Guest Posted August 1, 2013 Posted August 1, 2013 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...
norseman Posted August 2, 2013 Admin Author Posted August 2, 2013 Norseman, Here is an interesting article that gives more background information about early American cultural views concerning mammoths and mammoth bones. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Mammoths-and-Mastodons-All-American-Monsters.html To be honest, your reply is odd to me. It is anachronistic. You are assuming Thompson and his men would know what a mammoth’s track would look like. How would they know that? They would not have seen a live elephant or a reconstructed one. http://www.historybuff.com/library/refelephant.html 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. Here again is Thompson’s mention of eastern First Nations’ lore based on a mammoth bone, and its attendant lore in the west, from whites and Indians. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/champlain/DigObj.cfm?Idno=9_96855〈=eng&Page=0304&Size=3&query=mammoth&searchtype=Fulltext&startrow=1&Limit=All Here again is Thompson noting that his men believed an area of tree falls was the work of a mammoth. He says he had them admit they had never seen the creature itself and he tells them that such a creature would leave signs, it “would leave indelible marks of its feet†if it truly existed. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/champlain/DigObj.cfm?Idno=9_96855〈=eng&Page=0570&Size=3&query=mammoth&searchtype=Fulltext&startrow=1&Limit=All So, a couple of days later Thompson and company find tracks belonging to what Thompson believes is a “large old grizled Bear.†His companions think it is the track of a mammoth. It’s easy to see what is happening here. Thompson had tried to dissuade his men from believing in the mammoth and lectured them about the need for evidence for its existence; for instance, it “would leave indelible marks of its feet.“ So, when they come upon large bear tracks that lack the signature long claw marks, they argue for mammoth, thereby finding the “indelible marks of its feet†required by Thompson to verify their belief. Your “default position, that there is no way anyone is going to mistake a Elephant track with a bear track.†You continue: “And if it was simply a bear track? Then why did he write about it as being something of a mystery between him and his Indian guides.? First, no one at that time would have known what an elephant track looked like. Second, they believed the mammoth was a giant animal (not necessarily an elephant, but much larger than a sasquatch, so please don’t go there). And third, it was not a mystery to him; their insistence on mammoth was maybe a face-saving defense of their beliefs, or an honest assessment based mainly on the short claws and sunken ball. Your idea that the Old Chief didn’t describe an elephant is probably correct. Although the idea that a very large animal needs to stand up always may be traceable to individual giant mammoth bones that would suggest a creature with immense legs without joints. Thus, the mammoth connection. You say that “Thompson does not describe a fore paw track†so “we should be able to rule out Bear very quickly….†Here you are jumping to an unnecessary conclusion. Thompson does not describe a fore paw. He apparently measured only one track, a hind paw. That, to his satisfaction, told him it was bear. And I must point out, nowhere in this story do you find mention of giant hairy men (apes). And Thompson,working the Pacific Northwest, living side by side with First Nation peoples and mapping great expanses of land, should have heard something. Don’t you think? I never once stated that his Indian scouts should know what elephant track looks like. And Iam still not convinced that what his particular group of guides was describing was a mammoth. Thompson on the other hand was educated in London. Circuses featuring elephants were popular during his time and so I do not see my position as anachronistic. It's inconceivable to me that Thompson did not have a good understanding of what an elephant looked like or what sort of track it should leave behind. The person who brings doubt into the whole story is Thompson himself. Lets look at the whole statement and not just the cherry picked parts. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx "January 7th 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 mammouth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzly 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, the Indians would not allow." (David Thompson's journal entry, January 7th, 1811.) Xxxxxxxxxcxxxxxxx Yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not of a bear. This is the part of the statement that's throws doubt into the mix! And what mystery track that is bigger than a rear paw bear track, lacks claws and has a significant ball? Well I hate to say it but its a Sasquatch track. Certainly not a mammoth track in any way shape or form. And if it was a simply a bear track? Then why the confusion? That's your point to make, why if Thompson is solid in his assessment of the trackway does he throw doubt into it? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. As far as Thompson not knowing about the Sasquatch myth? It's certainly possible. But the myth was certainly alive and well during Thompson's lifetime. And in the geographic area he was mapping. How do you explain This? http://books.google.com/books/about/Sculptured_Anthropoid_Ape_Heads_Found_in.html?id=U0gXAAAAYAAJ I'm working off an iPhone but I welcome you to look into this further. If you take the old chief account to describe a mammoth certainly you can entertain stone ape heads or totem poles that represent Sasquatch. You say that Sasquatch being represented as a ape is a modern phenomenon. I would really like you to present that case before us in a broader spectrum that the Bauman or Thompson accounts.
