Bauman Story

[Guest]

Norseman,

You make the point that in the PNW there were “stories of Apes, Ape-men, Ape like men, Gorillas, Mountain Devils …Skookum, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, whatever the heck you want to call them have been around for a very very long time“ and suggest your parents knew of such creatures in western Washington prior to the 1950s. I have heard this before from others. That is interesting, of coarse. But antidotal. I would be more confident in this line of argument if it had more meat on it. However, if your family imparted the idea of apes living in Washington to you, I can see why you may devalue the events of the 50s and 60s as the catalyst for the modern belief in Bigfoot.

I was born and raised in Texas. Growing up I heard stories of “goat man,†a creature said to inhabit our wood lands. It was virtually a satyr-like animal. It was more rumor than anything concrete. I would never have credited it with having a real flesh and blood existence. Until, one day, in 1969, a goat-man made an appearance at Lake Worth. http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/lakeworth.htm

The “Lake Worth Horror†is now part of the canon of, guess what --- Bigfoot lore. I’ve seen where it has been credited as one of the best documented cases of Bigfoot, or its cousin, ever. In truth, the events surrounding its appearance are most likely based on the combination of pranks and hysteria.

So, I will grant to you the rumor of apes in Washington prior to the 1950s. I never precluded regional storytelling anyway. My guess would be that the stories may have originated with the Ape Canyon notoriety. And we have the admission of persons like Rant Mullins as to the hoaxing of tracks in the state going back to the 20s (if I remember.) These ape stories to my mind would be more akin to ghost stories. I’m reminded of the Ranger who disputed the existence of apes or “mountain devils†in the area after the miners’ story broke. He had certainly found no evidence for such creatures.

And to remind or clarify: to my mind, what is lacking in the old stories is the understanding of the general public that there are apes living alongside bison, elk, bear, etc., etc. in the hinterlands. Newspaper clippings of anomalous sightings and rumor-like stories don’t constitute a level of general acceptance that is necessary, to my mind, to give us evidence of public knowledge (knowledge, not rumor) of such creatures. For me it this matter of degree that is important.

The California events of the 50s and 60s created a superficial legitimacy because of the repeated finding of tracks and the documentation of those tracks. This lifted any rumor to the plane of the physical. This moved regional rumor to national awareness and eventually to international interest.

[norseman]

Norseman,

You make the point that in the PNW there were “stories of Apes, Ape-men, Ape like men, Gorillas, Mountain Devils …Skookum, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, whatever the heck you want to call them have been around for a very very long time“ and suggest your parents knew of such creatures in western Washington prior to the 1950s. I have heard this before from others. That is interesting, of coarse. But antidotal. I would be more confident in this line of argument if it had more meat on it. However, if your family imparted the idea of apes living in Washington to you, I can see why you may devalue the events of the 50s and 60s as the catalyst for the modern belief in Bigfoot.

 

 

All of my family knew of the MYTH of Sasquatch, only my father had his own sighting. When you say "your parents knew of such creatures" your making it sound like they were feeding them apples out of the window of the car.

 

And no, it's not anecdotal............because I can point to numerous newspaper clippings prior to 1950 that supports the fact that the Sasquatch myth was alive and well. Which then lends credibility to my own families knowledge of that myth prior to 1950.

 

 

I was born and raised in Texas. Growing up I heard stories of “goat man,†a creature said to inhabit our wood lands. It was virtually a satyr-like animal. It was more rumor than anything concrete. I would never have credited it with having a real flesh and blood existence. Until, one day, in 1969, a goat-man made an appearance at Lake Worth. http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/lakeworth.htm

The “Lake Worth Horror†is now part of the canon of, guess what --- Bigfoot lore. I’ve seen where it has been credited as one of the best documented cases of Bigfoot, or its cousin, ever. In truth, the events surrounding its appearance are most likely based on the combination of pranks and hysteria.

 

Your probably right. All I can say is that your assertion that Sasquatch was a feral Indian until Green got ahold of the myth is nonsense. But I can now see where your line of thinking comes from. I'm not familiar with the goat man myth at all.

 

Also, there is a lot of confusion with the feral Indian accounts concerning Sasquatch. My opinion is that its a case of cultural mistaken identity. The Sinixt or Lake band people who live in NE Washington and speak a dialect of Salish call Sasquatch "Skanicum". Which translated means "Stick  Indian". If your looking at a giant man track and your parents are European and you ask a Indian what made these tracks? And he says it was a stick Indian? Then the European walks away thinking he is dealing with a tribe of giant feral Indians. But if asked to describe in depth the stick Indian, the native American would have painted a very different picture.

 

So, I will grant to you the rumor of apes in Washington prior to the 1950s. I never precluded regional storytelling anyway. My guess would be that the stories may have originated with the Ape Canyon notoriety. And we have the admission of persons like Rant Mullins as to the hoaxing of tracks in the state going back to the 20s (if I remember.) These ape stories to my mind would be more akin to ghost stories. I’m reminded of the Ranger who disputed the existence of apes or “mountain devils†in the area after the miners’ story broke. He had certainly found no evidence for such creatures.

 

We are not discussing proof in the existence of Sasquatch in this debate. 

 

 

And to remind or clarify: to my mind, what is lacking in the old stories is the understanding of the general public that there are apes living alongside bison, elk, bear, etc., etc. in the hinterlands. Newspaper clippings of anomalous sightings and rumor-like stories don’t constitute a level of general acceptance that is necessary, to my mind, to give us evidence of public knowledge (knowledge, not rumor) of such creatures. For me it this matter of degree that is important.

 

Knowledge requires proof. 

 

We have gone from knowledge of a myth, to belief in the myth, to now...............knowledge of a flesh and blood animal, that lives alongside bear and elk.

 

Odd, but popularity of a myth does not constitute proof. As if the more people who believe at some point critical mass is achieved and the myth spontaneously explodes into reality. 

 

 

The California events of the 50s and 60s created a superficial legitimacy because of the repeated finding of tracks and the documentation of those tracks. This lifted any rumor to the plane of the physical. This moved regional rumor to national awareness and eventually to international interest.

 

I have often been skeptical of Bigfoot myths outside of the western US. But just like native American accounts here, there certainly is evidence of myths in other tribes such as Seminole and Choctaw and Seneca. I simply do not know how that all corresponds to other myths...........but here in the pacNW? There is no break such as from goat man to Bigfoot. Or feral Indian to Ape.......as described above. It's always been an Ape like creature, as Pac NW native art work proves.......

 

The Totem has pursed lips of an ape, and a five fingered hand with a thumb and even has finger nails.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest UPs]

(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.)

Jerrywayne.....if you have read this book, in your opinion, what was the author referring to? Since there was no other introduction of character within the the entire book and the reference was not out of place at all, it indicates to me that this wild man was well known during these times as either a myth or more likely, something very rarely seen and described by the adventurous types of the day. It also indicates to me that in 1903, the existence of "wild men" were well known. The description certainly does not fit a human, even early man, IMO.

[Guest]

Norseman,

To expand and clarify.

I note the different perspectives we bring to the table based on our life histories. You or your family are from the Northwest where you say “apes in the hinterland†“myths†are a continuum from historical times to contemporary times. I am from Texas, an ape dry state that has recently gone ape wet, thanks to Bigfoot Field Researchers (BFRs). As I like to point out --- I am setting at my desk in Dallas, a major American city, and can find various BFRs web pages with sighting reports of Bigfoot just 40 minutes or so, by car, north and south of where I am now setting. Never knew they were so close at hand!

