates to "old man of the forest". Accordingly I say it's no stretch that the observed phenomena got named ape or man at the whim of the observer, or maybe the circumstances of the observation.

That book mentioned by the way, I found a total waste of time... even as a non-bigfoot book it's a total waste of time... just some hikers self important meanderings.

Flashman2.0,

I'm not sure I follow you entirely. For instance, I do not understand why the world before the 1950s was "semantically unsophisticated." I will grant that the advances in technology in the 70s, 80s and 90s helped spread Bigfoot lore and this lead to the "ubiquitous Bigfoot" we find today.

As to the issue of my playing semantics. I hazard this observation: the Bigfoot most people believe in is not of the apes of Ape Canyon or the sasquatch of Indian lore or the imagined ape at the heart of the Bauman story, etc. The Bigfoot at the heart of the contemporary myth, we will find its template forged during the 1950s and 60s, fortified with a dose of yeti lore. This is a play of semantics only if you smudge the old accounts to realign them with the phenomena now.

[Guest]

Norseman,<br /><br />Folks in Las Vegas have other things on their mind, not Bigfoot. Realistically, if I were to fabricate an ape sighting, desert would not be the place I would place the sighting. Also, we would not find substantial populations in desert areas. Then again, look at the map and the plains states sightings, and the central and west Texas sightings. I willing to bet that these sightings are substantially identical to areas more conducive, in theory, to Bigfoot sightings. How do we explain these sightings? If we explain them mundanely, then may we also explain the others similarly?

[norseman]

^^^^^^

How can you prove that they have other things on their minds? If TV is beaming in across the country? Then we should be able to find some sort of aggregate of people with impressionable minds seeing things that are not there.

 

Here is a UFO map to make a contrast:

 

 

It is much much more uniform across the country. Why?

[Guest]

By the way, THIS is what an elephant track looks like:

 

 

 

THIS is what a bear track looks like:

 

 

 

Not much chance of mistaking either for the other...

Mulder,

Overlooked this one.

Your argument makes no sense unless you are saying that mammoths coexisted with Native Americans and European explorers (and Bigfoot) in the early 1800s. Else, we would not expect the principles in the story to know what a mammoth track would look like. The fact is, the possible survival of the mammoth was a live issue at the time. Thompson did not believe in the beast as a living entity, though. Apparently, the Native Americans did have a tradition of a mammoth like animal (thought to be giant buffalo), probably based on the finding of mammoth bones.

Here is an interesting article:

http://www.nathpo.org/Many_Nations/mn_news17.html

Here is an interesting note by the western author, Louis L'Amour. He defends his use of mammoths in his book JUBAL SACKETT by appealing to the Thompson story. Apparently L'Amour believed that mammoths did survive until fairly recent times and cites Thompson's narratives as evidence (even though Thompson himself believed the opposite.)

http://vatchy.host56.com/books/Louis L'Amour%20-%20Sackett%2004%20-%20Jubal%20Sackett/0553277391__41.htm

Here is another article about early American ideas about the mammoth.

http://www.common-place.org/vol-04/no-02/semonin/

Edited September 30, 2013 by jerrywayne

[norseman]

Here is a photo of a Elephant skeleton foot:

 

 

Is it logical for us to assume that upon finding fossilized Mammoth bones (based upon your conjecture) for native Americans to confuse known extant Bear tracks with a track that the foot above would make.

[Guest]

This is a play of semantics only if you smudge the old accounts to realign them with the phenomena now.

They are smudged in the first place. North American english has drifted a little in meaning and nuance. The cultural lense of the observers affected the way the phenomena was stated in the first place. For instance a native american who has never seen an ape is never going to descripe anything as "apelike" even his first ape! Then pioneers out west who've never been to the one or two eastern zoos or menageries of the time, might only know of apes through a 6 month old political cartoon in an eastern newspaper, hardly a zoologically exact source to make a reference from.

 

9 out of 10 people you stop in the street today, would not know  the difference between a monkey and an ape, or for instance that man is also a primate. Thus four observers seeing a bonobo in a tree, one might say he saw an ape, one might say he saw a monkey, one might say he saw a primate, and one might say he saw a chimpanzee... all telling the truth as far as they know it, but how are we to know, years separated from the event, which of them was reporting most acurately?

[Guest]

While the European descendant traders, map makers, and explorers may have understood “mammoth†to mean elephants of pre-history, the First Nation peoples doubtless had in mind some huge creature. Where did the two cultures get a similar notion of a giant animal roaming the hinterland? From the finds throughout the U.S. of mammoth and mastodon bones. To First Nations peoples and frontiersman, the bones were evidence of the existence of some huge fearsome creature.

 

IMO prior to crystallising into the term almost solely used for a particular species of prehistoric pachyderm, the term "mammoth" was applied to anything big. It wasn't originally applied just to mammoths but also mastadons.

 

This illustrates it coming into 19th century useage for large things...

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=mammoth

 

And see this also...

http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/word-stories/mammoth/#metaphorical

 

So we are in doubt as to the precision of the intended meaning. In other articles that the ones cited, (19th C news clippings mostly, previously available here, but lost in site revamp) there are implications of giant manlike creature in some usages of "mammoth". I think in the one under discussion, the "mammoth" in question was a bear of size previously not experienced by the observers, a particularly large grizzly or kodiak.

[Guest]

Here is a photo of a Elephant skeleton foot:

 

** Quoted Image Removed **

 

Is it logical for us to assume that upon finding fossilized Mammoth bones (based upon your conjecture) for native Americans to confuse known extant Bear tracks with a track that the foot above would make.

Your argument might hold water if we assumed Native Americans and early explorers always excavated mammoth bones complete and in correct position. Much more likely would be this or that piece found exposed and taken. Something along this line.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ARRMp_HSxfE/UgOrvovEobI/AAAAAAAACdw/IDKJJt-7VTA/s1600/IMG_0434.JPG

Here is a mastodon bone exhibited in Jefferson’s White House.

http://explorepahistory.com/kora/files/1/2/1-2-269-25-ExplorePAHistory-a0a9h2-a_349.jpg

Here is the type of find that led people to think ferocious giant, a mastodon tooth.

http://www.lakeneosho.org/images/MM3B.JPG

I’m not sure why you think the Thompson and mammoth connection is some kind of conjecture of mine. I may do a lot of conjecturing, needless to say, but this connection is not my conjecture. I have documented it as well as is doable.

The conjecturing here lies in your lap. The idea that the Native Americans/French Canadians used the word “mammoth†to mean giant hairy man, or that Thompson and his men were not discussing mammoths but something else, or that they should have known what mammoths tracks looked like, is pure, virgin, unsullied conjecture.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Ginger
To Remove Quoted Image