Bauman Story

[Guest]

I would not suggest a Big Bang analogy. I will go instead with a more apt analogy: UFOs. In 1948, amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen crescent shaped objects in the sky near Mt. Rainer and said they flew in the manner of “saucers skipping on water.†This was the birth of the “flying saucer†craze that blossomed into full-bore ufology over time.

Yet we know that before Arnold there were events like Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds†radio drama/hoax. This fact shows that the idea of space aliens, or public acceptance of the possibility of alien invasion, predated the Arnold event. Still, modern ufo lore, it is generally agreed, began with Arnold’s mysterious sighting. Wells’ contribution was just an anomaly that is more interesting as a chronicling of social panic than an explanation for the origin of contemporary belief in ufos.

I see an analogy with the contemporary belief in Bigfoot. Prior to the 1950s, there was no general awareness or general thought of giant apes in America‘s forestland. This does not mean that on very rare occasions one might uncover an old newspaper article about “wild people†or even large hairy people or gorilla-like creatures. Certainly those articles exist but they are fewer in number than enthusiasts like to admit; sometimes they are not a good fit for modern Bigfoot; sometimes they are hoaxes; most of the time they failed to impress contemporizes for more than a few days; they appear to reflect the contemporary concerns with Darwinian placement of man as an animal, a primate like the apes.

I need to qualify what I mean by “no general awareness†prior to the 1950s. Here, I use another analogy: panthers in America. If we define “panthers†as being a large cat, a leopard or a jaguar, and not a puma, then there is no general awareness of “panthers†living as a population in the U.S. Yet, you may find some folks who do believe in a big cat that exists locally that is not a puma, some claim to have even seen them. I knew a woman once who told me that while growing up near Cedar Creek, Texas, she was told that panthers lived in the woods. She knew they did because she would hear their screams sometimes at night. When I asked whether she meant bobcat or mountain lion, she said no, a panther. Yet, still, do most people living in rural areas believe in local "panthers" (defined as not puma); I would doubt it.

What I am getting to is this: Bigfootology began when tracks were found in North California, the tracks were publicized, and John Green came down to proclaim them linked to the same kind of animal he believed lived in B.C., the sasquatch. Since Green tossed out the original defining of sasquatch as a tribe of reclusive giant Indians, he had to get his notion of a new ape from somewhere. Did he get it from old newspaper accounts? No. He got it from Roe and Ostman? Hard to fathom since they did not categorically say they saw apes. But we do know that the premier cryptid of that period was the yeti. It captured the imagination of the English speaking world. This fact can not be emphasized too much. In the early 1950s, there was no sasquatch or Bigfoot to be found in America’s consciousness. There was to be found in that collective consciousness, however, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. The great man-ape in a far away land.

There is a reason that Bigfoot was initially defined as “America’s Abominable Snowman.†The yeti influence was there at the beginning.

[norseman]

I would not suggest a Big Bang analogy. I will go instead with a more apt analogy: UFOs. In 1948, amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen crescent shaped objects in the sky near Mt. Rainer and said they flew in the manner of “saucers skipping on water.†This was the birth of the “flying saucer†craze that blossomed into full-bore ufology over time.

Yet we know that before Arnold there were events like Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds†radio drama/hoax. This fact shows that the idea of space aliens, or public acceptance of the possibility of alien invasion, predated the Arnold event. Still, modern ufo lore, it is generally agreed, began with Arnold’s mysterious sighting. Wells’ contribution was just an anomaly that is more interesting as a chronicling of social panic than an explanation for the origin of contemporary belief in ufos.

I see an analogy with the contemporary belief in Bigfoot. Prior to the 1950s, there was no general awareness or general thought of giant apes in America‘s forestland. This does not mean that on very rare occasions one might uncover an old newspaper article about “wild people†or even large hairy people or gorilla-like creatures. Certainly those articles exist but they are fewer in number than enthusiasts like to admit; sometimes they are not a good fit for modern Bigfoot; sometimes they are hoaxes; most of the time they failed to impress contemporizes for more than a few days; they appear to reflect the contemporary concerns with Darwinian placement of man as an animal, a primate like the apes.

I need to qualify what I mean by “no general awareness†prior to the 1950s. Here, I use another analogy: panthers in America. If we define “panthers†as being a large cat, a leopard or a jaguar, and not a puma, then there is no general awareness of “panthers†living as a population in the U.S. Yet, you may find some folks who do believe in a big cat that exists locally that is not a puma, some claim to have even seen them. I knew a woman once who told me that while growing up near Cedar Creek, Texas, she was told that panthers lived in the woods. She knew they did because she would hear their screams sometimes at night. When I asked whether she meant bobcat or mountain lion, she said no, a panther. Yet, still, do most people living in rural areas believe in local "panthers" (defined as not puma); I would doubt it.

What I am getting to is this: Bigfootology began when tracks were found in North California, the tracks were publicized, and John Green came down to proclaim them linked to the same kind of animal he believed lived in B.C., the sasquatch. Since Green tossed out the original defining of sasquatch as a tribe of reclusive giant Indians, he had to get his notion of a new ape from somewhere. Did he get it from old newspaper accounts? No. He got it from Roe and Ostman? Hard to fathom since they did not categorically say they saw apes. But we do know that the premier cryptid of that period was the yeti. It captured the imagination of the English speaking world. This fact can not be emphasized too much. In the early 1950s, there was no sasquatch or Bigfoot to be found in America’s consciousness. There was to be found in that collective consciousness, however, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. The great man-ape in a far away land.

