Guest BAGWAJININI Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 Bagwajinini and their relationship to the Anishinaabeg. I remember when I was a child picking blueberries with my grandmother. Her and her friends talked about all sorts of things. They would talk about ricing (harvesting wild rice). They would talk about how small or large the berries were in a particular patch this or that year. They talked about the bears, the eagles and the beaver. Once in a great while, they talked about Bagwajinini. When they did so, they only spoke the Anishinaabeg language. "tibikong ingii wabamaa bagwajinini jiigibiig"=Last night I saw the wild man by the lake shore. "Sheaaah ingii waabamaa bagwajinini pigiiweyaan"=I saw the wild man on the way home. "Gi-daa miizhaa Zhiimagak apii waabamad owe bagwajinini Ikaye piindaakawad" You should offer something sweet and some tobacco if/when you see him. (not meaning directly to him but as one would offer a prayer to a spirit.) Anyways, nobody will understand my language so I'll translate some things I've heard through time and listening to elders as well as my own experiences. When they talked about him it was a sacred and honored manner as though they were honored to have met up with him. Other times, Near Seine River reservation in Ontario Canada, I was told to never look him in the eye or I would go crazy. That if we come across him were were to bow our heads and remain quiet and stay to the path were are on so that we do not interfere with his path. I was out deer hunting once like a white man hunts. My wife laughed but it looked fun to sit and wait in silence and lure them. I did so. I bought all kinds of camo clothes and deer grunt hoses and the fox pee and the doe pee and the buck pee and pretty much the whole shabang. I sat in a clearing for close to 3 hours one morning on my reservation. I would blow through the little grunt tool. keep quiet. Finally, a small 6 point buck came from behind me into the clear cut. He ran into the cut more or less. In the middle of the cut he stopped and put his head down to graze. I shot him. He jumped fairly high and ran about ten yards into some poplar saplings. I shot him again in the chest with my little 22 magnum and he ran a little ways again. I watched him lay down and I hear him kicking and breathing. I knew he would die soon so I walked slowly over to him with my buck knife drawn ready to slit his throat and gut him. While walking toward him I'd misjudge his strength because that deer struggle to his feet and ran to the thick pines behind the tree line. That was when I heard Bagwajinini for the first time. Not his voice, but his foot steps. It was a deep thumping that moved fast. No crashing through the brush. Just the deep thumps of his feet on the forest floor. I didn't know it was him though. I thought it was the deer jumping. I ran toward the treeline after my deer to try and get another shot because I didn't want him to get away. That was when I watch Bagwajinini snap a large branch from a tree and hit the deer. He hit it once in the head killing it. I put my head down and closed my eyes. I heard him breathing and I knew that he was so real and I was so scared I honestly peed my pants. My eyes were shut and I heard him walking away. When I opened my eyes he was walking away dragging my deer by the neck. I ran straight to my grandma. I didn't go home. I went straight to grandmas house and told her what happened. She told me to put tobacco on the east side of a tree and give thanks. I was dumbfounded though. "Ogii kimoodwaa niwaawaashkeshii!" (He stole my deer!) She laughed at me and told me in a calm, collective voice; "ganabaj igo gii noodeshkade." (perhaps he was hungry.) She told me to go visit my Uncle Earl in White Earth who was the family medicine man. I was told that I would have a special relationship with Bagwajinini someday. When I tried to get more details and asked what he meant he simply told me that I had the rest of my life to find out. That was my first encounter with Bagwajinini. Since then they've appeared in my dreams and I've heard them close to me when I'm in the woods. Oh yeah. To the fanatics who want to catch and study the older brothers. Don't come to my Area. Free country or not. We will NOT tolerate our woods with a bunch of screaming white people with infrared cameras and hand held radios. We call him and all animals older brothers because we "humans" were the very last creation on this Earth. They were all here before us. We are the younger brothers. Google map coordinates to my sighting: spot I sat:48.069606,-93.16059 spot I went into woods:48.070064,-93.160354 about spot he was:48.070322,-93.159796 Spot I suspect he hangs around:48.080516,-93.160547 This particular area of the reservation is a natural calcium spring which is why it looks like white waters and shore lines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BAGWAJININI Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 If there were ever an area that I would want to explore it would be here------>:51.382067,-68.718338 remote area found on the google satellite map. I never have time or money to do things like that though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimB Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 If there were ever an area that I would want to explore it would be here------>:51.382067,-68.718338 remote area found on the google satellite map. I never have time or money to do things like that though. Wow that's an amazing feature. Almost a perfect circle. Between here and Newfoundland too. Is there a name for that area? Tim B. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 http://www.ilec.or.jp/database/nam/nam-26.html 1/2 natural feature, 1/2 man-made Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 Says who? There are multiple threads in here that dispute that. There are also people on the forum who have been attacked. Where did you get this info from? Oh, Sweetsusiq, go see the video posted in the thread "Bigfoot" (sorry, that is literally all it is called) started by para ape. You will see that there ain't anything with blood running through it a human can't take down with something they can hold in their hands. Thank you so very much. I'm on my way to read that info, and I appreciate being able to read more about the BF relating to our NAs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Biggie Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 I'm not great with height but just guessing without fact, I'd say he was around 8-9feet tall. The branch wasn't on a live standing tree. He snapped the branch off a dead fall tree that I can't identify just off the top of my head. Whatever kind of tree it was the bark was gone so it had to have been sitting there seasoning for a few years or the tree died from porcupines eating the bark. Just guessing. If I had to guess the size of the branch I would say about 4 feet to 5 feet long and about 3-4 inches wide. Once again I'm simply guessing. I really should go out and visit the Area again, but I get scared to be honest. Well I don't blame you for feeling that way, but just remember if it wanted to harm you that day it would have yet it didn't. It didn't growl at you, throw rocks at you or even give you a mad expression so it didn't have any problem with you being there. Sounds like it was just there to be a opportunist and easily have a deer to take away since it knew you were going to shoot it. What's interesting is that it dragged the deer through the woods making so much noise exposing