roguefooter Posted August 2, 2013 Posted August 2, 2013 Not true. Several of the old 1800s accounts refer to "gorillas" in reference to "wildman" eyewitnesses. I posted this newspaper article a few months ago from 1870 that references them to gorillas but "in the image of man". http://bigfootforums.com/index.php/topic/36556-stanislaus-california-1870-wild-man/
Guest Posted August 2, 2013 Posted August 2, 2013 I never once stated that his Indian scouts should know what elephant track looks like. And Iam still not convinced that what his particular group of guides was describing was a mammoth. Thompson on the other hand was educated in London. Circuses featuring elephants were popular during his time and so I do not see my position as anachronistic. It's inconceivable to me that Thompson did not have a good understanding of what an elephant looked like or what sort of track it should leave behind. The person who brings doubt into the whole story is Thompson himself. Lets look at the whole statement and not just the cherry picked parts. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx "January 7th 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 mammouth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzly 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, the Indians would not allow." (David Thompson's journal entry, January 7th, 1811.) Xxxxxxxxxcxxxxxxx Yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not of a bear. This is the part of the statement that's throws doubt into the mix! And what mystery track that is bigger than a rear paw bear track, lacks claws and has a significant ball? Well I hate to say it but its a Sasquatch track. Certainly not a mammoth track in any way shape or form. And if it was a simply a bear track? Then why the confusion? That's your point to make, why if Thompson is solid in his assessment of the trackway does he throw doubt into it? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I think you are ignoring the key part of that sentence "I held it to be the track of a large old grizzly 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, the Indians would not allow." "Otherwise" = "Other than." Thompson is saying he thought it was a large, old bear whose claws were worn down (or damaged?), but his companions wouldn't agree. He's not saying that it wasn't a bear, he's saying it was, but the Indians wouldn't admit it.
norseman Posted August 2, 2013 Admin Author Posted August 2, 2013 I think you are ignoring the key part of that sentence "I held it to be the track of a large old grizzly 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, the Indians would not allow." "Otherwise" = "Other than." Thompson is saying he thought it was a large, old bear whose claws were worn down (or damaged?), but his companions wouldn't agree. He's not saying that it wasn't a bear, he's saying it was, but the Indians wouldn't admit it. Iam not ignoring anything, iam simply pointing out the key component that throws his own account of a mundane bear track into disarray. He is admitting that the track exhibits characteristics not in line with a bear which he notes. But there are two others, no mention of a much shorter tell tale fore paw track. And his description of only four toes. Also I think the size of the track is outside the range of a grizzly bear. Again this is silly, this is a very old and vague account that has limited value in this debate. Which again I will remind everyone is Jerrywayne's claim that an ape like Bigfoot creature did not exist as a myth until bluff creek in the 50's.