There is a reason that Bigfoot was initially defined as “America’s Abominable Snowman.†The yeti influence was there at the beginning.

 

 

Ok............two points, one towards your ufology and the other towards your comment highlighted.

 

1) One full year BEFORE Arnold's encounter at Mt. Rainer:

 

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

 

Read the headline on the paper............"RAAF captures FLYING SAUCER on ranch in Roswell region."

 

Not only does this destroy your assumption that the birth of the term "flying saucer" was born with Arnold..........it also destroys your assumption that it's the start of a craze............the people's own GOVERNMENT made a claim of capturing a flying saucer. Which it later recanted as just a weather balloon. Roswell is ground zero of modern ufology, end of story. There are more conspiracy theories from that event than almost the rest of ufology combined.

 

I personally find it funny that we now know that the Air Force was trying to develop flying wing technology seized from Germany at the end of WW2........

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229

 

Looks kinda like a crescent doesn't it? Anyhow..........not a good analogy and not a very wise statement you made that I highlighted.

 

Fred Beck uses the term "hairy Apes" to describe his encounter.........

 

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/classics/beck.htm

 

 

 

Here again, this story ran in many newspapers, it's a popular story, I knew it as a kid and it freakin says APE MEN right in the title!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! More importantly it was ran in the press in 1924!!!!!

 

Jerry........I'm being as open minded as I possibly can be to you.

 

As a gesture of extending an olive branch to your position? I can say without a doubt that the term Bigfoot was coined in N. California during the 1950's. I can say without a doubt that Green and Dahinden made large contributions to the myth of Bigfoot during their lifetimes. Unfortunately you dogmatically hold on to the assumption that they completely invented the modern myth of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. This has been proven to be absolutely false..........

 

You can fight me over terminology..........you can fight me over what this story is saying or that story is describing, that it's a misidentification or another myth all together. That's all fine and good.

 

But when you state there was no one describing ape men in the hinterlands prior to Green or Dahinden when I can plainly show you there were? I've kicked the chair right out from under you. You have Wrabbit to thank for that one by the way........I knew they were there but he found them and linked them to this debate. That part of your argument is over..........if you doggedly stick to this line of reasoning, then you abandon logic and critical thinking. The newspaper clippings are not fictitious in any way.........and they are the final nail in the coffin.

 

Now, with that out of the way? Some food for thought here..........with as much emphasis as you place on Green and Dahinden? I wonder if children being born today will even know about them? Or if the myth of Sasquatch will come to them from the Barackman's, Bobo's and Moneymaker's of the world here today with their own TV shows?

 

Also, another baffling thing to me in your debate was that you completely left out the PGF as a crux moment in the myth of Sasquatch. Personally I think the Crew story would have been just another Beck story if it had not been for that film in the same area a decade later. In fact I would argue that the PGF is our Roswell.............it is the most important moment of this subject bar none. And here again...........there are more conspiracy stories that we talk about even today surrounding that film than any other single point in the myth, without a doubt.

 

In the case of Roswell, our government's admittance to capturing a flying saucer was what put gravitas into the myth. And same goes for the PGF...........just Ape man stories by local yocals until people saw it with their own eyes.

 

Again, I want to remind everyone that this debate was not about discussing the REALITY of Bigfoot or Sasquatch.........just the origins of the myth.

 

I think I've flatly beaten Jerry in this debate with facts and logic (you can be the judge), but I've only beaten him in proving the myth has been around longer than John Green has. He is still a skeptic, and in the question of Sasquatch being a real animal, science is still on his side, and it's up to proponents to prove him wrong. Which we haven't done a very good job of for quite sometime.

 

Thanks Jerry!

[Guest]

Norseman,

Thanks for working with me on this. Although we won’t agree, maybe we will at least understand each other.

First, though --- I mistyped the Arnold date and led you astray, apparently. Arnold saw his ufos skipping like “saucers†on June 24, 1947 (not, as I typed, 1948.) The Roswell incident happened on July 7th, 1947. The military used the term “flying saucers†because of its popular usage, fresh from the Arnold event.

I should point out that the Roswell “flying saucer†story was almost immediately forgotten after the military’s correction. It took a couple of decades after Arnold’s account got the ball rolling on the ufo myth for enthusiasts to look back and realize they had a juicy story (not the least, the sensational headline you mentioned) and went to work dreaming up their conspiracies.

As to the apes in the hinterland confusion, I think you are missing the distinction and the nuance of what I am saying. Probably not your fault. Maybe mine.

We are dealing with two issues. First, how important were the newspaper accounts in disseminating belief in what we now call Bigfoot. I say such accounts had negligible influence. They came and went. Some people may have believed the accounts, but I would say most did not. The accounts DID NOT induce the general public to consider that America had its own indigenous species of apes. There was not a widely held belief in an American ape. In fact, it was more fringe than even today.

You are looking at cases where people claimed to have seen such things as “Ape-men, 8 Feet Tall, With Hairy Bodies Like Bears†and you seem to be converting this into a general acceptance by the public that such things existed. No. Those type accounts were weird and anomalous and led nowhere. They were investigated and found unsupportable. They certainly did not crescendo, causing long term interest or generate a growing fascination with the possibility of an ape population in the wilds of North America.

