IT DOES EXIST, some say. It has a human form but it
is not really human. It dwells in the deepest and darkest
forests. Some call it a monster. Decide what you
think after you have read. ..
From northern California, through Oregon,
Washington, and into British Columbia, the mountains are wild
and deeply timbered. In this country there are new
reported sightings every year of humanlike monsters, huge,
hairy, and indescribably ugly.
Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest knew about
these giant, wild creatures of the forests hundreds of years
ago. They called them "Sasquatch." More recently,
people, standing spellbound before fourteen-inch-long
footprints, have called the monster
"Bigfoot."
Each year more people than ever before
are out there in the deeply wooded valleys hoping for a glimpse of
the big- footed Sasquatch.
Where could such monsters have come from? They could,
some explain, have come from the same place
the native Indians and Eskimos came from to settle
North America. During the time of the Wisconsin glacial
epoch the level of the oceans was lower. More of the
world's supply of water was locked up in ice and snow.
This exposed a wide bridge of land across the North
Pacific connecting Asia and North America.
Across this land bridge came
the ancestors of many wild creatures found here, deer, bear, bison, wild sheep,
and others. Perhaps the people, moving a few miles at
a time, followed these animals, which they hunted for
food. And perhaps in those times there came as well
some creatures we still know very little about.
Slipping along in the shadows of night may have been
tall, hairy creatures looking more like people than like
any of the other creatures around them. This could
explain how the ancestors of Sasquatch first came to the
forests of the Pacific Northwest; they came on their
big feet. They would have come, you understand, from
Asia, which is also home of the Abominable Snowman,
presumably a cousin to Bigfoot.
It is likely that the creature we now
know as Bigfoot was never abundant. Except for the fact that they have
managed to stay out of sight of people so well, there
might, by now, be none of them remaining.
Not until the 1950s did many people begin
thinking seriously about the possibility that there might really be a
Bigfoot. Then timber workers, in lonely logging camps
of northern California, began finding strange giant
tracks around their dwellings and beside the forest
trails. Plaster casts of these prints were sometimes made
and preserved. The story spread, and people began to ask
each other if such human-shaped animals did live
up there in the woods. Many believed they did.
Soon someone recalled a remarkable story
that had appeared in Portland, Oregon, newspapers in 1924.
On the east slope of Mount St. Helens lived a grizzled
old prospector, all alone in a little cabin in the silence of
the deep forest. On an August day the prospector left
the cabin and hurried off to search for a forest ranger.
The prospector told the foresters this strange tale.
"They woke me up in the middle of
the night. They were throwin' stones at my place. Some of them stones
was big ones, some even come through the roof. And
all the time they was around the house, they was
screaming like a bunch of apes. I didn't dare go
outside. That's probably what they wanted me to do. Would
you have gone outside? No sir! Instead I crawled
under the bed, and I stayed there till morning come.
Sometime in the night them critters quit their screamin'
and slunk off in the dark. Next morning when I went
outside there was the tracks, big ones, a foot or
more across, and right up beside my place."
That story appeared in newspapers in Washington and
Oregon. Soon the wooded slopes of Mount St.
Helens were filled with nervous hunters. They were
alert for the slightest noise, the big footprint, or a glimpse of
a furry hide in the undergrowth. Considering the
assortment of rifles, shotguns, and pistols they carried, it was
a blessing nobody got shot.
They saw no sign of the Bigfoot.
Gradually folks around those mountains seemed to forget the giant, hairy
Monsters again. Sasquatch was becoming more elusive
than ever. The creature wanted very little to do with
people and this was understandable.
But following the reports from the
California logging camps, the story began growing again. In the years
since, the evidence has piled up. More and more,
people in the Pacific Northwest are convinced that
something in human form, but not very human at all,
really lives in the deepest and darkest forests. There is
now a list of more than three hundred reported
sightings of Bigfoot. Undoubtedly there would be more except
for the elusive nature of the beast and its nocturnal
habits. Still no Bigfoot has been captured or killed. Seldom
has one been photographed. The most notable exception
occurred in the mountains of northern California in
1967.
Mr. and Mrs. Roger Patterson and their
three children live on the little horse ranch they operate near Yakima,
Washington. For several years Mr. Patterson had been
studying the exploits of Bigfoot and figuring out the
best place to go look for the creature.
On October 20, 1967, Mr. Patterson and his
friend, Bob Gimlin, had been high in the mountains in northern
California for almost a week. On that day Mr.
Patterson says, ". ..when riding horseback up a creek bottom, we
encountered this creature. My horse smelled it,
jumped, and fell." Mr. Patterson scrambled for his saddlebag.
"I got the camera out of the saddlebag," he
says, "and ran across the creek and we were able to get twenty-
nine feet of sixteen- millimeter colored film."
After three miles of tracking through
rough country, the two men lost Bigfoot's trail in deep undergrowth. They
made plaster casts of the footprints. Other people
returned later and also saw and measured the 14 1/2-inch
prints.
This newly made film was sent down to
Hollywood. There, experts in "special effects," photographers who
really know how to set up a fake picture, studied and
restudied Patterson's disturbing movies. Each of them
decided that in no way could Patterson have faked his
pictures.
Next the movies were shown to a lengthy list
of scientists. Among them were noted zoologists. They arrived
as doubters, but following a look at the Patterson
movies, left "shaken."