When I mentioned the Jerry Crew incident, I wrote, “When John Green showed up, he linked the tracks to an animal he hypothesized existed in British Columbia too, a giant bipedal ape, America’s version of the yeti. And the rest is…history.†Your response --- “Ok, your last statement. John Green came up with the whole Ape theory right?†Your counterpoise: “Why then are they having ‘Ape hunts’ in 1924 up in Ape-canyon?†You say about Ape Canyon, “This story was published in the Oregonian IN 1924. So there is no chance that Fred Beck told his story much later, and only then added that they were Apes AFTER the whole Bluff creek deal in the 1950’s.†And I became your “bud†--- “You simply wrong bud, this myth has been with us for quite sometime.â€

You linked to this: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/classics/beck.htm This was careless of you, because

you said, “there is no chance that Fred Beck told his story much later [than 1924], and only then added that they were Apes AFTER the whole Bluff creek deal in the 1950’s.†If you read your link again, you will find that Beck did indeed tell his story much later than 1924 --- he told his story in 1967! The original newspaper accounts were not quoting Beck; his 1967 booklet was meant to finally tell his side of the story and to set the record straight. Paradoxically, Beck’s “apemen†were supernatural creatures “made possible by vibrations of power and certain fine substances.â€

Look at this related piece of information, from one year before Beck’s booklet, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/early-patterson.htm and this from shortly after the Beck publication, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/firstpgf.htm In Bigfoot World, one thing leads to another and we can see why Beck spoke up when he did, with Patterson having already interviewed him and had included him in his book (with a contradictory account of the ape attack ) Beck must have felt there was an audience for his old story because of the current interest in Bigfoot.

But I understand you are making a larger point. There was an “ape hunt†in 1924 in Washington so Green could not have been the originator of an American ape concept. One thing to keep in mind is this nuance: The “ape hunt†was not an outcome of a general knowledge of local apes, but was the direct response to an unusual occurrence, a strange anomalous event. There is a difference.

Having looked again at my statement on Green I still do not find anything that ought to disturb you. The fact is that when the Bluff Creek tracks began showing up, no one knew exactly what to make of them. Folks had their own differing explanations. For instance, this is what Bob Titmus originally thought he was dealing with: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/1958.htm Green came on the scene to set the matter straight: it was a sasquatch as he understood the term.

There may have well been legendary ape stories throughout various locations in the PNW, perhaps due to the Ape Canyon story and mere folklore. We know, however, that “sasquatch†was always considered a tribe of giant, hairy Indians (sometimes, covered in hair, other times sporting long head hair.) “Sasquatch†was coined by J.W. Burns and here is his breakthrough article of 1929:

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/burns.htm

It would be hard to accept Burns’ eyewitness accounts as true and still claim there is an ape/human ambiguity to their portrayal of sasquatch. The sasquatch are unlike the ape known as Bigfoot in their obvious human attributes.

John Green did not believe in the sasquatch “tribe†even though he lived in B.C. He was to be influenced by Rene Dahinden, who was initially inspired by tales of the yeti. At the time, interest in the yeti had been surging because of the track found by Shipton in 1951. In this wickipedia article, note the events of the 1950s that brought exciting headlines to the yeti myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti

Here is Dahinden: http://sasquatch-bc.com/dahinden.html The following is a radio interview with Dahinden made in the 50s, when he was in his late 20s. Notice that the interviewer links the sasquatch to the yeti. Also, Rene, at this point, seems to believe he is dealing with an Indian tribe, based on Burns’ information. (Notice too that the interviewer seems to be saying “sasquai†as plural for sasquatch, a term that resurfaced a few years ago to the chagrin of Bigfoot enthusiasts here at BFF.) http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/science-technology/the-unexplained/monsters-myths-and-mystery-great-canadian-legends/trailing-bcs-hairy-giants.html

Here is a succinct explanation of the yeti phenomena, an explanation made as early as 1958, but not gaining all that much traction until fairly recently: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/abominable1956.htm

If it were well known that North America had its own yeti-like animal before Green, Roe, Sanderson, etc. , or that in America’s hinterland native apes were widely accepted as real, then it is hard to understand why this happened first: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/tom_slick.htm

Instead of this: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/bluff-creek1960.htm

The public interest in the yeti helped pave the way for the sasquatch -- as an ape. Green denied Burns’ human sasquatch and accepted the yeti-like creature of Roe. Roe’s sighting may be considered the birth of the non-human sasquatch, impressive in its calm description, free of the theatre found in other accounts. Although Roe did not claim he saw an ape, just a sasquatch, Green began referring to sasquatch as an ape nevertheless. I’m sure he believed Roe’s animal was an ape, but the yeti background noise of the time would have helped him acclimate himself and others to the concept.

This is not just a matter of semantics. Perception of the sasquatch prior to Green (and Roe, Sanderson, etc.) tended to move in this direction:

http://zapatopi.net/blog/sasquatch_last_cave_men_1934-07-29.png

The yeti was popularly conceived as looking something like this: http://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/uploads/WT-Yeti.jpg

Which looks something more like this than like a caveman/Indian: http://blog.seattlepi.com/filmhound/files/library/Bigfoot_Closeup.jpg

Here is Green on his early involvement in the development of the sasquatch story. He believes contemporary evidence points to an “erect ape:â€

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/meetsasquatch.htm

Here is Sanderson’s opening take on the Crew affair. His title is “The Strange Story of America’s Abominable Snowman.“ This article reinforces my notion of the newness of the phenomena at that point in time, even with the mention of the sasquatch and of rumors predating the Crew story. Still, the cagey Sanderson does not want to commit too much to the ape hypotheses, and instead leaves it as a surprising mystery. (But why would it be a surprising mystery if knowledge of a North American ape was prevalent?)

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/true1959.htm

My central premise is that contemporary Bigfootology really began with Green, Sanderson, Crew, Wallace, Roe, Ostman, Dahinden, Patterson, Bluff Creek, Ruby Creek, etc. As I’ve said before, without them there would probably be no Bigfootery as we know it now.

Here are two skeptics who would disagree with me, at least by degrees.

Daniel Loxton mentions Indian lore: “It is inappropriate to link all Native tales of ogres or wild men to Bigfoot, but it is true that Bigfoot mythology has its roots in specific Native stories.â€

He goes on: “There is a ground zero for Bigfoot, a place and time when the legend can be said to have originated. In the 1920s, in British Columbia’s lush Fraser Valley, a man named John W. Burns collected the original eyewitness reports of encounters with “Sasquatch.†(This was a term that Burns apparently coined as an anglicization of a word in the mainland dialects of the Haikomelem language of the Coast Salish people.) All of modern Bigfoot mythology grew from this regional seed: spreading across the North American continent and beyond, mutating and hybridizing with later reports, hoaxes, and popular fiction.â€

(Loxton, Prothero: “Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptidsâ€)

David J. Daegling offers this: “Finding the first account or source for Bigfoot turns out to be a monumentally difficult task. What we call Bigfoot stories existed well before the monster got its name. A number of scholars have attempted to trace the legend or the animal to its historical origin, but tales of hairy giants living on the fringes of human habitation have been around forever.â€

He goes on: “There is a widespread but mistaken impression that Bigfoot as a phenomenon started de novo with the discovery of gigantic, strangely proportioned footprints by a road construction crew in a remote region of northern California in 1958. Rather, what happened was that a wire service picked up the local story and it ran all over the country and in many places abroad. What made the dispatch so dramatic was a photograph of the track’s discoverer, Gerald Crew, holding a cast of one of the prints. The size of the cast was breathtaking; it would have been laughable were the picture not accompanied by a sober report of scores of tracks peppering the freshly graded road in this largely uninhabited stretch of coastal California. Bigfoot was now big-time news, but neither the story nor the tracks were unprecedented.â€

Daegling does, however, offer this appraisal that is close to mine: “The 1958 events are regarded as the beginning of the contemporary era of Bigfoot for a number of reasons.†One reason: “1958 marked a sea-change in Bigfoot’s social history [that] is probably appreciated more by the skeptics than the advocates: the giant ape seemed to get a lot busier in the aftermath of the events. The data have snowballed ever since.â€

(Daegling, “Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend“)

Edited September 15, 2013 by jerrywayne

[Guest]

(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.)

Jerrywayne.....if you have read this book, in your opinion, what was the author referring to? Since there was no other introduction of character within the the entire book and the reference was not out of place at all, it indicates to me that this wild man was well known during these times as either a myth or more likely, something very rarely seen and described by the adventurous types of the day. It also indicates to me that in 1903, the existence of "wild men" were well known. The description certainly does not fit a human, even early man, IMO.

