by Michael Mayes

Created on: December 17, 2008

I am a member of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy and actively investigate bigfoot sightings in the Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas region. This would be considered a pretty unusual hobby by most. I suppose that it is, indeed, unusual. However, I strongly believe in the existence of these animals. I will not try to convince you, the reader, that the sasquatch is a real flesh and blood animal. Through painful experience, I have learned that such efforts are usually a waste of time. Instead, I will simply convey to you the reasons that have convinced me that these animals are more than myth and do exist. This will take longer than you might think, as I've researched the topic extensively. One of the first factors that caused me to stop and ponder the possibility that these animals existed are the many Native American and First Nations accounts of sasquatch-like creatures that pre date U.S. History.

Most people think that bigfoot was "born" in October 1958. That is when the Humboldt Times carried a picture of a road worker named Jerry Crew holding a plaster cast of a 16" long, human-like, footprint. Crew made the cast from tracks left behind by "something" that visited the road construction site he was working on in Bluff Creek, California. The story hit the wire services and "bigfoot", the tongue in cheek name given to the maker of the footprint, became part of the American lexicon. Whether these original tracks were authentic has been debated, but the point is that most people believe that nobody had an inkling that large, hairy, hominids might be roaming the woods of North America. This is a fallacy as many First Nations peoples knew of the sasquatch.

There are numerous stone and/or wooden carvings that seem to depict sasquatch-like creatures. For example, First Nation stone carvings dated between 1500 B.C A.D. 500 show creatures with decidedly simian characteristics. Early paleontologist Q.C. Marsh, in an 1877 address, said, "Among many stone carvings that I saw there (Columbia River) were a number of heads which so strongly resemble those of apes that the likeness suggests itself." Roderick Sprague, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Idaho, said the carvings collected along the Columbia River showed, "non human but anthropoid features" and that "a relationship between these stone heads and the sasquatch phenomenon is suggested." There are also examples of the sasquatch in wooden carvings and totems among various Native American

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>