Just as some locations have their own ghost stories, some have their monster stories. I will grant that you may find some community here or there that had their own “Boo Radley†stories involving hairy men-monsters, but those were unimportant and wink heavy.

So to clear up our confusion on this point, I am not saying that no one ever claimed to have seen ape-men in the hinterland. I’m saying that those scattered accounts are unimportant in understanding the origin of Bigfootology today. Those accounts were not influential and did not lead to a grassroots belief in apes in America. That came later with the events in B.C. and California in the 1950s and 60s.

The second issue is this: Does the trail of Bigfoot/sasquatch, i.e., Bigfootology, as modern phenomena, begin with Ape Canyon, or J.W. Burns, or Jacko, or numerous other newspaper accounts? Or does it begin with Dahinden, Green, Sanderson, etc.? I say the second group. I believe that the ape in the American woods scenario was stillborn time and time again because, when all was said and done, there was nothing but newspaper accounts and people’s claims of sightings.

What set the B.C. and California conditions apart were a handful of special circumstances. First, the yeti was big news in the early fifties with headlines all through the English speaking world, not to be overlooked in a British subject like Canada. The yeti was being portrayed as a robust, coneheaded, bipedal ape. Dahinden caught yeti fever, like Dinsdale had for Nessie. He was given advice that Canada had its own giant hairy ones and he made North America his home. Green thought the sasquatch a bogus belief (and why, if belief in the creature was a normal occurrence?) Rene converted Green. They found substance in Roe and Ostman, giving descriptions that could be seen as yeti-like. And they were seemingly level-headed whites, not the superstitious Indians.

Green and Dahinden conceptually converted the sasquatch from Indians speaking Douglas dialect into massive, bipedal apes, just as the yeti was perceived. Their next task was to see if the historical records could support such a conclusion. In old newspaper files they found what they believed to be verification in such stories as Ape Canyon and Jacko (although Green later disavowed the Jacko story.) This was the beginning.

Second, Sanderson got involved. He was a well know personality and importantly a zoologist. He was a freelance writer for men’s entertainment magazines. He was also a Fortean. Green fed him his sightings and historical reports. Then something happened that set the course for a sea change in belief in apes in the hinterland. Tracks were found and documented in California. This made all the difference. Something tangible. Not just a ghost story, after all.

Enter Wallace. It is possible (I think probable) that Wallace and company laid the tracks that created the term Bigfoot. Early on Green likened these tracks to those traced at Ruby Creek in B.C., even though they were similar only in size. He claimed that the maker of these tracks must be a sasquatch, a bipedal ape. Wallace secretly obliged and had two of his employees claim to see the very same type animal crossing a road after dark.

There was a difference between yeti and sasquatch, though. The tracks. If we assume the early tracks were hoaxed (and I do) by Wallace, who got the idea from Rant Mullins who claimed to have hoaxed tracks in Washington state for decades, then we may assume Bigfoot has a human-like foot because Mullins was hoaxing giant HUMAN tracks or maybe even hoaxing THE sasquatch of Indian lore (but again, giant HUMAN Indians, giant HUMAN tracks.) Mullins started making hoax stompers long before Shipton found his more apelike yeti track and, in any event, wasn’t trying to create an ape track.

You say Patterson was more important than Green or Dahinden. I say yes, and no. If there had been no Green, Dahinden, or Sanderson, there would have been no Patterson. They played up sasquatch and Bigfoot as America’s Abominable Snowman and Patterson got cryptid fever because of them. Patterson’s film subject looks like a yeti with Wallace style human feet.

I've gotta close for now. Thanks for the exchange.

[HOLDMYBEER]

..............When fleshed out? This story I feel very well could be describing a bipedal Sasquatch track. Thompson never mentions specifically it's bipedal, but when you read between the lines? Why the confusion first of all? And second of all, no mention of the tracks being anything other than 14x8 inches in dimension. So if it was a Bear? It was indeed walking bipedally.............

 

 

I have spoken with Jack Nesbit (the author referenced above) and know him to be an authority on Thompson's writings.  We had an opportunity to talk about the journal entry made at Athabascan Pass and Thompson's subsequent mentions of it. I defer to Nesbit on all things Thompson. I also think Thompson's writing speaks for itself: ..." but the sight of the track of that large beast staggered me, and I often thought of it. yet never could bring myself to believe such an animal existed, but thought it might be the track of some monster Bear"....  

 

By his own words Thompson indicates he was puzzled by what they found, that he had no answer for what they saw, that he wrote it off as a 'monster bear' never really sure what path they had crossed. Coming from fellows that had each probably seen more bear tracks than all of us combined their puzzlement says volumes to me.

Edited September 5, 2013 by HOLDMYBEER

[Cotter]

There are records of flying craft dated 6,000 years ago.

 

Jerry - it seems that you are arguing terms, not objects or animals.

A rose by any other name.

 

And I'll offer, perhaps the term 'the american abominable snowman' was coined in America as the abominal snowman was already socially known and acceptable.

[Guest Darrell]

Where there persons searching for bigfoot prior to the 1950's?

[norseman]

Does searching include having your cabin attacked with boulders from"ape men"?

[roguefooter]

^This is an original newspaper that I have from 1924:

 

[norseman]

Norseman,

Thanks for working with me on this. Although we won’t agree, maybe we will at least understand each other.