Ups,

Since you didn’t give the direct quote, I’m not sure. But a clue may be when you infer the wolf dog is “reflecting†on its past life as a wolf. In fact, London may be using a device he used in other books, of having ancestral memories or dreams of primitive life reflect the ancient animal nature of some of his characters. Since London was a Darwinist, he probably was having his wolf dog’s nature “reflecting†primitive life with its hairy primates.

Here is a passage from CALL OF THE WILD. This is an ancestral dream that Buck, a dog becoming a wolf, has:

“This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling. The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down the outside of arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and quick alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen .â€

You may see Bigfoot in this quote too. I think, though, London was just presenting a “caveman†or primitive man as he understood them from the science of the day.

[norseman]

Norseman,

To expand and clarify.

I note the different perspectives we bring to the table based on our life histories. You or your family are from the Northwest where you say “apes in the hinterland†“myths†are a continuum from historical times to contemporary times. I am from Texas, an ape dry state that has recently gone ape wet, thanks to Bigfoot Field Researchers (BFRs). As I like to point out --- I am setting at my desk in Dallas, a major American city, and can find various BFRs web pages with sighting reports of Bigfoot just 40 minutes or so, by car, north and south of where I am now setting. Never knew they were so close at hand!

When I mentioned the Jerry Crew incident, I wrote, “When John Green showed up, he linked the tracks to an animal he hypothesized existed in British Columbia too, a giant bipedal ape, America’s version of the yeti. And the rest is…history.†Your response --- “Ok, your last statement. John Green came up with the whole Ape theory right?†Your counterpoise: “Why then are they having ‘Ape hunts’ in 1924 up in Ape-canyon?†You say about Ape Canyon, “This story was published in the Oregonian IN 1924. So there is no chance that Fred Beck told his story much later, and only then added that they were Apes AFTER the whole Bluff creek deal in the 1950’s.†And I became your “bud†--- “You simply wrong bud, this myth has been with us for quite sometime.â€

You linked to this: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/classics/beck.htm This was careless of you, because

you said, “there is no chance that Fred Beck told his story much later [than 1924], and only then added that they were Apes AFTER the whole Bluff creek deal in the 1950’s.†If you read your link again, you will find that Beck did indeed tell his story much later than 1924 --- he told his story in 1967! The original newspaper accounts were not quoting Beck; his 1967 booklet was meant to finally tell his side of the story and to set the record straight. Paradoxically, Beck’s “apemen†were supernatural creatures “made possible by vibrations of power and certain fine substances.â€

 

 

And I will hold to that 1924 time line, and the Oregonian article describing "Ape men", despite Beck's much later book. Nor do I see where his own personal hypothesis about the origin of the creatures makes much of a difference. We certainly find some Indian legends about Sasquatch to contain elements of supernatural in them as well. For the focus of this debate it doesn't matter when or where the creature sleeps, eats, poops or time travels or shape shifts.

 

Were Ape men roaming the hinterland of the western US before John Green was born according to major newspaper articles? That answer is YES. There fore John Green cannot claim the title of inventor of the myth as you propose.

 

 

Look at this related piece of information, from one year before Beck’s booklet, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/early-patterson.htm and this from shortly after the Beck publication, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/firstpgf.htm In Bigfoot World, one thing leads to another and we can see why Beck spoke up when he did, with Patterson having already interviewed him and had included him in his book (with a contradictory account of the ape attack ) Beck must have felt there was an audience for his old story because of the current interest in Bigfoot.

 

I have the book and am well aware of his story within the book. And I'll also not argue with the timing of his own book. But your proving my point for me.......... People like Patterson and Green where seeking out people from their father's generation and interviewing them about the myth of Bigfoot because of their own interest in the subject. Just as Green interviewed Albert Ostman, and others. This shows a continuation of the myth from one generation to the other...........and not a spontaneous invention in the 1950's as you claim.

 

But I understand you are making a larger point. (1)There was an “ape hunt†in 1924 in Washington so Green could not have been the originator of an American ape concept. (2)One thing to keep in mind is this nuance: The “ape hunt†was not an outcome of a general knowledge of local apes, but was the direct response to an unusual occurrence, a strange anomalous event. There is a difference.

 

Even if you look at the Jerry Crew incident which produced the term Bigfoot, at first no local folk had a clue as to who or what had left the tracks. Talk of a giant Indian kid, a runaway from a 1930’s CCC camp, bear, and even Lemurians from the caves of Mt. St. Helens were in the media. When John Green showed up, he linked the tracks to an animal he hypothesized existed in British Columbia too: a giant, bipedal ape, America’s version of the yeti. And the rest is …. history.

 

1) So your retracting your statement above? In that statement your stating that the idea of Ape men in the hinterlands was completely unknown anywhere in the Cascade mountain chain in the US. Basically a Canadian man imported the idea into the US from Canada and invented it here. The Fred Beck story is just one example I might add, there are many others that completely destroys this premise of yours.

 

A simple yes or no answer will do.

 

2) This is simply conjecture on your part. And I'll add again that your not going to get local law enforcement involved in a ape hunt today......... So by using logical deduction? I would say while the myth may be more popular today, thanks to John Green, Roger Patterson and others? It is much less believable now than it was them.

 

 

Having looked again at my statement on Green I still do not find anything that ought to disturb you. The fact is that when the Bluff Creek tracks began showing up, no one knew exactly what to make of them. Folks had their own differing explanations. For instance, this is what Bob Titmus originally thought he was dealing with: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/1958.htm Green came on the scene to set the matter straight: it was a sasquatch as he understood the term.

 

And I do not have a problem with Titmus having a different hypothesis when first encountering the tracks...........this in no way supports your position. As it does not nullify the myth of Sasquatch being a ape like creature prior to the late 50's.

 

There may have well been legendary ape stories throughout various locations in the PNW, perhaps due to the Ape Canyon story and mere folklore. We know, however, that “sasquatch†was always considered a tribe of giant, hairy Indians (sometimes, covered in hair, other times sporting long head hair.) “Sasquatch†was coined by J.W. Burns and here is his breakthrough article of 1929:

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/burns.htm

 

False.

 

Sasquatch is not a "coined term", it's a Anglicized variant of an Indian term for the myth. In Salish it is spelled "Sesquac".

 

It would be hard to accept Burns’ eyewitness accounts as true and still claim there is an ape/human ambiguity to their portrayal of sasquatch. The sasquatch are unlike the ape known as Bigfoot in their obvious human attributes.

John Green did not believe in the sasquatch “tribe†even though he lived in B.C. He was to be influenced by Rene Dahinden, who was initially inspired by tales of the yeti. At the time, interest in the yeti had been surging because of the track found by Shipton in 1951. In this wickipedia article, note the events of the 1950s that brought exciting headlines to the yeti myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti

Here is Dahinden: http://sasquatch-bc.com/dahinden.html The following is a radio interview with Dahinden made in the 50s, when he was in his late 20s. Notice that the interviewer links the sasquatch to the yeti. Also, Rene, at this point, seems to believe he is dealing with an Indian tribe, based on Burns’ information. (Notice too that the interviewer seems to be saying “sasquai†as plural for sasquatch, a term that resurfaced a few years ago to the chagrin of Bigfoot enthusiasts here at BFF.) http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/science-technology/the-unexplained/monsters-myths-and-mystery-great-canadian-legends/trailing-bcs-hairy-giants.html

 

And why do you think they were linking the Sasquatch and the Yeti as similar phenomenon? Native Americans had no idea what an Ape was.........they didn't even have an idea what a monkey was unlike the Nepalese. As myths we can draw many parallels between Sasquatch and the Yeti. But you have not done a good job of demonstrating that if one myth did not exist then neither would the other. Many Indian terms for the myth use the term Indian in them......such as "Stick Indian". This does not imply that these myths were feral Indians, as a Anglo Saxon might understand them to be upon hearing about the myth. Only that Native Americans saw them as human like in appearance. A debate that still rages today within the Bigfoot community, as to what this creature is if real.

 

Here is a succinct explanation of the yeti phenomena, an explanation made as early as 1958, but not gaining all that much traction until fairly recently: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/abominable1956.htm

 

Again, we are not debating the veracity of either the myth of Sasquatch or the myth of the Yeti. Only the existence of the myth in human culture. When observing the myths of either entity from a Native perspective it is a slam dunk case for it's existence prior to the 1950's. From a western perspective it's also a slam dunk case that the myth existed prior to the 1950's concerning Sasquatch.