Guest Cervelo Posted August 5, 2013 Posted August 5, 2013 Sasquatch most likely rode Asian elephants over to North America, both the Sasquatch and Asian Elephant developed hair over their bodies to adapt to the new harsher climate. ;-)
Guest Posted August 8, 2013 Posted August 8, 2013 (edited) Norseman, I honestly do not know what to make of your reply. We seem to be like ships passing in the night. Maybe I am to blame for not making my points well. I’ll try again. In the 17 and 18 hundreds, mammoth and mastodon bones were found in various places in North America. This lead people such as Thomas Jefferson and others to believe that in America’s uncharted regions there may exist American forms of elephants. After all, elephants existed in Asia and Africa. And elephant bones had been found here (mass extinctions is a fact not recognized in the early American centuries and was counter to religious beliefs.) The First Nations people also were exposed to extinct elephant bones. This lead to a belief among Native Americans that a giant animal existed in their world and they accounted for it in their stories. The “mammoth†was the European’s possible contemporaneous American elephant and the Indian’s giant animal. The Indian’s stories were taken by the Europeans as possible evidence of American elephants. The European’s designation of this creature as a “mammoth†also informed some First Nation peoples ideas, especially those working and living with the explorers and map makers. Thompson was very aware of the possibility of the American elephant. However, he did not seem to put much stock in it, at least as it related to impressions made by his guides. When the men found a large grizzly bear track, his guides interpreted it as made by a “young mammoth,†meaning the giant animal of Indian lore (originating from the discovery of giant bones --- mammoth bones.)It is my impression that the guides made this claim because they had been rebuked by Thompson just a couple of days earlier when they interpreted an area of tree falls as caused by the mammoth. He asked for signs on the ground of this mammoth and they couldn’t provide it. Now, with the unusual large bear track, they jumped at the chance to cry “mammoth†and prove Thompson wrong. (This is only my impression, but one that can be suggested from the text itself.) The track was considered a bear track by Thompson. Nothing you have argued erases that fact. LEISURECLASS well explained your misreading of Thompson’s bear track statement. And though you charge me with relying on “cherry picked parts†of Thompson’s story (even though I presented whole pages of Thompson’s own writings), you end up quoting only part of a Thompson sentence to make your point, and leaving off the rest of the sentence that contradicts you. Bad form, Norseman. I’ll chalk it up to the disadvantage of replying from an iPhone. Let me be clear. I do not think there were mammoths in American during the European exploration era. There was a belief among some explorers and the educated that maybe mammoths existed in unexplored areas, but it was a provisional belief. On the other hand, some First Nation peoples incorporated into their beliefs and lore the idea of a giant animal, ferocious, that seemed to coincide with the explorer’s “mammoth.†So, I do not think the Thompson track was a mammoth track. I do think you err if you are suggesting the guides were saying “mammoth†but meaning “sasquatch.†I do not think the old chief saw a mammoth. He was probably repeating Indian folklore about a giant animal (based on the huge bones known to exist.) Your entire case seems to rest on the idea that Thompson was confused by the tracks. I don’t get it. Some points in rejoinder: 1. Thompson said the tracks were bear. No confusion there. He was simply explaining why his men thought differently, and you are taking this as a statement of confusion by Thompson. 2. Thompson recorded the incident not to highlight its mysteriousness, as you imply, but because he was writing a journal and the finding of tracks that day was recorded in his journal like many other events during his travels. 3. There is no reason whatsoever to assume the men had found a bipedal track way. Why? Because their explanations for the tracks (mammoth and bear) were not bipedal animals. They really would have been confused if they were looking at a bipedal track and explaining it as having been made by a four-legged creature. 4. Nowhere in this account is there mentioned giant hairy Indians, giant human feet, American orangutans, etc. These people ought to have known all about the sasquatch, and to know its sign. They are silent. I proffer that they were silent because they had no knowledge of sasquatch or its sign. This is about as much as I can do with Thompson. I’ll respond to your request for an explanation concerning my ideas about the origin of Bigfoot next. So you won’t be disappointed, keep this in mind: I’m not saying exactly what you think I’m saying. Not to pull rank or be snarky, but ------ I was reading accounts like Ape Canyon before you were born. I am very familiar with the ape in the hinterland stuff. Edited August 8, 2013 by jerrywayne