First, though --- I mistyped the Arnold date and led you astray, apparently. Arnold saw his ufos skipping like “saucers†on June 24, 1947 (not, as I typed, 1948.) The Roswell incident happened on July 7th, 1947. The military used the term “flying saucers†because of its popular usage, fresh from the Arnold event.

I should point out that the Roswell “flying saucer†story was almost immediately forgotten after the military’s correction. It took a couple of decades after Arnold’s account got the ball rolling on the ufo myth for enthusiasts to look back and realize they had a juicy story (not the least, the sensational headline you mentioned) and went to work dreaming up their conspiracies.

As to the apes in the hinterland confusion, I think you are missing the distinction and the nuance of what I am saying. Probably not your fault. Maybe mine.

We are dealing with two issues. First, how important were the newspaper accounts in disseminating belief in what we now call Bigfoot. I say such accounts had negligible influence. They came and went. Some people may have believed the accounts, but I would say most did not. The accounts DID NOT induce the general public to consider that America had its own indigenous species of apes. There was not a widely held belief in an American ape. In fact, it was more fringe than even today.

You are looking at cases where people claimed to have seen such things as “Ape-men, 8 Feet Tall, With Hairy Bodies Like Bears†and you seem to be converting this into a general acceptance by the public that such things existed. No. Those type accounts were weird and anomalous and led nowhere. They were investigated and found unsupportable. They certainly did not crescendo, causing long term interest or generate a growing fascination with the possibility of an ape population in the wilds of North America.

Just as some locations have their own ghost stories, some have their monster stories. I will grant that you may find some community here or there that had their own “Boo Radley†stories involving hairy men-monsters, but those were unimportant and wink heavy.

So to clear up our confusion on this point, I am not saying that no one ever claimed to have seen ape-men in the hinterland. I’m saying that those scattered accounts are unimportant in understanding the origin of Bigfootology today. Those accounts were not influential and did not lead to a grassroots belief in apes in America. That came later with the events in B.C. and California in the 1950s and 60s.

The second issue is this: Does the trail of Bigfoot/sasquatch, i.e., Bigfootology, as modern phenomena, begin with Ape Canyon, or J.W. Burns, or Jacko, or numerous other newspaper accounts? Or does it begin with Dahinden, Green, Sanderson, etc.? I say the second group. I believe that the ape in the American woods scenario was stillborn time and time again because, when all was said and done, there was nothing but newspaper accounts and people’s claims of sightings.

What set the B.C. and California conditions apart were a handful of special circumstances. First, the yeti was big news in the early fifties with headlines all through the English speaking world, not to be overlooked in a British subject like Canada. The yeti was being portrayed as a robust, coneheaded, bipedal ape. Dahinden caught yeti fever, like Dinsdale had for Nessie. He was given advice that Canada had its own giant hairy ones and he made North America his home. Green thought the sasquatch a bogus belief (and why, if belief in the creature was a normal occurrence?) Rene converted Green. They found substance in Roe and Ostman, giving descriptions that could be seen as yeti-like. And they were seemingly level-headed whites, not the superstitious Indians.

Green and Dahinden conceptually converted the sasquatch from Indians speaking Douglas dialect into massive, bipedal apes, just as the yeti was perceived. Their next task was to see if the historical records could support such a conclusion. In old newspaper files they found what they believed to be verification in such stories as Ape Canyon and Jacko (although Green later disavowed the Jacko story.) This was the beginning.

Second, Sanderson got involved. He was a well know personality and importantly a zoologist. He was a freelance writer for men’s entertainment magazines. He was also a Fortean. Green fed him his sightings and historical reports. Then something happened that set the course for a sea change in belief in apes in the hinterland. Tracks were found and documented in California. This made all the difference. Something tangible. Not just a ghost story, after all.

Enter Wallace. It is possible (I think probable) that Wallace and company laid the tracks that created the term Bigfoot. Early on Green likened these tracks to those traced at Ruby Creek in B.C., even though they were similar only in size. He claimed that the maker of these tracks must be a sasquatch, a bipedal ape. Wallace secretly obliged and had two of his employees claim to see the very same type animal crossing a road after dark.

There was a difference between yeti and sasquatch, though. The tracks. If we assume the early tracks were hoaxed (and I do) by Wallace, who got the idea from Rant Mullins who claimed to have hoaxed tracks in Washington state for decades, then we may assume Bigfoot has a human-like foot because Mullins was hoaxing giant HUMAN tracks or maybe even hoaxing THE sasquatch of Indian lore (but again, giant HUMAN Indians, giant HUMAN tracks.) Mullins started making hoax stompers long before Shipton found his more apelike yeti track and, in any event, wasn’t trying to create an ape track.

You say Patterson was more important than Green or Dahinden. I say yes, and no. If there had been no Green, Dahinden, or Sanderson, there would have been no Patterson. They played up sasquatch and Bigfoot as America’s Abominable Snowman and Patterson got cryptid fever because of them. Patterson’s film subject looks like a yeti with Wallace style human feet.

I've gotta close for now. Thanks for the exchange.

 

Ok, I feel like your completely moving the goal posts again.

 

The first time you moved the goal posts was when you introduced Indian myths into the debate. Originally we were only going to talk about non Indian accounts prior to the 1950's hence the importance of the Bauman and Thompson accounts. Once you introduced the old chief's myth about Wooly Mammoths into the debate then I went ahead and started using a treasure trove of Indian myths concerning Ape men.