 

You seem to now be focused on the popularity of the myth prior to John Green.

 

If it were well known that North America had its own yeti-like animal before Green, Roe, Sanderson, etc. , or that in America’s hinterland native apes were widely accepted as real, then it is hard to understand why this happened first: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/tom_slick.htm

Instead of this: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/bluff-creek1960.htm

 

By four years? By following your own line of logic then? Did Tom Slick invest money into searching for Sasquatch as well?

 

This is interesting:

 

http://www.petercbyrne.com/greatsearches.html

 

 

At first skeptical about the U.S. phenomenon, Peter flew to Texas and sat down with Slick to pour over maps of northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and planned a project. Studying the maps, the first thing that he noticed - something that soon began to erode his skepticism - was the enormous size of the heavily-forested mountains of North-Western America and British Colombia, a vast region running from Northern California to the Alaskan border - an area that was five the times the size of the mountains where he had just spent three years. More to the point, and unlike the Yeti, the Pacific Northwest creatures, whatever they were, had a documented history that went back - via old newspapers and magazine articles, letters written by missionaries and miners, and Native American lore - for more than 300 years. Again unlike the sparse evidence of the Yeti, there were, Slick told him, recent footprint finds and sightings; the footprints had been documented with plaster casting and the sightings were reported by reliable eye witnesses. 

 

So the very point your trying dismiss, was exactly what impressed Peter Byrne into enlisting in the search for Sasquatch, despite his skepticism, at the direction of Tom Slick!!!

 

 

The public interest in the yeti helped pave the way for the sasquatch -- as an ape. Green denied Burns’ human sasquatch and accepted the yeti-like creature of Roe. Roe’s sighting may be considered the birth of the non-human sasquatch, impressive in its calm description, free of the theatre found in other accounts. Although Roe did not claim he saw an ape, just a sasquatch, Green began referring to sasquatch as an ape nevertheless. I’m sure he believed Roe’s animal was an ape, but the yeti background noise of the time would have helped him acclimate himself and others to the concept.

This is not just a matter of semantics. Perception of the sasquatch prior to Green (and Roe, Sanderson, etc.) tended to move in this direction:

http://zapatopi.net/blog/sasquatch_last_cave_men_1934-07-29.png

 

Burn was not describing a "human Sasquatch", he was not describing a Sasquatch at all, when you look at the historical record per Native American accounts and artwork, that I have deposited earlier in this thread.

 

The yeti was popularly conceived as looking something like this: http://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/uploads/WT-Yeti.jpg

Which looks something more like this than like a caveman/Indian: http://blog.seattlepi.com/filmhound/files/library/Bigfoot_Closeup.jpg

 

An excerpt from Ostman's description 1924:

(source Bigfoot Encounters)

 

The young fellow might have been between 11-18 years old and about seven feet tall and might weight about 300 lbs. His chest would be 50-55 inches, his waist about 36-38 inches. He had wide jaws, narrow forehead, that slanted upward round at the back about four or five inches higher than the forehead. The hair on their heads was about six inches long. The hair on the rest of their body was short and thick in places.

 

Is he not describing a conical shaped head? Does this description sound like a Native American human to you?

Here is Green on his early involvement in the development of the sasquatch story. He believes contemporary evidence points to an “erect ape:â€

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/meetsasquatch.htm

Here is Sanderson’s opening take on the Crew affair. His title is “The Strange Story of America’s Abominable Snowman.“ This article reinforces my notion of the newness of the phenomena at that point in time, even with the mention of the sasquatch and of rumors predating the Crew story. Still, the cagey Sanderson does not want to commit too much to the ape hypotheses, and instead leaves it as a surprising mystery. (But why would it be a surprising mystery if knowledge of a North American ape was prevalent?)http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/true1959.htm

 

 

 

 

Prevalent to whom? Readers in New York and London? Certainly not the people living in the Cascade mountains themselves who have been reading newspaper articles about Ape men for roughly 50 years previously.........not counting anecdotal accounts from uncle Bob. Nor Native American legends about the myth..........

 

 

My central premise is that contemporary Bigfootology really began with Green, Sanderson, Crew, Wallace, Roe, Ostman, Dahinden, Patterson, Bluff Creek, Ruby Creek, etc. As I’ve said before, without them there would probably be no Bigfootery as we know it now.

Here are two skeptics who would disagree with me, at least by degrees.

Daniel Loxton mentions Indian lore: “It is inappropriate to link all Native tales of ogres or wild men to Bigfoot, but it is true that Bigfoot mythology has its roots in specific Native stories.â€

He goes on: “There is a ground zero for Bigfoot, a place and time when the legend can be said to have originated. In the 1920s, in British Columbia’s lush Fraser Valley, a man named John W. Burns collected the original eyewitness reports of encounters with “Sasquatch.†(This was a term that Burns apparently coined as an anglicization of a word in the mainland dialects of the Haikomelem language of the Coast Salish people.) All of modern Bigfoot mythology grew from this regional seed: spreading across the North American continent and beyond, mutating and hybridizing with later reports, hoaxes, and popular fiction.â€

(Loxton, Prothero: “Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptidsâ€)

David J. Daegling offers this: “Finding the first account or source for Bigfoot turns out to be a monumentally difficult task. What we call Bigfoot stories existed well before the monster got its name. A number of scholars have attempted to trace the legend or the animal to its historical origin, but tales of hairy giants living on the fringes of human habitation have been around forever.â€

He goes on: “There is a widespread but mistaken impression that Bigfoot as a phenomenon started de novo with the discovery of gigantic, strangely proportioned footprints by a road construction crew in a remote region of northern California in 1958. Rather, what happened was that a wire service picked up the local story and it ran all over the country and in many places abroad. What made the dispatch so dramatic was a photograph of the track’s discoverer, Gerald Crew, holding a cast of one of the prints. The size of the cast was breathtaking; it would have been laughable were the picture not accompanied by a sober report of scores of tracks peppering the freshly graded road in this largely uninhabited stretch of coastal California. Bigfoot was now big-time news, but neither the story nor the tracks were unprecedented.â€

Daegling does, however, offer this appraisal that is close to mine: “The 1958 events are regarded as the beginning of the contemporary era of Bigfoot for a number of reasons.†One reason: “1958 marked a sea-change in Bigfoot’s social history [that] is probably appreciated more by the skeptics than the advocates: the giant ape seemed to get a lot busier in the aftermath of the events. The data have snowballed ever since.â€

(Daegling, “Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend“)

 

 

 

 

 

I disagree with you and both of your skeptics. The single crux moment of the Sasquatch legend is the Patterson Gimlin film. As far as I'm concerned we have accounts of strange tracks all the way back to Thompson. We have strange stories going back just as far of strange encounters. Nothing new here........what was changing was technology. Technology to tell the story of the myth in a much more compelling way and reach an audience much bigger than a mining camp or a logging camp. First came newspapers, then radio, then television and now today we have the internet and cable TV with reality shows.

 

None the less, John Green and all the rest would have been a mere shadow of themselves if they had not been "validated" by the PGF. That film beamed into every house hold with a TV across the world, made a impact greater than any story or foot cast could have ever done.

 

The conjecture surrounding what Sasquatch was during the 1950's, does not nullify the myth nor the Native American accounts. Nor does it nullify the accounts by white men describing an Ape prior to John Green. The crescendo that I argued at the beginning is valid And it was able to build upon early accounts for good reason. But if none of this had come to pass, the Native American accounts of a "hairy giant wild man" or Sasquatch would still be with us to this day.

 

 

[Guest]

Somewhere along the line it was assumed here that I denied accounts prior to the 1950’s. Since I’ve read many of those accounts over the years, for many years, I know that newspaper stories and other sources mention such things as wild people, gorillas, and hairy humans and reported in various locations in the U.S.A. during the 1800s and 1900s. Those accounts do exist. So, I must be saying something else.

