Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is a large, hairy, mythical humanoid creature said to inhabit forests in North America, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.Example definitions include: "A large, hairy, manlike creature supposedly inhabiting the north-western United States and western Canada." (Oxford English Dictionary ) "Bigfoot is a large and mysterious humanoid creature purported to inhabit the wild and forested areas of Oregon and the West Coast of North America" (Oregon Encyclopedia ) (Bigfoot redirected to Sasquatch) "A hairy creature like a human being reported to exist in the northwestern U.S. and western Canada and said to be a primate between 6 and 15 feet (1.8 and 4.6 meters) tall." (Merriam-Webster online ) "A very large, hairy, humanlike creature purported to inhabit the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Also called Sasquatch." (American Heritage Dictionary ) "Sasquatch, also called Bigfoot, (from Salish se'sxac: "wild men") a large, hairy, humanlike creature believed by some people to exist in the northwestern United States and western Canada." (Britannica ) Bigfoot is featured in both American and Canadian folklore, and since the mid-20th century has become a cultural icon, permeating popular culture and becoming the subject of its own distinct subculture.
Enthusiasts of Bigfoot, such as those within the pseudoscience of cryptozoology, have offered various forms of dubious evidence to support Bigfoot's existence, including anecdotal claims of sightings as well as supposed photographs, video and audio recordings, hair samples, and casts of large footprints. However, the evidence is a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, and the creature is dismissed by scientists as not a real living animal.
Folklorists trace the phenomenon of Bigfoot to a combination of factors and sources, including the European wild man figure, folk tales, and indigenous cultures. Examples of similar folk tales of wild, hair-covered humanoids exist throughout the world, such as the skunk ape of the southeastern United States, the Almas, Yeren, and Yeti in Asia, the Australian Yowie, and creatures in the mythologies of indigenous people. Wishful thinking, a cultural increase in environmental concerns, and overall societal awareness of the subject have been cited as additional factors.Walls, Robert E. 1996. "Bigfoot" in Brunvand, Jan Harold (editor). American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, p. 158–159. Garland Publishing, Inc.
Description
Bigfoot is often described as a large, muscular, and bipedal human or ape-like creature covered in black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair. Anecdotal descriptions estimate a height of roughly , with some descriptions having the creatures standing as tall as . Some alleged observations describe Bigfoot as more human than ape, particularly in regard to the face. In 1971, multiple people in The Dalles, Oregon, filed a police report describing an "overgrown ape", and one of the men claimed to have sighted the creature in the scope of his rifle but could not bring himself to shoot it because "it looked more human than animal".
Common descriptions include broad shoulders, no visible neck, and long arms, which many skeptics attribute to misidentification of a bear standing upright. Some alleged nighttime sightings have stated the creature's eyes "glowed" yellow or red. However, eyeshine is not present in humans or any other known great apes, and so proposed explanations for elevated observable eyeshine in the forest include owls, raccoons, or opossums perched in foliage, or bears standing upright.
Michael Rugg, the owner of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, claims to have smelled Bigfoot, stating, "Imagine a skunk that had rolled around in dead animals and had hung around the garbage pits."
The enormous footprints for which the creature is named are claimed to be as large as long and wide. Some footprint casts have also contained claw marks, making it likely that they came from known animals such as bears, which have five toes and claws.
Etymology and other names Sasquatch In 1929, Indian agent and teacher J.W. Burns, who lived and worked with the Sts'ailes Nation (then called the Chehalis First Nation), published a collection of stories titled, Introducing B.C.'s Hairy Giants: A collection of strange tales about British Columbia's wild men as told by those who say they have seen them, in Maclean's magazine. The stories offered various anecdotal reports of wild people, including an encounter a tribal member had with a hairy wild woman who could speak the language of the Douglas First Nation. Burns coined the term "Sasquatch", believed to be the anglicized version of sasq'ets (sas-kets), roughly translating to "hairy man" in the Halq'emeylem language. Burns describes the Sasquatch as "a tribe of hairy people whom they claim have always lived in the in tunnels and caves".
Bigfoot
In 1958, Jerry Crew, bulldozer operator for a logging company in Humboldt County, California, discovered a set of large, 16-inch (410 mm) human-like footprints sunk deep within the mud in the Six Rivers National Forest. Upon informing his coworkers, many claimed to have seen similar tracks on previous job sites as well as telling of odd incidents such as an oil drum weighing having been moved without explanation. The logging company men soon began using the word "Bigfoot" to describe the apparent culprit. Crew and others initially believed someone was playing a prank on them. After observing more of these massive footprints, he contacted reporter Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times newspaper. Genzoli interviewed lumber workers and wrote articles about the mysterious footprints, introducing the name "Bigfoot" in relation to the tracks and the local tales of large, hairy wild men. A plaster cast was made of the footprints and Crew appeared, holding one of the casts, on the front page of the newspaper on October 6, 1958. The story spread rapidly as Genzoli began to receive correspondence from major media outlets including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. As a result, the term Bigfoot became widespread as a reference to an apparently large, unknown creature leaving massive footprints in Northern California.