 

But now more importantly this time, your really trying to change the original intent of the debate, which is not cool............

 

You said:

 

The accounts DID NOT induce the general public to consider that America had its own indigenous species of apes.

 

No WHERE at NO time, were we discussing BELIEF.............we were discussing knowledge. People know about a great many myths without believing in them. Your whole premise of your debate is that people simply had no knowledge of a Ape man myth prior to 1950's. It was completely an invention of John Green............that's originally the crux of what you stated.

 

This is a fallacy that we in this forum have torpedoed and sunk...........it's dead, defunct, kaput!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

People did know about Ape man myths prior to the 50's and Mr. Green. How many of those people actually BELIEVED in those myths?  The straight up answer is that we have no idea............what the consensus was. But humans being human? I would guess that it's probably somewhere close to what it is today. I would guess one in four or one in five people today thinks that Bigfoot exists. My father had a sighting prior to the 1950's up at Mt. Index. And out of his wife (my mother), my aunt (her sister) and uncle, which all four palled around together alot? He was the only one that believed.

 

But this is not the original question, of the debate. A question of belief............only if the myth of a Ape man existed at all or if it was a pure fabrication by John Green. 

 

It existed.

[Guest Rex]

Where there persons searching for bigfoot prior to the 1950's?

 

 

Where?

[roguefooter]

Where there persons searching for bigfoot prior to the 1950's?

 

As like a researcher- probably not. I'm thinking that Marlin Perkins and Edmund Hillary's search for the Yeti was probably the first, though I could be wrong.

 

Searching as in an angry mob or police hunt? Yes, there were multiple times. I have a couple newspaper articles including the one I posted above where people go out on a hunt for it. I have another from 1871.

[Guest UPs]

This argument comes up often from the skeptics, that bf was really not not known prior to the 1950,s. There is a host of evidence to the contrary as Norse and others have pointed out and I would like to add one thing more. Have any of you read the book " The Call of the Wild" ? This is a very famous book that was published in the early 1900,s (1903?). In one of the later chapters, the author describes what I can only assume to be a sasquatch. The description he uses is not an exact match for what we would use today, but it is undoubtedly a sasquatch.

It has been quite a while since I read the book and for those who have not read it, its very well written and was difficult for me to put down. Of course this book is entirely fiction, but the author tries to put the reader in those forests by using just words and from the popularity of this book, he did a fantastic job. I certainly do not believe he just came up with the description of this animal or wild man on his own and instead probably used more common knowledge from stories well known at the time. This is just another example of what was probably common knowledge at the time. If you have not read the book, I highly recommend it. UPs

Edited for the following.....in the book, the dog is reflecting back when he was a wolf and describes the short legged hairy man who would gather shell fish by the sea, sleep in the trees, eyes peering everywhere or hidden danger and run like the wind at the first appearance. The man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck, leap into the trees and move as quickly in the trees as on the ground, swing from tree to tree. These descriptions are in chapter 7 and although not an exact match for bf, what else could he be describing?

Edited September 8, 2013 by UPs

[Guest]

Ok, I feel like your completely moving the goal posts again.

 

The first time you moved the goal posts was when you introduced Indian myths into the debate. Originally we were only going to talk about non Indian accounts prior to the 1950's hence the importance of the Bauman and Thompson accounts. Once you introduced the old chief's myth about Wooly Mammoths into the debate then I went ahead and started using a treasure trove of Indian myths concerning Ape men.

 

But now more importantly this time, your really trying to change the original intent of the debate, which is not cool............

 

You said:

 

 

No WHERE at NO time, were we discussing BELIEF.............we were discussing knowledge. People know about a great many myths without believing in them. Your whole premise of your debate is that people simply had no knowledge of a Ape man myth prior to 1950's. It was completely an invention of John Green............that's originally the crux of what you stated.

 

This is a fallacy that we in this forum have torpedoed and sunk...........it's dead, defunct, kaput!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

People did know about Ape man myths prior to the 50's and Mr. Green. How many of those people actually BELIEVED in those myths?  The straight up answer is that we have no idea............what the consensus was. But humans being human? I would guess that it's probably somewhere close to what it is today. I would guess one in four or one in five people today thinks that Bigfoot exists. My father had a sighting prior to the 1950's up at Mt. Index. And out of his wife (my mother), my aunt (her sister) and uncle, which all four palled around together alot? He was the only one that believed.

 

But this is not the original question, of the debate. A question of belief............only if the myth of a Ape man existed at all or if it was a pure fabrication by John Green. 

 

It existed.

Norseman,

Somehow I missed this: “I think I’ve flatly beaten Jerry in this debate with facts and logic…..â€

I am looking at this from an exchange of ideas point of view, which is apparently out of step with your intentions. I did not complain when you moved my comments to a new thread. I do complain when you try to saddle me with your perception of the issue at hand, which is at odds with how I am looking at it and then claim some kind of superior “logic“ and uncontested “facts.â€

Now you say “I feel like your completely moving the goal posts again.†Nonsense. So far we have been playing a night game --- in the dark. You fail to see my point of view --- because you have cobbled it to your own perception of the issue. And I’m probably missing some of your intent for a similar reason.