norseman Posted August 8, 2013 Admin Author Posted August 8, 2013 (edited) Let's get something straight. I could really care less about this story in it's relation to anything, Sasquatch, Bear or Mammoth. We didn't interview him, or nor can we study pictures of the track way. But I'm not in bad form at all in pointing out WHERE THOMPSON CONTRADICTS HIS OWN ACCOUNT. I indeed must underline where he inserts confusion into his own story, in order to point out to you and other's that if it was simply a Bear track? Why did he even write about it? Why did he not just state that he came across grizzly bear tracks instead of noting that there were characteristics in those tracks NOT OF A BEAR? To you specific points: 1) Which it is a statement of confusion, whether we can dissect that it was actually Thompson that harbored some doubts or if it was him being bullied by his guides I think is lost to history. 2) Ok, I can accept that, but why then bring it up again 40 years later? I wasn't there, but I can see with earnest that if Thompson was any sort of tracker at all? In snow? The fore paw track if indeed a Bear would simply seal the deal in that trackway. Maybe if it was a Bear track, he omitted this to purposefully to then create some sort of boogie man/monster elephant (which ever way you see it) hype that would garner attention to himself and his journal. 3) No your dead wrong here. At least for a Bear walking in snow. I won't address Elephant tracks because your simply using this explanation to explain away the confusion, and do not take this hypothesis seriously. I don't know how you track animals but I never simply look at one track in a long trackway in snow and make a positive determination, especially if I'm confused with the track I'm looking at. It's like trying to understand a book by reading one page. Your argument is not logical in the sense that Thompson should have been able to take two steps and say "WALLAH! SEE! I TOLD YOU IT WAS A BEAR TRACK!!!" Because if ALL the tracks in that track way are measuring 14 inches by 8 inches? We have a problem........it's indeed a Bear. Do you or anybody else see the logical hole in the story? If he had found the track on a gravel bar during summer and that's all he had to go off of? Fine. But that is not the case in his story. 4) Ok.......so your going to beat us down with Indian Mammoth legends, that you have pointed to earlier, in which you proclaim we should accept as what the Indian guides where referring to in the Thompson account........... But any legends about Sasquatch (that are centuries old) among the native inhabitants is not to be inserted into the debate? That's a double standard. I'm not even remotely convinced that a Wolly Mammoth is what the guides are referring to at all. And it even makes less sense from a tracking point of view. It's much easier to confuse a Sasquatch track with a Bear track than a Elephant track with a Bear track. We as readers can even make that assessment from the track dimensions. So I guess what your asking us to accept is that he had gotten a hold of some really bad Indian guides. Of course obviously Thompson himself should have studied tracking a little more and sextants a little less, if he can not simply follow a Bear track in snow and make a positive ID. Not really all that difficult really. Unless of course all of the tracks look like the track to the right.........without claws, and a bigger ball........then I can see the confusion. Is there any other logical conclusion from a tracking standpoint? Also, I'd like to add one other tidbit from his story. He says the track has four toes, not five. A Bear paw's toes are much more uniform from the first to fifth digit than a Human or Sasquatch foot's toes are.......we have a much more pronounced "big toe" and "pinky toe". So it's also logical to assume that a pinkie toe may very have not registered well in the track, or the forth and fifth toe could have been confused as one toe. Hence making the track a four toed track from his observation. Do you see the devil is in the details of the account? It doesn't add up to that of a Bear, Thompson's opinion not withstanding (if indeed he was dead set on a Bear). Regardless, I don't think this account fits into the nice tidy box that you would like it to, but the account is very old and very vague, and we could hash this out for months. And I look forward to your thoughts about Apes in America prior to John Green and Bluff creek in the 1950's. Edited August 8, 2013 by norseman