I am saying this: modern belief in ape-like men or men-like apes in popular culture, known as Bigfoot or sasquatch, has nothing to do with anomalous stories that pop up occasionally and sparsely in the historical record, other than both are reflections of “wild people†folklore memes found in most cultures. The historical stories were rediscovered, publicized, and employed by Bigfoot advocates to give their newly minted myth a back-story and give it historical continuity and credibility.

I am saying that most Bigfoot advocates are advocates, directly or indirectly, because of what happened in B.C. and California in the late 1950s and 1960s. Most enthusiasts are enthusiasts because of a chain of events that go back no further than Ruby Creek, Ostman, Roe, Crew, Bluff Creek, Blue Mountain Road, etc. I’m saying that if Dahinden, Green, Roe, Sanderson, Wallace, Patterson, and others there and then had not existed, there would be no Bigfoot myth today.

This assumes that almost all of the sightings and inconclusive photos, the track ways and other evidence since the 1950s would not have happened because the myth that feeds and even creates such “evidence†would not have happened. This means, for instance, that Paul Freeman would not have thought to fake tracks and videos of Bigfoot because he had no myth to inspire him in that direction. On a different level, this means the common Joe that comes back from his hunting trip with a Bigfoot story today would never have thought the fleeting glimpse of something hairy moving in the bush was anything other than a known animal, and his Bigfoot story would never had existed had the myth never existed.

You may ask: What about the historical record? Doesn’t it back up the modern myth? Not really. If it did, the myth would have been well known and publicized a hundred years or more before Green and company. What we find in the record are anomalies that cause a local fuss for a few days, provide no definitive evidence, and are usually not mentioned again and are forgotten. Some of the stories are probably outright fabrications made by in-house editors during slow weeks, or by an outside “correspondent†looking to sell a story. We know that both activities have happened during the history of newsprint. Other stories may be based on real people, homeless in the hinterland, or hermits. Other stories are cultural reflections of the times, when the general public became aware of the implications of Darwinism and explorers’ tales of man-like apes like the gorilla became publicized.

Some “historical accounts of Bigfoot†are historical, but need not involve Bigfoot. The ape canyon apes had four toes and long pointy ears. Sasquatch? Hmmm? The park ranger who heard from the miners themselves had never found any evidence of such “mountain devils†in all his years in the area. If they were there, they made their selves known only to some miners over the coarse of a couple of days and then disappeared from the natural fauna, and history.

Some tales are drafted for Bigfoot duty by ignoring their contexts. Take the “Wild Man of the Navidad†story. Craig Woolheater employs the old Texas tale in order to give historical precedence to his belief that Bigfoot is part of Texas’ fauna.

http://www.forteanswest.com/lowfiguesteditorial-CraigWoolheater0909.html

But does the old story really support the modern lore?

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txrefugi/WildManoftheNavidadVictAdv.htm

 

That is the biggest post of assumptions, generalizations, and outright dismissals I've seen in a long time.

 

BF proponents have a single, consistent narrative: BF exists and is documented in encounters starting with the First Nations, through colonial times, through early US history, and into the present day.

 

The Skeptic narrative is basically: BF is a myth that started in the 1950s, then the myth makers miraculously managed to find some old folktales and fake newspaper accounts to fit their creation and bastardized it into historical evidence.  It completely ignores common sense simplicity in favor of a complex set of machinations that violate Occam's Razor.

 

Surely you can do better...this isn't even kindergarten level debating jerry.

[norseman]

I'm going to grant Jerry the fact that John Green certainly helped with Sasquatch's popularity. 

 

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/horsemen-alert/

 

He is known as one of the "four horseman".

 

Along with:

 

Dahinden

Krantz

Byrne

 

But I still say that Roger Patterson did more for the popularity of the myth than all of them put together..........or should I say his film.

[Guest]

norseman, on 15 Sept 2013 - 4:45 PM, said:

And I will hold to that 1924 time line, and the Oregonian article describing "Ape men", despite Beck's much later book. Nor do I see where his own personal hypothesis about the origin of the creatures makes much of a difference. We certainly find some Indian legends about Sasquatch to contain elements of supernatural in them as well. For the focus of this debate it doesn't matter when or where the creature sleeps, eats, poops or time travels or shape shifts.

Were Ape men roaming the hinterland of the western US before John Green was born according to major newspaper articles? That answer is YES. There fore John Green cannot claim the title of inventor of the myth as you propose.

Friend, I do not know where to even begin. You doggedly claim that I am saying Green invented the ape in the hinterland myth. I do not think that, nor have I argued that position. I am saying that Green initially dismissed the "sasquatch" as a myth. The sasquatch stories he knew were based on J.W. Burns' interviews with local First Native peoples; they presented their stories of a tribe of giant Indians that they interacted with on rare occasions. This alleged giant tribe is SPECIFICALLY what Green and others UNDERSTOOD the term "sasquatch" to mean, and he dismissed those sasquatch stories as essentially Indian tall tales. Green NEVER refers to the "apes in the hinterland" scenario you are fond of early on in this saga (which he should have, if he had known of it.) THEN he begins hearing stories from whites about what seems to be bipedal apes in B.C. and he finds these stories credible. Some of these stories are linked to the Indian lore of sasquatch (as uncovered by Burns), so much so that Roe and Ostman hesitate to even call what they saw "apes." But Green sees an "upright ape" in such accounts.(My thought here is that he may have also been influenced by accounts of the yeti popular at the time and giving credence to the unknown ape idea.) Green, early on, does not even mention bipedal apes inhabiting the lower 48 states. He gets wind of giant tracks of unknown origin, about the same size as the tracks found at the Ruby Creek incident in B.C., but these tracks are being found regularly in California, at Bluff Creek. People there, at Bluff Creek, have no idea what or who is leaving the tracks, an odd fact if bipedal apes were well known locally (and if the local Indians knew, they had kept it to themselves),as your position seems to require. Green arrives and links the tracks, because of size and general shape, to the "sasquatch" (from Ruby Creek) as he now has co-opted the term to mean a giant bipedal ape. Because of the unique set of circumstances rotating around the Northern California events, not the least the NEWS that a giant yeti-like ape was said to be living in California, the events there spawned the modern belief in sasquatch/Bigfoot (not Ape Canyon, Indian masks, Burns, etc., etc.)

You are stuck, literally stuck, on the erroneous idea that I think there were no ape stories in North America prior to Green, even though I have said NO, that is not a correct interpretation of what I AM saying, EVEN while I have shown familiarity with the sources (in fact, as I have said before, I read most of these accounts before you were born.) If those old stories have any relevance to the creation of the modern myth, they are of minor influence; they were unknown to most people AT THE TIME OF THE BLUFF CREEK events. The stories were found in newspaper files AFTER Roe, Ostman, etc., and employed to give the bipedal ape a historical continuity.

If there were this wide-spread knowledge of apes in the American hinterland as you claim, we would find MORE evidence of it reflected in the society of the time than just a strange news story, here or there, or in a recalled local spook lore. We would have, for instance, petitions to local governments or national institutions to look into the matter. We would have giant bipedal apes mentioned MORE than just the piddling stories so far uncovered by enthusiasts. We would have the opinion makers of the day, and the writers and lecturers, orators, naturalists and scientists, weigh in on the American Ape. Popular authors would bring them up. UPs had the right idea above -- we ought to find the ape reflected in writers like London, or Harte, or Twain, etc. Instead, we don't. You offer us instead a few Indian masks, and the phony Ape Canyon story, as strong evidence in your favor.

About Ape Canyon: The Ape Canyon story just does not hold the load you are giving it. Almost no one believed it, it was investigated and found lacking, its "apes" were described on occasion with attributes unlike Bigfoot, and it was found to be a supernatural event. It was such a splash as a news story because APES were NOT known to inhabit the region, NOT because they were, as you seem to think. The probable reason they thought they were experiencing "ape" is due to the fact, attested to by others, that a youth camp was situated on the rim of the canyon and the youths kicked rocks into the canyon over a coarse of time, and kids being kids, were noisy, with the end result being a siege of rock throwing "apes," as the canyon walls magnified the sounds and increased the rock falls. The miners were right about the primates, it was just the wrong primate. As recorded days later, the local authorities believed the whole account was due to the imagination of the miners. Turns out they were spiritualists, had performed a séance, and were in a susceptible frame of mind as the events came to pass.