My argument is this: without the events in B.C. and California in the 1950s and 1960s, the events that include a cast of characters such as Green, Dahinden, Sanderson, Wallace, Patterson, Crew, Roe, Ostman, Ms. Chapman from Ruby Creek, the Humboldt Times Editor, etc., you would probably not be a Bigfoot enthusiast today. Perhaps without them you would have still stumbled onto Charles Fort and read some Fortean literature that mentioned “Ape Canyon†and you would have wondered about it, but the story alone would not have lead you to believe that there are troops of apes populating the wilds of North America. (BTW, where are the indigenous apes of North America to be referenced in Fort’s books on natural mysteries?) The events in the 1950s and 60s catapulted the idea of native apes and captivated a segment of the population that continued to grow in numbers through the decades until now. Prior to that, you had scattered newsprint accounts of dubious stories that reflected worldly folk lore (giants among us) and the public’s interest in travelers’ accounts and explorers’ tales of apes and the verification of actual apes (in Africa and Asia, NOT America.) Because of my age, and my interest in the subject, I remember when the idea of a new type of ape native to America, aka, sasquatch/ Bigfoot, was fresh and came to us primarily from Sanderson, channeling Green, who was converted by Dahinden. The idea of a native American ape simply did not exist in the general population back then. You came to the party when the backstory, the newspaper accounts of wild people, gorillas, etc. and the introduction of Thompson, TR, etc., was fully integrated into the Bigfoot myth; you’ve mistaken what transpired at and since Ruby Creek, Roe, Bluff Creek, etc. as a continuation of an “apes in America†historical saga. Your mistake, I think, is to assume occasional newsprint accounts reflected a general knowledge of apes in America when in truth such accounts were anomalies and COUNTER to the general knowledge of the era.

I’ll try a new analogy based on a fiction. Maybe you will get what I’ve been trying to say about Bigfoot.

Let’s say that someone next week tells the local paper that he has seen what appears to have been a prehistoric flying reptile fly across the road one day. The sighting makes the back pages. Someone else in the area finds some strange markings on the ground in a nearby area of cliffs, markings that look like they may have been made by a pterosaur of some sort. Another sighting occurs. Now the story makes headlines across the land. People now have an interest in the possibility of surviving pterosaurs. The lore surrounding the American Pterosaur grows. Unlike Bigfoot, there are fossil remains of giant flying reptiles in America so some people give the notion of living relics of prehistory a pass.

Eventually more and more sightings occur as people become acclimated to the idea that pterosaurs populate our skies. Books and TV shows like “Finding Flying Dragons†become popular. A segment of the population has come to believe that there really are pterosaurs living in America today -- check out the sightings data base and tell me that flying reptiles do not exist, you skeptic.

But if pterosaur-like creatures are living all over the U.S., how come there is no real history (other than very old fossils) of their existence? Belief in flying reptiles really “took off†when the fellow saw one fly over and another fellow found tracks and someone else saw it again. Those events began the mushrooming of belief in flying reptiles.

But, the flying reptile enthusiast will say: hey, there is a historical record proving not only that pterosaurs were living in recent times, but people knew about them all along --- just like we know about them now. And the enthusiast will point to this or something like it: http://www.strangemag.com/strangemag/strange21/thunderbird21/thunderbird5_21.html

Do you think the newsprint stories about pterosaurs suggest a real back history for contemporary accounts and show that these historical accounts prove people knew about pterosaurs in the American hinterland a century ago?

All I have argued for is that the modern belief in Bigfoot originated in the 1950s and 60s. I fully recognize accounts that mention ape-men and so forth, prior to the 50s and 60s. I tender that those accounts, ALONE, are not the origin of today’s myth. They supplemented the events in the 50s and 60s later, by hook or crook. Even conceptually, we need not link them: for instance, J.W. Burns’ “sasquatch†were a tribe of Indians, not apes. The “Ape Canyon†incident was not simply a tale of aggressive native sasquatch (although local Indians imagined it was); the story was dubious then and even later more so when it became an outright paranormal event as retold by one its principles. Most of the stories back then were of feral humans, again unlike your idea of Bigfoot. Of coarse, we do not know how many people believed in American apes prior to the 1950s. You think the same percentage then as now. But because the accounts were really very few,I think much, much less, so small as to probably be unmeasurable, in principle. We do know that popular culture makes no unambiguous accounting of sasquatch like apes prior to recent times. (The “White Fang†referenced by UPs above is a perfect example of refitting a tale to see a sasquatch when it really doesn't fit.) Where is an aside from Twain, or some other chronicler, that bespeaks knowledge of sasquatch as normal fauna? Even the decade of the 1950s produced films such as The Abominable Snowman and The Snow Creature, movies about the yeti. Why no sasquatch? Why no Bigfoot movies from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s? And no, King Kong does not count (the idea of King Kong was born when a writer imagined what it would be like to have a gorilla fight a Komodo dragon on film.)

Here for your perusal is a dissertation on a folk lore interpretation of “wild man†stories in America. It is long and well worth reading. I’m not saying that this has much to do with my comments here, but it is interesting -- and he mentions Green and sasquatch later in.

https://repository.library.brown.edu/fedora/objects/bdr:11061/datastreams/PDF/content

[Guest]

I have spoken with Jack Nesbit (the author referenced above) and know him to be an authority on Thompson's writings.  We had an opportunity to talk about the journal entry made at Athabascan Pass and Thompson's subsequent mentions of it. I defer to Nesbit on all things Thompson. I also think Thompson's writing speaks for itself: ..." but the sight of the track of that large beast staggered me, and I often thought of it. yet never could bring myself to believe such an animal existed, but thought it might be the track of some monster Bear"....  