In 2002, the family of Jerry Crew's deceased coworker Ray Wallace revealed a collection of large, carved wooden feet stored in his basement. They stated that Wallace had been secretly making the footprints and was responsible for the tracks discovered by Crew. Similarly, some have theorized that most photographs of oversized footprints in the wild could be hoaxes created by carved wooden feet.
Wallace was inspired by another hoaxer, Rant Mullens, who revealed information about his hoaxes in 1982. In the 1930s in Toledo, Washington, Mullens and a group of other foresters carved pairs of large feet made of wood and used them to create footprints in the mud to scare huckleberry pickers in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The group would also claim to be responsible for hoaxing the alleged Ape Canyon incident in 1924. Mullens and the group of foresters began referring to themselves as the St.Helens Apes, and would later have a cave dedicated to them.
Wallace, also from Toledo, knew Mullens and stated he collaborated with him to obtain a pair of the large wooden feet and subsequently used them to create footprints on the 1958 construction site as a means to scare away potential thieves.
Other historical uses of Bigfoot
In the 1830s, a Wyandot chief was nicknamed "Big Foot" due to his significant size, strength and large feet. Potawatomi Chief Big Foot is today synonymous with the area of Walworth County, Wisconsin, and has a state park and school named for him. William A. A. Wallace, a famous 19th century Texas Ranger, was nicknamed "Bigfoot" due to his large feet and today has a town named for him: Bigfoot, Texas. Lakota leader Spotted Elk was also called "Chief Big Foot". In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at least two enormous marauding grizzly bears were widely noted in the press and each nicknamed "Bigfoot." The first grizzly bear called "Bigfoot" was reportedly killed near Fresno, California, in 1895 after killing sheep for 15 years; his weight was estimated at 2,000 pounds (900 kg). The second one was active in Idaho in the 1890s and 1900s between the Snake and Salmon rivers, and supernatural powers were attributed to it.
Regional and other names
Many regions throughout North America have different names for Bigfoot. In Canada, the name Sasquatch is widely used in addition to Bigfoot. According to Merriam-Webster, the use of Sasquatch in the English language is a synonym for Bigfoot, and predates it by approximately fifty years.
The United States uses both of these names but also has numerous names and descriptions of the creatures depending on the region and area in which they are allegedly sighted. The term Wood Ape is also used by some as a means to deviate from the perceived mythical connotation surrounding the name Bigfoot. Other names include Bushman, Treeman, and Wildman. Other regional names include:
History
Folklore and early records Ecologist Robert Pyle argues that most cultures have accounts of human-like giants in their folk history, expressing a need for "some larger-than-life creature". Each language had its name for the creature featured in the local version of such legends. Many names mean something like "wild man" or "hairy man", although other names described common actions that it was said to perform, such as eating clams or shaking trees. European folklore traditionally had many instances of the "wild man of the woods," or "wild people," often described as "a naked creature covered in hair, with only the face, feet and hands (and in some cases the knees, elbows, or breasts) remaining bare" These European wild people ranged from human hermits, to human-like monsters. Upon migrating to North America, myths of the "wild people" persisted, with documented sightings of "wild people" reported in what is now New York state and Pennsylvania. A 2007 paper titled "Images of the Wildman Inside and Outside Europe" stated:
Many of the indigenous cultures across the North American continent include tales of mysterious hair-covered creatures living in forests, and according to anthropologist David Daegling, these legends existed long before contemporary reports of the creature described as Bigfoot. These stories differed in their details regionally and between families in the same community and are particularly prevalent in the Pacific Northwest.Daegling 2004, p. 28
Dr. John A. McClelland, retired professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona states, "Legends of wild humanoid creatures are as old as human history and span the globe. Names and other details vary, but common traits of these undocumented animals are bipedalism, gigantic size, hair-covered bodies, and a potential to cause harm. A Native American tradition in the Pacific Northwest tells of a giant hair-covered ogre named Tsonoqua who steals children and food. This is likely the origin of the Sasquatch or Bigfoot legend".
On the Tule River Indian Reservation, petroglyphs created by a tribe of Yokuts at a site called Painted Rock are alleged by Kathy Moskowitz Strain, author of the 2008 book Giants, Cannibals, Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture, to depict a group of Bigfoots called "the Family". The largest glyph is called "Hairy Man" (also known as Mayak Datat) and they are estimated to be 1,000 years old.
According to the Tulare County Board of Education in 1975, "Big Foot, the Hairy Man, was a creature that was like a great big giant with long, shaggy hair. His long shaggy hair made him look like a big animal. He was good in a way, because he ate the animals that might harm people", and Yokuts parents warned their children not to venture near the river at night or they may encounter the creature.