Quote

I have the book and am well aware of his story within the book. And I'll also not argue with the timing of his own book. But your proving my point for me.......... People like Patterson and Green where seeking out people from their father's generation and interviewing them about the myth of Bigfoot because of their own interest in the subject. Just as Green interviewed Albert Ostman, and others. This shows a continuation of the myth from one generation to the other...........and not a spontaneous invention in the 1950's as you claim.

No. Green was a convert to the unknown ape hypothesis. He doesn't seem to have even heard about it before. And, as I tried to show, the yeti headlines may have influenced him as well.

Quote

"Even if you look at the Jerry Crew incident which produced the term Bigfoot, at first no local folk had a clue as to who or what had left the tracks. Talk of a giant Indian kid, a runaway from a 1930’s CCC camp, bear, and even Lemurians from the caves of Mt. St. Helens were in the media. When John Green showed up, he linked the tracks to an animal he hypothesized existed in British Columbia too: a giant, bipedal ape, America’s version of the yeti. And the rest is …. history."

1) So your retracting your statement above? In that statement your stating that the idea of Ape men in the hinterlands was completely unknown anywhere in the Cascade mountain chain in the US. Basically a Canadian man imported the idea into the US from Canada and invented it here. The Fred Beck story is just one example I might add, there are many others that completely destroys this premise of yours.

A simple yes or no answer will do.

No.

Quote

2) This is simply conjecture on your part. And I'll add again that your not going to get local law enforcement involved in a ape hunt today......... So by using logical deduction? I would say while the myth may be more popular today, thanks to John Green, Roger Patterson and others? It is much less believable now than it was them.

And I do not have a problem with Titmus having a different hypothesis when first encountering the tracks...........this in no way supports your position. As it does not nullify the myth of Sasquatch being a ape like creature prior to the late 50's.

The "ape hunt" occurred because of the violence in the story. They had to investigate the possible threat to the peace, whether they believed the perps were apes or not.

As to Titmus, and others, you would expect them to know about the local apes. They didn't. And as I pointed out before, the sasquatch was an tribe of giant Indians, not apes. You cannot have it both ways: you can not say sasquatch were apes because of a few Indian masks, and then deny Indian testimony when it doesn't suit you. Even the Ape Canyon incident was considered a sasquatch event, by Indians, who also were quick to point that the creatures were not apes, but from a tribe of Indians known as sasquatch.

Quote

False.

Sasquatch is not a "coined term", it's a Anglicized variant of an Indian term for the myth. In Salish it is spelled "Sesquac".

And why do you think they were linking the Sasquatch and the Yeti as similar phenomenon? Native Americans had no idea what an Ape was.........they didn't even have an idea what a monkey was unlike the Nepalese. As myths we can draw many parallels between Sasquatch and the Yeti. But you have not done a good job of demonstrating that if one myth did not exist then neither would the other. Many Indian terms for the myth use the term Indian in them......such as "Stick Indian". This does not imply that these myths were feral Indians, as a Anglo Saxon might understand them to be upon hearing about the myth. Only that Native Americans saw them as human like in appearance. A debate that still rages today within the Bigfoot community, as to what this creature is if real.

False. The word "sasquatch" did not exist before Burns. "Sesquac" did. There is a difference.

I never said the Indians linked the yeti to the sasquatch. I said white popularizers did, like Sanderson. The Indians of and around the Harrison Hot Springs certainly believed sasquatch were humans, how else were they able to talk to them in Indian dialects? And Green certainly believed the Indian lore of sasquatch was based on belief in an Indian tribe.

Quote

Again, we are not debating the veracity of either the myth of Sasquatch or the myth of the Yeti. Only the existence of the myth in human culture. When observing the myths of either entity from a Native perspective it is a slam dunk case for it's existence prior to the 1950's. From a western perspective it's also a slam dunk case that the myth existed prior to the 1950's concerning Sasquatch.

You seem to now be focused on the popularity of the myth prior to John Green.

By four years? By following your own line of logic then? Did Tom Slick invest money into searching for Sasquatch as well?

I have not argued you may not find ape stories in the past. I have argued that the modern belief in Bigfoot is due primarily to the events beginning in 1950s B.C. and California and 1960s California. The "myth" you are referring to, a myth of apes in the hinterland existing prior to the 1950s, is a stripped down version trying to hang on to similarities and totally ignoring dissimilarities. The beast as we know it now, the one you apparently believe in, came into being in the 1950s. You speak of prior to that, but you speak of lesser apes.

As to Ostman's coneheaded family, his yarn reflects yeti news, not Indian lore.

[Guest]

Mulder, on 17 Sept 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

That is the biggest post of assumptions, generalizations, and outright dismissals I've seen in a long time.

BF proponents have a single, consistent narrative: BF exists and is documented in encounters starting with the First Nations, through colonial times, through early US history, and into the present day.

The Skeptic narrative is basically: BF is a myth that started in the 1950s, then the myth makers miraculously managed to find some old folktales and fake newspaper accounts to fit their creation and bastardized it into historical evidence. It completely ignores common sense simplicity in favor of a complex set of machinations that violate Occam's Razor.

Surely you can do better...this isn't even kindergarten level debating jerry.

Hey Mulder! We haven't crossed paths in a while. Hope you're well.

I must confess I'm disappointed in your reply, though. Once upon a time, you would charge me with some spectacular crimes against logic, and name off the logical fallacies that I committed with somber precision.

But now I have fallen on hard times -- to be dismissed as just a purveyor of mere "assumptions, generalizations, and outright dismissals." You cut me to the quick, my friend.

Edited September 18, 2013 by jerrywayne

[norseman]

Friend, I do not know where to even begin. You doggedly claim that I am saying Green invented the ape in the hinterland myth. I do not think that, nor have I argued that position. I am saying that Green initially dismissed the "sasquatch" as a myth. The sasquatch stories he knew were based on J.W. Burns' interviews with local First Native peoples; they presented their stories of a tribe of giant Indians that they interacted with on rare occasions. This alleged giant tribe is SPECIFICALLY what Green and others UNDERSTOOD the term "sasquatch" to mean, and he dismissed those sasquatch stories as essentially Indian tall tales. Green NEVER refers to the "apes in the hinterland" scenario you are fond of early on in this saga (which he should have, if he had known of it.) THEN he begins hearing stories from whites about what seems to be bipedal apes in B.C. and he finds these stories credible. Some of these stories are linked to the Indian lore of sasquatch (as uncovered by Burns), so much so that Roe and Ostman hesitate to even call what they saw "apes." But Green sees an "upright ape" in such accounts.(My thought here is that he may have also been influenced by accounts of the yeti popular at the time and giving credence to the unknown ape idea.) Green, early on, does not even mention bipedal apes inhabiting the lower 48 states. He gets wind of giant tracks of unknown origin, about the same size as the tracks found at the Ruby Creek incident in B.C., but these tracks are being found regularly in California, at Bluff Creek. People there, at Bluff Creek, have no idea what or who is leaving the tracks, an odd fact if bipedal apes were well known locally (and if the local Indians knew, they had kept it to themselves),as your position seems to require. Green arrives and links the tracks, because of size and general shape, to the "sasquatch" (from Ruby Creek) as he now has co-opted the term to mean a giant bipedal ape. Because of the unique set of circumstances rotating around the Northern California events, not the least the NEWS that a giant yeti-like ape was said to be living in California, the events there spawned the modern belief in sasquatch/Bigfoot (not Ape Canyon, Indian masks, Burns, etc., etc.)

 

 

And this is simply your opinion. I have demonstrated to you thoroughly that native American peoples did not think that Sasquatch was another tribe of Indians with long braids and loin clothes. Of course they did not call Sasquatch "apes" as they had no word for it. And prior to John Green? Some whites also reported seeing "apes" in the hinterlands, despite whatever confusion you think the northern Californian folks experienced as a result of Sasquatch tracks.

 

If you want to hand the golden scepter to John Green? Go ahead. That's your prerogative to do so.