Guest Posted August 9, 2013 Posted August 9, 2013 (edited) ^^^^ Norseman, I wasn’t going to address Thompson again, but honestly, your responses have all left me scratching my head. We certainly are not having the meeting of minds I had anticipated. As to bad form. You said “I indeed must underline where he inserts confusion into his own story….†Actually, you wrote this: “Yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not a bear.†This is a quote from Thompson, although you didn’t put it in parenthesis. Your bad form, however, can be found in the fact you ended the sentence with a period, shortening Thompson’s sentence to make it read differently. As LEISURECLASS pointed out, you are misreading what Thompson is saying to begin with, and, I’ll add, you are cherry picking his words in a sentence to make your mistaken point. I don’t think this is an intentional dereliction on your part. (Maybe a bit sloppy, though --- you should have ended the quote openly. We all have our bad days posting, so I’m not charging you with anything down and dirty here.) You ask if Thompson had found just bear tracks, “why did he even write about it? Why did he not just state that he came across grizzly bear tracks instead of noting that there were characteristics in those tracks NOT OF A BEAR?“ He wrote about it because he was keeping a journal and he was writing down his experiences. He noted the unusualness of the bear track and not, as you would have it, noting seeing unusual tracks that were not bear. What Thompson is really saying is the unusual track is explicable in terms of having been made by a large, old bear. You seem to want to dismiss that part of his statement completely. You write: “… I never simply look at one track in a long track way in snow and make a positive determination, ….†Are you assuming that I’m assuming Thompson just looked at one track? I would not think that. He did measure one track. I’m am assuming he felt no need to measure fore-tracks when he saw that the track was bear and that he saw a larger part of the track way that confirmed bear to him. Are you saying bear tracks can sometimes look like bipedal tracks in snow? That’s interesting, if that is what you are saying. You do seem to be saying that my “mammoth†interpretation of the events is some peculiar notion that you cannot accept. Yet, I have supplied you with Thompson’s own writings that speak to the issue of mammoths. I have provided you three articles that concern the issue of belief in the possibility of existing mammoths in the early years of our country, and two of those articles explicitly deal with Thompson and the bear track. Yet, you still write as if the idea of Thompson and his men discussing mammoths is beyond the pale. A statement like this is a puzzle: “It’s much easier to confuse a Sasquatch track with a Bear track than a Elephant track with a Bear track.†As I pointed out before, none of the men we are discussing would know what an elephant track would look like. They probably had a vague notion of an elephant, the Europeans (not all Thompson guides were natives), and the First Nation men had an even vaguer idea of “mammoth.†In their lore it was a giant and ferocious creature. In context, the men thought “young†mammoth for the track because they had a belief in the animal and the tracks seemed too large for bear (and too small for adult mammoth.) But your point is too literal. The men saw large tracks they attributed to the mammoth of lore, and NOT explicitly to an ELEPHANT, since they had no knowledge of elephant tracks. You say I am applying a double standard because I am allowing the mammoth interpretation and disallowing the sasquatch interpretation. The answer I have to that is I am not applying a double standard because the source texts we are addressing speak of mammoths and not of sasquatch. The folks seeing bipedal apes in these texts are not historians; they were not contemporaneous writers or frontiersmen; they were not those people making records of the day in journals or collecting the fauna or making geologic surveys of that era; and they were not the learned men of the time. The folks seeing apes in the Thompson journal are the Bigfooters and Forteans of our time. Edited August 9, 2013 by Ginger To Remove Quoted Content Directly Above
roguefooter Posted August 9, 2013 Posted August 9, 2013 Jerrywayne- did you claim that the ape/Sasquatch correlation was created in the 50's at Bluff Creek?