 

By his own words Thompson indicates he was puzzled by what they found, that he had no answer for what they saw, that he wrote it off as a 'monster bear' never really sure what path they had crossed. Coming from fellows that had each probably seen more bear tracks than all of us combined their puzzlement says volumes to me.

Thanks for weighing in.

You are quoting Nesbit in the second paragraph? It seems to me, and far be it for me to contradict Nesbit, but for me, in context, Thompson means by "yet never could bring myself to believe such an animal existed," the young mammoth his guides had suggested was the culprit. Would you know if Nesbit would agree with my assessment about the "such an animal" quote?

Edited September 11, 2013 by jerrywayne

[norseman]

Norseman,

Somehow I missed this: “I think I’ve flatly beaten Jerry in this debate with facts and logic…..â€

I am looking at this from an exchange of ideas point of view, which is apparently out of step with your intentions. I did not complain when you moved my comments to a new thread. I do complain when you try to saddle me with your perception of the issue at hand, which is at odds with how I am looking at it and then claim some kind of superior “logic“ and uncontested “facts.â€

 

 

Jerry,

 

The reason why I moved your comments to this thread is because we were hijacking the NAWAC thread, no ill intent involved.

 

And you and I can both have our points of view........which was evident in our Thompson and Bauman discussions. In which both accounts were very old and very vague. But as you come forward in time, the facts stand out and are not open to interpretation.

 

 

Now you say “I feel like your completely moving the goal posts again.†Nonsense. So far we have been playing a night game --- in the dark. You fail to see my point of view --- because you have cobbled it to your own perception of the issue. And I’m probably missing some of your intent for a similar reason.

 

I can dig up your comments if you would like. But my perception of the ground rules of this debate were framed as thus. No Anglo Saxon myth of a Ape man in north America existed before John Green invented it.

 

You inserted the old chief mammoth legend into the debate upon discussing the Thompson account. That's not a Anglo Saxon myth.........but a native American one. To which I responded in kind by then pointing to native American myths that supported the myth of Sasquatch.

 

Then we never ever framed this debate within the context of BELIEF. Only if the myth existed..........that's a huge difference, and completely changes the ground rules. If in 1924 I read in the paper that Apes are attacking miners in Ape canyon? Without a doubt I'm aware of that myth............that is a fact, but me believing that myth is immaterial to this debate.

 

 

My argument is this: without the events in B.C. and California in the 1950s and 1960s, the events that include a cast of characters such as Green, Dahinden, Sanderson, Wallace, Patterson, Crew, Roe, Ostman, Ms. Chapman from Ruby Creek, the Humboldt Times Editor, etc., you would probably not be a Bigfoot enthusiast today. Perhaps without them you would have still stumbled onto Charles Fort and read some Fortean literature that mentioned “Ape Canyon†and you would have wondered about it, but the story alone would not have lead you to believe that there are troops of apes populating the wilds of North America. (BTW, where are the indigenous apes of North America to be referenced in Fort’s books on natural mysteries?) The events in the 1950s and 60s catapulted the idea of native apes and captivated a segment of the population that continued to grow in numbers through the decades until now. Prior to that, you had scattered newsprint accounts of dubious stories that reflected worldly folk lore (giants among us) and the public’s interest in travelers’ accounts and explorers’ tales of apes and the verification of actual apes (in Africa and Asia, NOT America.) Because of my age, and my interest in the subject, I remember when the idea of a new type of ape native to America, aka, sasquatch/ Bigfoot, was fresh and came to us primarily from Sanderson, channeling Green, who was converted by Dahinden. The idea of a native American ape simply did not exist in the general population back then. You came to the party when the backstory, the newspaper accounts of wild people, gorillas, etc. and the introduction of Thompson, TR, etc., was fully integrated into the Bigfoot myth; you’ve mistaken what transpired at and since Ruby Creek, Roe, Bluff Creek, etc. as a continuation of an “apes in America†historical saga. Your mistake, I think, is to assume occasional newsprint accounts reflected a general knowledge of apes in America when in truth such accounts were anomalies and COUNTER to the general knowledge of the era.

 

Again your talking belief, which is immaterial to our discussion. Basically what your saying is that Green and Dahinden catapulted Sasquatch into the limelight.........to which I would say that even their stories and foot casts would have been forgotten if it had not been for the Patterson Gimlin film, but whatever.

 

The point of fact IS.........Green nor Dahinden INVENTED the idea that Ape men were roaming the hinterlands. You have to retract previous statements in which you said thus, because the facts flatly reject this notion of yours. 

 

Your point that they made it a more popular, would require a completely new debate, but is much less of a radical statement from you. Green and Dahinden were important "researchers" in the myth of Sasquatch and I will grant you that. But I still say the crux moment was the PGF in the myth, more than anything else. It was like a bomb going off.............

 

 

 

I’ll try a new analogy based on a fiction. Maybe you will get what I’ve been trying to say about Bigfoot.