 

You are stuck, literally stuck, on the erroneous idea that I think there were no ape stories in North America prior to Green, even though I have said NO, that is not a correct interpretation of what I AM saying, EVEN while I have shown familiarity with the sources (in fact, as I have said before, I read most of these accounts before you were born.) If those old stories have any relevance to the creation of the modern myth, they are of minor influence; they were unknown to most people AT THE TIME OF THE BLUFF CREEK events. The stories were found in newspaper files AFTER Roe, Ostman, etc., and employed to give the bipedal ape a historical continuity.

 

This is absolutely putting the blinders on..........you are going to simply rewrite history, so that it fits into your neat tidy box. 

 

I'm going to try a different tact, to whittle your position down even further.

 

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/mullens.htm

 

Mr. Mullins claims he was making Bigfoot tracks since 1930 to scare berry pickers. He also claims to have been the one to attack the miner's cabin at ape canyon with rocks, that he rolled off the hillside. If this was a UNKNOWN myth??? Why did he bother to go through all of this trouble? And you might note? He would be very upset with you if he was alive today, to give John Green credit of inventing Sasquatch. As far as he is concerned? He invented it.

 

If there were this wide-spread knowledge of apes in the American hinterland as you claim, we would find MORE evidence of it reflected in the society of the time than just a strange news story, here or there, or in a recalled local spook lore. We would have, for instance, petitions to local governments or national institutions to look into the matter.

 

Why do you think that would be the case? Only if people thought they were dealing with a real animal and not just a MYTH? Fred Beck got the Kelso police dept. to form a posse........you wouldn't have a snowballs chance in Hades to do that today.

 

We would have giant bipedal apes mentioned MORE than just the piddling stories so far uncovered by enthusiasts. We would have the opinion makers of the day, and the writers and lecturers, orators, naturalists and scientists, weigh in on the American Ape. Popular authors would bring them up. UPs had the right idea above -- we ought to find the ape reflected in writers like London, or Harte, or Twain, etc. Instead, we don't. You offer us instead a few Indian masks, and the phony Ape Canyon story, as strong evidence in your favor.

 

Nothing piddling about them, they are simply the fly in your soup..........and I have pointed out Roosevelt, other's have pointed out London, but you refuse to take this into account. But alas your blurring the lines again between MYTH and REALITY. This really does at this moment in time sound like sour grapes from you. Even one of my favorite author's Russell Annabel has a Sasquatch story.

 

About Ape Canyon: The Ape Canyon story just does not hold the load you are giving it. Almost no one believed it, it was investigated and found lacking, its "apes" were described on occasion with attributes unlike Bigfoot, and it was found to be a supernatural event. It was such a splash as a news story because APES were NOT known to inhabit the region, NOT because they were, as you seem to think. The probable reason they thought they were experiencing "ape" is due to the fact, attested to by others, that a youth camp was situated on the rim of the canyon and the youths kicked rocks into the canyon over a coarse of time, and kids being kids, were noisy, with the end result being a siege of rock throwing "apes," as the canyon walls magnified the sounds and increased the rock falls. The miners were right about the primates, it was just the wrong primate. As recorded days later, the local authorities believed the whole account was due to the imagination of the miners. Turns out they were spiritualists, had performed a séance, and were in a susceptible frame of mind as the events came to pass.

 

Egads man......... you have lost yourself in this debate and your grasping at whatever to keep your position afloat. I've stated a hundred times in this debate? We are NOT NOT, evaluating the veracity of the claims made about ape men in the hinterlands. It's the fact that the CLAIM WAS MADE..........that is the focal point of this debate. Why apes? Why not dragons? Or cyclops? Or giant Easter bunnies?

 

I'll tell you why...........because the myth of Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Ape men/Hairy giants in the western US was very much alive and well during this time frame PRIOR to John Green being born.

 

Rant Mullins claims to be the one responsible for the cabin "attack".........if true what in the heck gave him the idea in the first place? Mullins was standing on a spring board before Green was a twinkle in his daddies eye.

 

No. Green was a convert to the unknown ape hypothesis. He doesn't seem to have even heard about it before. And, as I tried to show, the yeti headlines may have influenced him as well.

I've heard Green say as a young boy he thought Sasquatch was a tribe of wild Indians. Which I've addressed again and again. Anglo Saxon's thought this because they did not dig very deeply into Indian myth and folklore. As my Indian artwork I've linked here points to..........they NEVER thought Sasquatch was a Homo Sapien Sapien. 

 

The "ape hunt" occurred because of the violence in the story. They had to investigate the possible threat to the peace, whether they believed the perps were apes or not.

 

And you have what to back up your claim? They formed a posse to go after apes in ape canyon. And they claim they found tracks..........why do you do this?

 

As to Titmus, and others, you would expect them to know about the local apes. They didn't. And as I pointed out before, the sasquatch was an tribe of giant Indians, not apes. You cannot have it both ways: you can not say sasquatch were apes because of a few Indian masks, and then deny Indian testimony when it doesn't suit you. Even the Ape Canyon incident was considered a sasquatch event, by Indians, who also were quick to point that the creatures were not apes, but from a tribe of Indians known as sasquatch.

 

What I'm patiently saying over and over again, is that Indians did not think Sasquatch was of their own species, and the confusion comes from the Anglo Saxon perspective and not the Native American one. They are not going to point to a tall fellow Indian and call him a Sasquatch. 

 

False. The word "sasquatch" did not exist before Burns. "Sesquac" did. There is a difference.

 

And that difference is that one is a Anglicized spelling of the Indian word. Nothing more, other than the fact that Anglo's picked that term to describe the myth over Bukwas or Gilyuk.

 

I never said the Indians linked the yeti to the sasquatch. I said white popularizers did, like Sanderson. The Indians of and around the Harrison Hot Springs certainly believed sasquatch were humans, how else were they able to talk to them in Indian dialects? And Green certainly believed the Indian lore of sasquatch was based on belief in an Indian tribe.

 

I don't remember any Indian accounts of them sitting down and having a discussion with Sasquatch. For the most part they were terrified of them. And they never reported them using bows and arrows or other modern implements.........they lived in the forest like an animal. Could you go live in the forests of British Columbia with no clothes or shelter or tools? Your again trying to blur the lines here to suit your own purpose. And I've linked you to very old descriptions of the myth, and they don't support your assumptions here.

 

I have not argued you may not find ape stories in the past. I have argued that the modern belief in Bigfoot is due primarily to the events beginning in 1950s B.C. and California and 1960s California. The "myth" you are referring to, a myth of apes in the hinterland existing prior to the 1950s, is a stripped down version trying to hang on to similarities and totally ignoring dissimilarities. The beast as we know it now, the one you apparently believe in, came into being in the 1950s. You speak of prior to that, but you speak of lesser apes.

 

 

 

My belief has absolutely nothing to do with this debate. We are talking about the myth of Sasquatch and it's origins. If you choose to ignore everything prior to Green's involvement you do so at your own indiscretion.

 

As to Ostman's coneheaded family, his yarn reflects yeti news, not Indian lore.

 

 

 

Right. Because a man living in the 1920's in British Columbia is going to be MUCH more familiar with a Nepal myth half way around the world than the myths of the Natives in his own back yard.

 

Your grasping at straws. And you seem to be constantly confusing myth with reality. I'm not debating the actual existence of Sasquatch in this thread. I'm debating the myth in and of itself.........nothing more.

Edited September 18, 2013 by norseman

[Guest]

Hey Mulder! We haven't crossed paths in a while. Hope you're well.

I must confess I'm disappointed in your reply, though. Once upon a time, you would charge me with some spectacular crimes against logic, and name off the logical fallacies that I committed with somber precision.

But now I have fallen on hard times -- to be dismissed as just a purveyor of mere "assumptions, generalizations, and outright dismissals." You cut me to the quick, my friend.

 

 

I accused you of a big one, jerry, and it got right by you...you're slipping... 

