In North American folklore, Bigfoot or Sasquatch are said to be hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creatures that dwell in the wilderness and leave footprints. They are strongly associated with the Pacific Northwest (particularly Oregon, Washington and British Columbia), and individuals claim to see the creatures across North America. Over the years, these creatures have inspired numerous commercial ventures and hoaxes. The plural nouns 'Bigfoots' and 'Bigfeet' are both acceptable.
Folklorists trace the figure of Bigfoot to a combination of factors and sources, including folklore surrounding the European wild man figure, folk belief among Native Americans and loggers, and a cultural increase in environmental concerns.
A majority of mainstream scientists have historically discounted the existence of Bigfoot, considering it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, rather than living animals. A minority, such as anthropologists Grover Krantz and Jeffrey Meldrum, have expressed belief in the creatures' existence.
Description
People who claim to have seen it describe Bigfoot as large, muscular, bipedal ape-like creatures, roughly 6–9 feet (1.8–2.7 m) tall, covered in hair described as black, dark brown, or dark reddish.
The enormous footprints for which the creatures are named are claimed to be as large as 24 inches (60 cm) long and 8 inches (20 cm) 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.
History
According to David Daegling, the legends predate the name "bigfoot". They differ in their details both regionally and between families in the same community.
Ecologist Robert Pyle says 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 own name for the creatures featured in the local version of such legends. Many names meant something along the lines of "wild man" or "hairy man", although other names described common actions that it was said to perform, such as eating clams or shaking trees. Chief Mischelle of the Nlaka'pamux at Lytton, British Columbia told such a story to Charles Hill-Tout in 1898; he named the creature by a Salishan variant meaning "the benign-faced-one".
Members of the Lummi tell tales about Ts'emekwes, the local version of Bigfoot. The stories are similar to each other in the general descriptions of Ts'emekwes, but details differed among various family accounts concerning the creatures' diet and activities. Some regional versions tell of more threatening creatures. The stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai were a nocturnal race. Children were warned against saying the names, lest the monsters hear and come to carry off a person, sometimes to be killed. In 1847 Paul Kane reported stories by the Indians about skoocooms, a race of cannibalistic wildmen living on the peak of Mount St. Helens in southern Washington state.
Less-menacing versions have also been recorded, such as one in 1840 by Elkanah Walker, a Protestant missionary who recorded stories of giants among the Indians living near Spokane, Washington. The Indians said that these giants lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from the fishermen's nets.
In the 1920s, Indian Agent J. W. Burns compiled local stories and published them in a series of Canadian newspaper articles. They were accounts told to him by the Sts'Ailes people of Chehalis and others. The Sts'Ailes and other regional tribes maintained that the Sasquatch were real. They were offended by people telling them that the figures were legendary.
According to Sts'Ailes accounts, the Sasquatch preferred to avoid white men and spoke the Lillooet language of the people at Port Douglas, British Columbia at the head of Harrison Lake. These accounts were published again in 1940. Burns borrowed the term Sasquatch from the Halkomelem and used it in his articles to describe a hypothetical single type of creature portrayed in the local stories.
Sightings
About one-third of all claims of Bigfoot sightings are located in the Pacific Northwest, with the remaining reports spread throughout the rest of North America.
Bigfoot has become better known and a phenomenon in popular culture, and sightings have spread throughout North America. Rural areas of the Great Lakes region and the Southeastern United States have been sources of numerous reports of Bigfoot sightings, in addition to the Pacific Northwest.
The debate over the legitimacy of Bigfoot sightings reached a peak in the 1970s, and Bigfoot has been regarded as the first widely popularized example of pseudoscience in American culture.
Various explanations have been suggested for the sightings and to offer conjecture on what type of creature Bigfoot might be. Some scientists typically attribute sightings either to hoaxes or to misidentification of known animals and their tracks, particularly black bears
In 2007 the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization put forward some photos which they claimed showed a juvenile Bigfoot. The Pennsylvania Game Commission, however, said that the photos were of a bear with mange. However, anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum, and Ohio scientist Jason Jarvis said that the limb proportions of the creature were not bear-like, they were "more like a chimpanzee."
Source: wikipedia
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