it's location where everything around knew it was there instead of just picking the deer up and carrying it on it's shoulders to maintain it's stealth. I do know that they make a lot of noise at times when they want their presence to be known though. Thanks for your answers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Biggie Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 Says who? There are multiple threads in here that dispute that. There are also people on the forum who have been attacked. Fascinating. I'm new here and I haven't seen the threads you're referring to or any mention of people here being attacked either so I'll have to research that. Hopefully the search function works well here since it hasn't for me on several other sites. If you could give me any info from memory it would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 There was an excellent thread started on another forum a couple of years ago. The general conclusion of the postings was that Bigfoot was never a part of Native American mythology/culture. Sasquatch was a term invented in the 1920's somewhere in Canada by a white educator/writer if I remember correctly. That isn't to say that the Native Americans didn't have a mythology of an alternate race of bipedal beings. However a good internet search will reveal that most of that alternate bipedal being's existence was tied to spiritual/non physical manifestation. It seems that the big apelike biped we refer to as Sasquatch/Bigfoot is far more an invention of the white man then the Native Americans. But mythology is like that it tends to meld and blur between cultures. look up the " Dzunukwa " on google images and you tell me what that is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest keninsc Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 It's interesting to me that there is a lot of Native American lore about Bigfoot or Bigfoot-like creatures. There are cave paintings, totems and the word of mouth stories and legends past from father to son over many generations. Many people will discount the stories because the languages aren't written but verbal and I can see what they are talking about because verbal stories can change, however there are the cave paintings, petrogliphs, and totems. Those things didn't change, but I have been told the paintings and gliphs didn't change but the interpretations have, on that I can't really say. I do find it interesting when I see a person who is not NA telling the NA's what their paintings and such mean. These stories from the NA's are the oldest stories we have of these creatures in North America. Seems silly to discount them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDL Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 It seems petroglyphs and cave art are given more weight if they are European rather than native American. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuchi1 Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 It's interesting to me that there is a lot of Native American lore about Bigfoot or Bigfoot-like creatures. There are cave paintings, totems and the word of mouth stories and legends past from father to son over many generations. Many people will discount the stories because the languages aren't written but verbal and I can see what they are talking about because verbal stories can change, however there are the cave paintings, petrogliphs, and totems. Those things didn't change, but I have been told the paintings and gliphs didn't change but the interpretations have, on that I can't really say. I do find it interesting when I see a person who is not NA telling the NA's what their paintings and such mean. These stories from the NA's are the oldest stories we have of these creatures in North America. Seems silly to discount them. IMO, you need to take into account that humans tend to explain events, objects, things in context with the understanding of knowledge in existence, at that particular point in time. I wonder if in a few hundred years, the writings on such internet boards like this one, will be considered as primitive? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xion Comrade Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 By the older reports I was pointing to the fact that several of the early reports of Sasquatches treat them in a more ferocious light. This may be because many of them are from newspapers being cast in the glow of a hideos monster news story or wild cannibal of the woods kind of spin. The ones I was referring to more so were The Teddy Roosevelt story about the one man who is bitten in the neck and killed and the Ape Canyon story as told by Fred Beck in which several of the Apes seige their cabin. It seems as though a larger percentage of the earlier reports were of a more hostile nature, this could stem from the fact that there are fewer reports from 70+ years ago then there have been in recent time and also the fact that maybe people just seeing these animals over 100 years ago was less likely to be reported, or at least reported to anyone who may have kept a permanent record, where as a hostile encounter would be more likely to be remembered, passed on and possibly reported. I think you nailed it with that now bolded statement, drama sells! People will go out and twist stories to make them look like monsters all the time just to spice the story up, I know some popular blogtalk shows that do this and wouldn't say something nice about a bigfoot if one threw them a freaking Birthday party! Give me a break....I just think you left the area unscathed? Well then obviously it wasn't some killer monster now was it, or else you would have been dead before you knew what killed you, silly city people...Most stories that involve a big hairy humanoid bigfoot deal killing someone, including Roosevelts Goblin story as he put it, involve it killing or attacking after it or another big hairy dude has been shot or shot at, and in that case I say it is perfectly understandable to kill the shooter and even expected, I would do the same thing if someone tried to take me or my own out, period and no questions asked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest keninsc Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 IMO, you need to take into account that humans tend to explain events, objects, things in context with the understanding of knowledge in existence, at that particular point in time. I wonder if in a few hundred years, the writings on such internet boards like this one, will be considered as primitive? True but will that devalue what we talk about? Will it make what we say now less significant? It shouldn't and yet we are willing to write off the NA's accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuchi1 Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Quite the opposite as I was implying that writing off NA accounts may be foolish on our part just a successive generations may discount ours as well. We are of the same accord on this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WesT Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 +1 Ken. When this subject was discussed at the "other" place years ago, the naysayers attempted to trivialized it as usual only to have Native Americans, from many different tribes, come on there and affirm they do have stories and legends of such a creature. None written down, but orally passed down from generation to generation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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