[Guest]

Norseman,

When you opened this thread I thought we would have an exchange of ideas, maybe even a fruitful one. Some pages in, I became disabused of that sunny idea. I realized that your purpose was to kick my burro in what you believed was an easy task, given your mischaracterization of my position early on and throughout. Also, you are trying to enforce some sort of debate rules when I have not agreed to a debate, much less to the rules. What's up with that? I will continue, though, but I must say that I find some of your arguments really, and I mean really, silly.

I do not have much time tonight so I'll just mention this particular exhibit.

You argued that Ostman described the sasquatch as possessing what we now call a "conehead." You ask me if that sounds like a description of an Indian. I replied that his comments may have reflected yeti news and not Indian lore.

Here is your reply: "Right. Because a man living in the 1920's in British Columbia is going to be MUCH more familiar with a Nepal myth half way around the world than the myths of the Natives in his own back yard." Then you claim I'm "grasping at straws" and "confusing myth with reality."

Norseman --- You have to know that there is no evidence that Ostman told anyone his story prior to the late 1950s. Right? You know that, correct?

All we know for sure is that Ostman revealed his story after he read Roe's account-- in the late 50s. There is the strong possibility that he knew of the yeti descriptions because the Abominable Snowman was cryptid numero uno since its resurgence in 1951 when the Shipton track was found and popularized around the world, especially in English speaking countries. As an elementary school age kid at the time of Roe/Ostman, and in Texas, I can tell you that even I KNEW what the yeti was supposed to look like, conehead and all! And I never heard of a sasquatch at that time.

Since Ostman's story is contemporaneous in its telling with Roe and the yeti interest by the public, we could argue that he was influenced by both sources when he told his tale. The only way YOU could disallow this interpretation is ---- now get this ---- if you argue that Ostman's story is TRUE. But, as YOU claim, we are not here to argue the truth of any account, only the myth. So, you must allow my interpretation as a possibility, based on your own rules.

[Guest]

I accused you of a big one, jerry, and it got right by you...you're slipping...

You mean the majority of your post, the parts that exhibited assumptions, generalizations, and outright dismissals?

Nice to hear from you though, Mulder. Seriously.

[norseman]

Norseman,

When you opened this thread I thought we would have an exchange of ideas, maybe even a fruitful one. Some pages in, I became disabused of that sunny idea. I realized that your purpose was to kick my burro in what you believed was an easy task, given your mischaracterization of my position early on and throughout. Also, you are trying to enforce some sort of debate rules when I have not agreed to a debate, much less to the rules. What's up with that? I will continue, though, but I must say that I find some of your arguments really, and I mean really, silly.

 

Oh baloney. "The rest is history" remember? You didn't insert newspaper articles about "apes into the hinterland" into this debate, I asked for them and BFF responded in kind. So after championing John Green as the inventor of Bigfoot, and guffawing over the old accounts of Bauman and Thompson having nothing to do with Bigfoot? When the flood of news paper articles hit your lap, you exclaimed that you knew about them all along.......longer than you have been alive sonny boy! And then accuse me of misrepresenting your position! That's AWESOME! Are you running for governor of Texas or something? Politics should be your calling...........

 

And make no mistake Jerry, I'm sure your a likable guy and all, but I'm absolutely positively without a doubt gunning for your inaccurate revisionist stance on the myth of Bigfoot. Not because it might make the animal more or less real.........who cares. I'm pro kill Jerry if the animal is out there then someone should be able to settle this with a bullet, and nothing less will do.

 

But because your STEALING and BELITTLING the myths and legends of our American history. It's like going to Scotland and saying Saint Columba really saw a guppie, the story has nothing to do with Nessie and it was all invented by Dr. Wilson in 1933. You really would absolutely make a abysmal archaeologist. And you might get ran out of town to boot.

 

You dogmatically dismiss any account of "apes in the hinterland" prior to John Green as irrelevant because you have blinders on and want to crown John Green. I've been fair and admitted to you numerous times in this debate that John Green was very important to the myth of Bigfoot. But I'm not going to crown him "inventor" of the modern myth....it's preposterous.

 

Also rules..........note to self, next time make Jerry post his rules in the first post. Jerry...........you made most of these rules we are debating, such as only using Anglo Sasquatch myths to support my position instead of Indian ones. You later went back on your own rule when you inserted "old chiefs" recounting of supposed Mammoth myths during our debate about the Thomspon account. Why do you think we went so hot and heavy against each other over the Bauman and Thompson accounts? Go back and reread your posts in the NAWAC thread if you have forgotten.......

 

 

You argued that Ostman described the sasquatch as possessing what we now call a "conehead." You ask me if that sounds like a description of an Indian. I replied that his comments may have reflected yeti news and not Indian lore.

Here is your reply: "Right. Because a man living in the 1920's in British Columbia is going to be MUCH more familiar with a Nepal myth half way around the world than the myths of the Natives in his own back yard." Then you claim I'm "grasping at straws" and "confusing myth with reality."

Norseman --- You have to know that there is no evidence that Ostman told anyone his story prior to the late 1950s. Right? You know that, correct?

 

All we know for sure is that Ostman revealed his story after he read Roe's account-- in the late 50s. There is the strong possibility that he knew of the yeti descriptions because the Abominable Snowman was cryptid numero uno since its resurgence in 1951 when the Shipton track was found and popularized around the world, especially in English speaking countries. As an elementary school age kid at the time of Roe/Ostman, and in Texas, I can tell you that even I KNEW what the yeti was supposed to look like, conehead and all! And I never heard of a sasquatch at that time.

 

 

That's because you lived in Texas and not British Columbia.

 

Question........... according to your assumptions? Ostman concocted the story about a cone headed family of Sasquatch AFTER reading Roe's account..........right?

 

 

 

So why does Roe's Sasquatch picture that his own daughter drew with his direction? LACK A CONICAL SHAPED HEAD?????? That head is flatter than mine is...........she could probably balance a couple of encyclopedias up there!!!!!

 

Since Ostman's story is contemporaneous in its telling with Roe and the yeti interest by the public, we could argue that he was influenced by both sources when he told his tale. The only way YOU could disallow this interpretation is ---- now get this ---- if you argue that Ostman's story is TRUE. But, as YOU claim, we are not here to argue the truth of any account, only the myth. So, you must allow my interpretation as a possibility, based on your own rules.

 

It does not matter if these myths hold any veracity to their claims in this debate..........otherwise you could just sit over there smugly and demand a body, like any other BFF thread that could be about anything from vocalizations to stick structures. It's rather boring.

 

I thought we were debating how old the myth was in Anglo Saxon culture.............then it became Indian culture and now we are debating the reality of the creature.

 

Ok, I'll play along............why does Ostman's description much more resemble Patty than Roe's description? Or maybe it's as simple as Patterson picking which account he liked best to build his suit from? But why would Ostman break rank with Roe to make his creature in his story to look like a Yeti, half a world away in the 50's?

 

Also Ostman described the Squatch genitalia as being like a stallion. Which a Baculum is present in all great Apes except Humans........a very very astute observation by a mining prospector living in BC that was born before 1900 wouldn't you say? Or did he read that about the Yeti as well?

 

I might add.........

 

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

 

On August 20, 1957, police magistrate A.M. Naismith wrote an affidavit which states "...I found Mr. Ostman to be a man of sixty-four years of age; in full possession of his mental faculties. Of pleasant manner and with a good sense of humor. I questioned Mr. Ostman thoroughly in reference to the story given by Mr. Green. I cross-examined him and used every means to endeavor to find a flaw in either his personality or his story, but could find neither..."^[4][5] Albert Ostman also signed a Solemn Declaration indicating that his account of the Sasquatch story was true under oath and by virtue of the Canadian Evidence Act.^[

 

He was questioned by the police who are experts on sniffing out a lie, and he passed. Short of a modern day polygraph test, this is as good as it got in those days.

 

Jerry, you must find my arguments as "silly" because you never address any of my talking points fully, and just expect me to counter yours. What about Rant Mullins? Why Apes and not Dragons? Why do you insist that Native Americans myths about Sasquatch are only about "other" Indians?

 

You might find this silly, or maybe it's that you view this from afar when I live it. And maybe you won't respond at all.

 

But why does Jim Boyd (Lake band or Sinixt tribal member) from my home, depict a stick Indian as Ape like (covered in fur) in his music video and song?