Let’s say that someone next week tells the local paper that he has seen what appears to have been a prehistoric flying reptile fly across the road one day. The sighting makes the back pages. Someone else in the area finds some strange markings on the ground in a nearby area of cliffs, markings that look like they may have been made by a pterosaur of some sort. Another sighting occurs. Now the story makes headlines across the land. People now have an interest in the possibility of surviving pterosaurs. The lore surrounding the American Pterosaur grows. Unlike Bigfoot, there are fossil remains of giant flying reptiles in America so some people give the notion of living relics of prehistory a pass.

Eventually more and more sightings occur as people become acclimated to the idea that pterosaurs populate our skies. Books and TV shows like “Finding Flying Dragons†become popular. A segment of the population has come to believe that there really are pterosaurs living in America today -- check out the sightings data base and tell me that flying reptiles do not exist, you skeptic.

But if pterosaur-like creatures are living all over the U.S., how come there is no real history (other than very old fossils) of their existence? Belief in flying reptiles really “took off†when the fellow saw one fly over and another fellow found tracks and someone else saw it again. Those events began the mushrooming of belief in flying reptiles.

But, the flying reptile enthusiast will say: hey, there is a historical record proving not only that pterosaurs were living in recent times, but people knew about them all along --- just like we know about them now. And the enthusiast will point to this or something like it: http://www.strangemag.com/strangemag/strange21/thunderbird21/thunderbird5_21.html

Do you think the newsprint stories about pterosaurs suggest a real back history for contemporary accounts and show that these historical accounts prove people knew about pterosaurs in the American hinterland a century ago?

 

First of all, we do have fossils of "Bigfoot" if by that you mean a bipedal ape that was not fully human and falls somewhere in the bushy hominid tree. Sasquatch does not represent a species that has no precedent in evolution. Such as a five headed hydra.

 

Second, I would absolutely say that if people were reporting sightings 100 years ago of pterosaurs flying around that that is very important to the overall myth if that is what people are reporting today. Despite how many people believed the reports back then versus how many people believe today.

 

All I have argued for is that the modern belief in Bigfoot originated in the 1950s and 60s. I fully recognize accounts that mention ape-men and so forth, prior to the 50s and 60s. I tender that those accounts, ALONE, are not the origin of today’s myth. They supplemented the events in the 50s and 60s later, by hook or crook. Even conceptually, we need not link them: for instance, J.W. Burns’ “sasquatch†were a tribe of Indians, not apes. The “Ape Canyon†incident was not simply a tale of aggressive native sasquatch (although local Indians imagined it was); the story was dubious then and even later more so when it became an outright paranormal event as retold by one its principles. Most of the stories back then were of feral humans, again unlike your idea of Bigfoot. Of coarse, we do not know how many people believed in American apes prior to the 1950s. You think the same percentage then as now. But because the accounts were really very few,I think much, much less, so small as to probably be unmeasurable, in principle. We do know that popular culture makes no unambiguous accounting of sasquatch like apes prior to recent times. (The “White Fang†referenced by UPs above is a perfect example of refitting a tale to see a sasquatch when it really doesn't fit.) Where is an aside from Twain, or some other chronicler, that bespeaks knowledge of sasquatch as normal fauna? Even the decade of the 1950s produced films such as The Abominable Snowman and The Snow Creature, movies about the yeti. Why no sasquatch? Why no Bigfoot movies from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s? And no, King Kong does not count (the idea of King Kong was born when a writer imagined what it would be like to have a gorilla fight a Komodo dragon on film.)

 

I never linked King Kong directly with Sasquatch, only that early world explorers had mystery Apes on the brain. If nobody cared about mystery Apes, the story of a giant Ape that lived on a mysterious island that fell in love with a maiden? Would have flopped.........

 

Your argument is very weak, in trying to drive a wedge between say the Fred Beck Ape man story and what Green advocated. Simply for the fact that now the debate is framed on popularity.............which is open to conjecture. I'm not going to argue with you that the myth has received more and more popularity over time. In fact with many channels having their own Bigfoot shows, it really even blows Green and Dahinden out of the water. A crescendo as I said earlier..........

 

But how many people who even watch these shows today are just mildly curious versus full blown believer?

 

This debate is basically over, because it has been drug into the muddy pit, of who believes what, now or back then? It's all conjecture at this point. All I can leave you with is my own families beliefs, Everyone was aware of the myth, but only my father believed as he had his own sighting prior to Green's popularity. It wasn't feral Indians or were wolves.........it was a big Ape, that walked like a man.

 

Here for your perusal is a dissertation on a folk lore interpretation of “wild man†stories in America. It is long and well worth reading. I’m not saying that this has much to do with my comments here, but it is interesting -- and he mentions Green and sasquatch later in.

https://repository.library.brown.edu/fedora/objects/bdr:11061/datastreams/PDF/content

 

 

Thanks, I'll read it when I have a chance.

 

I'm sorry but I feel you have back peddled in this debate since your original claim. Green invented nothing.......... the notion of Ape men in the hinterlands was being printed in major newspapers, no matter what page they were on, prior to Green's involvement. In fact John Green was born 3 years AFTER the Beck story broke.

 

Also, if such stories were met with such doubt? Then why did LE agents form a posse and go after the "apes"? For that matter? Try that today...........I can hear the giggles over the other end of the phone line from here.

 

You see me as a revisionist of history........but I think the facts support me and show your stance as just that.

Edited September 11, 2013 by norseman