norseman Posted August 9, 2013 Admin Author Posted August 9, 2013 (edited) Norseman, I wasn’t going to address Thompson again, but honestly, your responses have all left me scratching my head. We certainly are not having the meeting of minds I had anticipated. As to bad form. You said “I indeed must underline where he inserts confusion into his own story….†Actually, you wrote this: “Yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not a bear.†This is a quote from Thompson, although you didn’t put it in parenthesis. Your bad form, however, can be found in the fact you ended the sentence with a period, shortening Thompson’s sentence to make it read differently. As LEISURECLASS pointed out, you are misreading what Thompson is saying to begin with, and, I’ll add, you are cherry picking his words in a sentence to make your mistaken point. I don’t think this is an intentional dereliction on your part. (Maybe a bit sloppy, though --- you should have ended the quote openly. We all have our bad days posting, so I’m not charging you with anything down and dirty here.) Correct, I'm generally responding to you by Iphone while sitting in the gravel pit in my truck while a loader loads gravel onto me. If what you mean by "bad form" is my grammar, then my apologies, I'm doing the best I can. I'm simply trying to illustrate the point where he goes from Bear to confusion and back to mostly likely Bear in his analysis. As far as a meeting of the minds? Well, it's a debate and I respect you as a person and a poster, but I do not necessarily agree with your assessment of either story. You ask if Thompson had found just bear tracks, “why did he even write about it? Why did he not just state that he came across grizzly bear tracks instead of noting that there were characteristics in those tracks NOT OF A BEAR?“ He wrote about it because he was keeping a journal and he was writing down his experiences. He noted the unusualness of the bear track and not, as you would have it, noting seeing unusual tracks that were not bear. What Thompson is really saying is the unusual track is explicable in terms of having been made by a large, old bear. You seem to want to dismiss that part of his statement completely. But then why talk about it 40 years later? Can you imagine how many Grizzly Bear tracks that man must have saw in his lifetime of travels in W. Canada? And again, I'm not dismissing his references to a Bear at all, only that in his assessment he sounds confused by them. Which I'll add is a parallel to the Bauman story. It's almost is if you simply want to plant a stake in both of these stories that reads "nothing to see here folks.........just move along". You write: “… I never simply look at one track in a long track way in snow and make a positive determination, ….†Are you assuming that I’m assuming Thompson just looked at one track? I would not think that. He did measure one track. I’m am assuming he felt no need to measure fore-tracks when he saw that the track was bear and that he saw a larger part of the track way that confirmed bear to him. Then why the omission? The one crucial crucial part of the jigsaw puzzle that would put the nail in the coffin he leaves out. Instead we get a vacillating account of well, I think its a Bear, but maybe it's not, but maybe it is. A simple statement of some thing along the lines of "the much shorter forepaw tracks in the snow, assured me without a doubt it's a Bear"..............would leave me at peace with his encounter. Are you saying bear tracks can sometimes look like bipedal tracks in snow? That’s interesting, if that is what you are saying. No, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that a hind foot of a Bear taken by itself can indeed look like a large Human track or Sasquatch track. And no doubt many a Bigfoot researcher has made this mistake. But if you take all of the tracks in a track way as an aggregate, then even to the untrained eye it's obvious as to whether it's a Bear or not. You do seem to be saying that my “mammoth†interpretation of the events is some peculiar notion that you cannot accept. Yet, I have supplied you with Thompson’s own writings that speak to the issue of mammoths. I have provided you three articles that concern the issue of belief in the possibility of existing mammoths in the early years of our country, and two of those articles explicitly deal with Thompson and the bear track. Yet, you still write as if the idea of Thompson and his men discussing mammoths is beyond the pale. Correct. And the reason for this is because your attempting to replace one legend within the story and shoe horn in another. From a logical standpoint it's a Cinderella story.........if the shoe fits wear it. The tracks of an elephant look nothing like what is being described in the account. And more importantly, the old chief story that you linked us to, does not in any way shape or form describe a Mammoth. We know from the story that it's very big and sleeps standing up. No mention of a truck or tusks, giant ears or any other easily distinguishable features of an Elephant or Mammoth. And yet you want me to take on faith that a Mammoth is what the old chief is describing? A statement like this is a puzzle: “It’s much easier to confuse a Sasquatch track with a Bear track than a Elephant track with a Bear track.†As I pointed out before, none of the men we are discussing would know what an elephant track would look like. They probably had a vague notion of an elephant, the Europeans (not all Thompson guides were natives), and the First Nation men had an even vaguer idea of “mammoth.