Of special interest to the zoologists was the
movement of the muscles as the Bigfoot walked. This movement
was proof enough to many that the creature was real
and the Patterson movies authentic. The figure
photographed, a female, walked upright like a human
and measured about seven and a half feet tall, three feet
across the shoulders, had arms three feet long, and
weighed an estimated eight hundred pounds.
In addition to his movies, Patterson tells of other
evidence that Bigfoot lives. In 1958 he interviewed Charles
Cates, an aging man who had once served as mayor of
North Vancouver. Cates recalled three old Indians
whom he considered reliable, and all of whom told of
hairy giants they had seen in their youth. Perhaps there
were more of the monsters around in those times. One
of the Indians had been in a tent one night with friends
when a Bigfoot stuck its hairy head through the tent
door and looked in upon them.
Near Yankton, Oregon, according to Mr. Patterson's
records, several people sighted the hairy giants in 1
1926. A truck driver swore that one of them had
trotted along beside his logging truck looking into the cab at
him.
In 1941, according to a report given Patterson by
Mrs. George Chapman, she and her children saw "an
eight-foot hairy man come out of the woods." The
creature went into a lean-to behind their cabin. As it went in
the back door, the Chapmans went out the front door.
They fled into the forest. For a long time they huddled
there in the shadows. When they returned to their
home, huge tracks marked the place where the giant had
walked. The deputy sheriff from Blaine, Washington,
came out and made casts of the footprints. This Bigfoot,
whether male or female, had the biggest feet of all.
They measured sixteen inches long. The Bigfoot tramped
down a patch of potatoes as it departed for the forests.
Then the next year, near Eugene, Oregon, Mr. and Mrs.
Don Hunter spotted a "giant biped" walking, taking
long strides, over the mud flats of Todd Lake.
Such reports, when coupled with Patterson's movies,
are not to be taken lightly. So much interest has been
aroused in these stories of Bigfoot that at least
three organizations have been created to seek the creature.
Oneis the American Resources and Development
Foundation, Inc., organized by Ron Olsen, one of the most
respected of all Bigfoot hunters. This organization
is programing all reports of sightings on a computer in
efforts to pinpoint the best possible places to
continue the search.
Another is the International Wildlife Conservation Society.
This group is based in Washington, D.C. At the
head of it is an explorer with experience searching
the Himalayas for Bigfoot's cousin, the Abominable
Snowman.
Roger Patterson has also set up the Northwest
Research Association. With these groups, plus uncounted
individual amateur monster hunters loose in the
woods, the chances seem better than ever that Bigfoot will
soon slip up, be captured, measured, photographed,
and verified.
Some people have admitted they plan to
shoot the first Bigfoot they find, thereby ending speculation. But
most hope only to take one of the furry beasts
captive long enough to study the creature. With this in mind,
expeditions go afield with dart guns carrying drugs
to put Bigfoot to sleep.
Patterson has mapped out a complete
course of action. On that memorable day when Bigfoot is eventually
tracked to earth, the procedure will include the
following steps. Small groups of specialists will be scouring the
mountain country for fresh evidence. "When a
specimen is obtained," Patterson explains, "all personnel and
equipment will be concentrated on it," Even
after the effects of the drug-carrying dart wear off, Bigfoot will be
kept under full sedation. (This seems safest.) All
field forces will be rushed to the scene. A call will go out for a
helicopter. Blood samples, bone marrow, body fluids,
all will be collected and labeled, Plastic casts will be
made of teeth, jaws, hands, feet.
Meanwhile cameras will click and whine,
tape recorders will run continuously, and a stenographer will record
written observations. Security measures will go into
effect at once. One reason will be to protect the
researchers against attack by other Big feet. There
will also, as Patterson explains, be the need to protect the
field group against ", , , interference by
everybody, including the press."
Patterson welcomes new members to his association.
For their dues, members receive a certificate plus a
colored photograph of Bigfoot. This is enough to make
adventure- minded people everywhere feel a little
closer to the monsters.
One of the most recent centers of Bigfoot activity is
around the county seat town of The Dalles, Oregon.
According to
the sheriff's office in The Dalles , five people testified they saw the
creature in the neighborhood
June 2, 1971, a one-day record. A month later there
was an additional sighting near the same location.
Visitors flocked to town. But there were no more observations
reported during the summer.
Bigfoot will almost certainly appear
again. No one knows where. People all the way over into Montana and
Wyoming, and other states as well, talk of the
Bigfoot. Many would not be at all surprised to find these shaggy
giants living in their mountains too. Doubters
sometimes suggest that anyone with a mountain and a forest can
have a Sasquatch.
One thing is certain, if Bigfoot is
really out there in the hills, its name belongs on the government's official list
of rare and endangered species. Whatever Bigfoot's
fortunes might have been in the past, its numbers have
dwindled to a precious few.
All who seek to kill a Bigfoot should
reconsider. The creature appears, after all, to be a harmless monster.
This is the firm belief in Skamania
County, Washington. County commissioners there recently passed a law
making anyone who kills a Bigfoot or Sasquatch
subject to a fine of one thousand dollars and five years in jail.
To humans and Bigfoot alike, this is a
refreshing development. We live in an age when hundreds of wild
species are becoming rare and approaching extinction.
Only after the passenger pigeons were already gone
did we pass laws to save them. The bison nearly
became extinct for the same reason. But here is a case
where we pass a law to save a wild creature even
before it is found -and a monster at that.
If you should see a Bigfoot, perhaps you
should tell it about that. It might help convince the creature that
people are not such monsters after all.