The oldest recorded written account of Bigfoot dates from 986 A.D. After landing in the new world, Leif Erikson and his men wrote about ugly, hairy monsters with great black eyes. The first recorded sighting in modern times occurred in 1811 when David Thompson, an explorer, found large, human-like footprints near Jasper, British Columbia.
Nineteenth century newspapers record many encounters between Bigfoot and the early settlers. An 1884 newspaper report descibes the capture of what may have been a young Sasquatch from alongside a railway line near Yale, British Columbia. The creature, nicknamed 'Jacko' by his captors and reported to be 4 ft 7ins tall, mysteriously disappeared enroute to London — never to be seen again. In 1924, Fred Beck, a miner, reported shooting at a large ape-like creature near a cabin in Ape Canyon, Washington. That night, Beck and his companions were attacked — a group of the creatures bombarded their cabin with rocks.
In 1958, a road crew working in North West California discovered their worksite was attracting a night time 'visitor', whom they nicknamed "Bigfoot". Large fifty-gallon fuel drums were thrown around the site, and many enormous, human-like footprints were found. The media got hold of the story after the site foreman took a footprint cast to the local newspaper, and "Bigfoot" became national news.
Eye-witness accounts of encounters with Bigfoot number in the thousands. Taken individually they don't prove a great deal but... as Dr Jeff Meldrum points out:
"The cumulative weight of all eyewitness reports on the other hand are much more difficult to dismiss. Obviously, once one has acknowledged the possibility and/or probability that such things exist, then the consistent and also the novel features of anatomy and behavior, distribution, etc. recounted by eyewitnesses are quite useful."
Its interesting to note how many witnesses keep their sightings secret for years before reporting them. Some prefer to remain anonymous and shun all publicity. Henry Franzoni makes this point about eye-witness accounts:
"Another piece of evidence that has always intrigued me is personally interviewing many people who claim to have had a 'bigfoot' encounter soon thereafterwards, and noticing how really shook up, upset, and frightened they are. I don't think they're 'faking' it."
FOOTPRINTS
Footprints are one of the few pieces of 'hard' evidence, Roger Patterson describes the first time he saw them in his book 'Do Abonimable Snowmen of America Really Exist?':
"As we talked more on the subject, Pat said he had seen these giant tracks on Leard Meadow Road by another old logging landing only the day before. We said a hurried goodbye and hurried over there. What we found was an amazing sight. The creature had come down the mountain, crossed a road, gone down around an old logging landing, then over the bank into the brush, taking an average 52-inch stride. The prints were of enormous size — 17 inches long and five inches across the heel. I was so astonished I could only stare and try to picture the creature that had made those tracks only the day before. I believe that anyone who sees tracks like Rod and I saw will have to admit there would be no faking them. The imprint of each foot pressed into the ground an inch and a half while our own tracks were barely visible. It was plain to see the foot was flexible as it stepped on small rocks as it travelled down the road. If a rock happened to be where the ball of the foot stepped where the most weight was it was smashed down into the hard road. Where the rocks were up by the toes the foot curled over them like a bare foot would do."
These huge footprints are often said to be the work of hoax-mongers. Dr. W Henner Farenbach disagrees, he studied a database of 550 track cast length measurements, collected over a period of 38 years, and came to this conclusion:
"The footprint data follow a Gaussian distribution curve such as would be expected from a population. The mean size is larger than commonly cited estimates. A collection of reports fabricated over 40 years by hundreds of people independently would have a non-Gaussian distribution"
Dr John Napier, in his book "Bigfoot", describes how he found the prints he studied "biologically convincing" and went on to say: "...I am convinced that the Sasquatch exists." A significant statement from a leading British expert in primate anatomy and former head of the primate programme at the Smithsonian Institute.
"I could only stare and try to picture the creature that had made those tracks..."
Dr Grover Krantz, an anthropologist at Washington State University, reconstructed the skeletal structure of the foot from prints found near Bossburg, Washington. He noticed that the ankle was positioned further forwards than in a human foot, and used his knowledge of physical anthropology, and the reported weight and height of Sasquatches, to calculate exactly how far forward the ankle was set. Further examination of the prints confirmed that the position of the ankle exactly matched his theoretical calculations:
"That's when I decided the thing is real.There is no way a faker could have known how far forward to set that ankle. It took me a couple of months to work it out with the casts in hand, so you have to figure how much smarter a faker would've had to be."
In 1982 a remarkable discovery occured after a US Forestry Service employee claimed to have seen a Sasquatch on a logging spur road. Examination of the casts by Dr Krantz revealed clear details of sweat pores and dermal ridges (the footprint equivalent to fingerprints). Skin impressions found on the side walls of the casts indicated the creature had a flexible sole pad. Dr Krantz then consulted fingerprint experts including top state investigators, several experts at the Smithsonian Institute and Scotland Yard, and the current and former heads of fingerprinting at the F.B.I. The majority of these experts concluded that the prints were real, and not the result of a hoax. This is considered to be some of the most definitive evidence that has yet been found.