†In their lore it was a giant and ferocious creature. In context, the men thought “young†mammoth for the track because they had a belief in the animal and the tracks seemed too large for bear (and too small for adult mammoth.) But your point is too literal. The men saw large tracks they attributed to the mammoth of lore, and NOT explicitly to an ELEPHANT, since they had no knowledge of elephant tracks. Did you not say in your argument that both native Americans and Anglo's were digging up Mammoth fossilized bones? Would not the bones give them a very good idea of what a Mammoth foot looked like? Or the scale? Did they think Mammoth had toes? Or claws? My point is not too literal, but logical. Why would Indian guides or White expedition members point to a Bear track and say that it was a Mammoth? If I dug up a fossilized Irish Elk as an Indian, and I make my living in the woods hunting and tracking game.........why would I point to a "odd" Bear track and say that it was instead a giant mythical ungulate? This line of reasoning to me is simply reaching on your part, I just don't see it at all. You say I am applying a double standard because I am allowing the mammoth interpretation and disallowing the sasquatch interpretation. No incorrect. In the thread before this, when we were debating, you stated you did not want to take into account Indian legends............you wanted only Anglo stories. This is exactly why we are debating the Bauman and Thompson accounts in the first place! They are non Indian, Anglo stories that seem to have an element of boogie man in them. The answer I have to that is I am not applying a double standard because the source texts we are addressing speak of mammoths and not of sasquatch. The folks seeing bipedal apes in these texts are not historians; they were not contemporaneous writers or frontiersmen; they were not those people making records of the day in journals or collecting the fauna or making geologic surveys of that era; and they were not the learned men of the time. The folks seeing apes in the Thompson journal are the Bigfooters and Forteans of our time. And yet inexplicably these historical men that seem so heavy drawn into the Indian Mammoth legends of the time according to you? Take no notice at all of the legends of wild ape men running wild in the woods according to the same tribes of Indians? Doesn't that seem a bit odd to you? I see this as a feeble attempt by you to simply wipe away the myth of Sasquatch from the historical record because it some how serves your purpose to erode the foundation of the modern myth. 1840- Rev. Elkanah Walker writes in his journal that the Spokane Indians believe in a race of giants that inhabit a mountain to the west of them: To: The Rev. David Green. Date: April, 1840. Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Dear Sir: I suppose that it is not necessary for me to say much as Mr. Eeles has given you all that is interesting. My health is very poor and I fear I shall be unable to pursue my labours as a missionary. We are, we hope, doing something in the language. It is, if I may be judge, very difficult and will require much hard study before we have much knowledge and are prepared to make any direct or forcible appeal to them. I should not be at all surprised if this mission prove a total failure. How much more confidence I should have in its success if we had had real opposition to encounter from the Indians at its commencement. We, I fear, are destined to experience some opposition from the old chief I named in my letter last fall. He has been absent most of the time since. He soon after went off to Buffalo and has not yet to my knowledge returned. I left our place last Monday for this place (Fort Colville) and shall leave tomorrow for home, “Deo volente†which I expect to reach in two days. It has been very sickly in this region the last part of the winter. Many have died. I do not know what can be done to save them from utter extinction. They seem as fated to fade away before the whites as the game of their country. There seems but one way that they can be saved and that is by settling them and civilizing them and this I fear they cannot bear. I sometimes think that it will be as injurious to them as their superstitions which are carrying them off very fast. Whatever is done for them must be quickly done, for there will soon be nothing to labour for. We need to be placed in such a situation that we can devote all our time and energies to them and when that is done we can do little on account of the few that we have access to. I think that I may safely say that the two tribes, Nez Perces and Flat Heads are as well supplied with ministers as New England, that is, there are as many preachers compared to the number of the people. We can only have access to a few at a time. If we travel and visit with them at their places we can have but little influence over them. I suppose you will bear with me if I trouble you with a little of their superstition, which has recently come to my knowledge. They believe in the existence of a race of giants which inhabit a certain mountain off to the west of us. This mountain is covered with perpetual snow. They inhabit its top. They may be classed with Goldsmith’s nocturnal class and they cannot see in the daytime. They hunt and do all of their work in the night. They are men tealers. They come to the people’s lodges in the night when the people are asleep and take them, and put them under their skins and take them to their place of abode without even waking. When they wake in the morning they are wholly lost, not knowing in what direction their home is. The account that they give of these Giants will in some measure correspond with the Bible account of this race of beings. They say their track is about a foot and a half long. They will carry two or three beams upon their back at once. They frequently come in the night and steal their salmon from their nets and eat the’m raw. If the people are awake they always know when they are coming very near, by their strong smell, which is most intolerable. It is not uncommon for them to come in the night and give three whistles and then the stones will begin to hit their houses. The people believe that they are still troubled with their nocturnal visits. We need the prayers of the Church at home. I am, My Dear Sir, Yours most truly and submissively, E. Walker (Elkanah Walker) Missionary to Spokane Indians. http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/html/e_walker.html So these race of mythical giants..............stink, whistle, throw stones and are nocturnal...........does this sound familiar to you? The painter Paul Kane wrote: “When we arrived at the mouth of the Kattlepoutal 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 mountains 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 who they hold in great dread ... these superstitions are taken from a man they say went in to the mountains with another, and escaped the fate of his companion, who was eaten by the “skookumsâ€, 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.â€11 http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/html/bigfoot_history.html A different race of beings from humans, that eat men and live in the mountains. So are we to believe that this myth is only 50 some years old then? Both of these accounts of myths are given to Anglo's by Indians.............with the Walker account being VERY VERY descriptive of the creatures. And yet, you want to dismiss these accounts, but take ole Chief's VERY VERY vague account to Thomspon of a myth as being a Mammoth. Because it's very large and sleeps while standing up............ Add to this, that you seem to be describing a European/American society in the 1800's as gaga over mysterious Elephant creatures running loose in the wild of North America, but a mysterious Ape man as not being present in their minds at all. Emmanuel Frémiet Gorilla Carrying off a Woman 1887 Bronze Yes it's a Gorilla, yes they live in Africa..........but you don't think anyone was looking at these and scratching their heads? Tsimshian tribal Sasquatch mask - 1850 Which myth was a box office smash in 1933 (the next generation after)? A mysterious Elephant like creature or a mysterious Ape like creature? You can certainly make the case that our culture was gaga for ape creatures back then, and that is responsible for the modern Sasquatch myth popularity. But our fascination with Apes, and Ape legends has been around probably since the dawn of man. And yes indeed those Indian Ape legends were present in North America before Europeans ever set foot on this continent. So if it's just a myth and no such creature such as Sasquatch truly exists? It's an amazing peek into the common human psyche that we all share across oceans, languages and cultures. And then every once and a while? A legend rears it's ugly head directly into science's delicate understandings of history. Science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis Legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebu_Gogo Jerrywayne- did you claim that the ape/Sasquatch correlation was created in the 50's at Bluff Creek? You can read his claim from the NAWAC thread (page 25) on my post #5 in this thread. Please do not go back and post anything in the NAWAC thread. I did not cherry pick anything out of his post, it's there in it's entirety and you can judge for yourself. Edited August 9, 2013 by norseman
Guest Posted August 9, 2013 Posted August 9, 2013 I'm a little late to the party I'm sure. If your still looking for sighting reports prior to the PGF era I found this one interesting for no other reason than its from my research area where we just bought a farm. It's from the John Green database circa 1940: http://www.sasquatchdatabase.com/(S(utlpp055ds2z4q45ae2kgs20))/SearchResult.aspx?i_year=1940&i_state_prov=N.%20York Interesting the note of 'apelike' in the description. As far as credibility goes I'm not so sure, but I don't think that's the point of this thread. Its interesting that the reporter is none other than famed paranormal author John Keel. Perry, NY is his hometown so I don't know if a BF story was just sensationalism that he could add into all his other writing. I haven't been down to the library yet to see if there's any news paper reports of this, I plan to go though. Also of note, there are black bears here now but there weren't then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keel BTW Norse I've been following your kill thread, love it!
Guest Posted August 9, 2013 Posted August 9, 2013 Your example wasn't reported until 1989, so it wouldn't qualify as pre-PGF era.
Guest Posted August 10, 2013 Posted August 10, 2013 ^^^ Yes, unless I can find actual historical reports of it from the library if they exist.
roguefooter Posted August 10, 2013 Posted August 10, 2013 There are more than enough pre-PGF 'apeman' examples out there from old newspapers to debunk the theory. One more or less isn't going to make a difference.
Recommended Posts