Seeking sasquatch

First of three parts

Do you think there is an apelike creature, Bigfoot or sasquatch, living in the forests of the Northwest? What do you make of the 15-inch footprints that have been found all over and by the hundreds, if not the thousands? What do you think of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film of a so-called Bigfoot walking in Northern California? Are all the purported sightings of Bigfoot just hoaxes or simply misidentifications?

Did you know there are bona fide, Ph.D.-bearing scientists studying the Bigfoot phenomena who are convinced there really is such a creature? Were you aware that one of those researchers taught for 30 years at Washington State University until his retirement in 1998 and another currently teaches at Idaho State University?

Are those enough questions for now?

Actually, probably not, for this is a subject with lots of questions – and hardly any answers. But the questions are fascinating, and the new prospects for answers are astounding.

So, a few more questions: Have you ever heard of Bigfoot sightings in North Idaho? Did you know that one of the hottest areas for recent, as well as older, Sasquatch records is the part of the Blue Mountains that straddles the Washington-Oregon border just outside Walla Walla? Were you aware that documented sightings of Sasquatch in the West date back to 1811?

Let’s stop with the questions, and I’ll begin to answer a few of the historical ones.

I’ll skip all the Native American “legends” that relate to sasquatch except to point out that the term “sasquatch” comes from the Salish family of languages used by tribes in the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia, to describe a Bigfootlike beast.

The name “Bigfoot” was coined by a reporter to portray the source of some huge tracks found near Bluff Creek, Calif., in 1958.

In 1811, a 14-inch footprint was observed near Jasper, Alberta. In 1840, a missionary to the original inhabitants of the Spokane area wrote home concerning a problem with hairy giants that were stealing salmon. In 1893, Theodore Roosevelt published a story of a sasquatchlike creature told to him by an “old mountain hunter in Idaho.” And in 1925, the Oregonian newspaper reported on a group of miners who had been attacked by stone-hurling sasquatchlike animals at their cabin near Ape Canyon on the flank of Mount St. Helens.

All these reports predate – from 147 years to 33 years – the Bigfoot hoopla that started in 1958 with the Bluff Creek footprints.

When I was a teenager, the 16 mm Patterson-Gimlin film purporting to show a walking female Bigfoot was touring the Northwest, and I attended one of the showings. At the time, many people were calling the creature a “man in a monkey suit.”

In 2002, someone confessed to being the “woman in a monkey suit,” but her assertion failed to hold up. Recent evaluations of the film have found no evidence of a hoax. Certain anatomical details of the creature are too odd, yet real, to have been faked.

Now for some of the academic questions: Who is studying the “evidence” of sasquatch, and what is the nature of that evidence? Three of the best-qualified researchers to take the evidence of sasquatch seriously are – or were – working close by.

Grover S. Krantz, who died in 2002, was the Ph.D. physical anthropologist from WSU who was the first of his academic stature to take a serious look at Bigfoot footprints.

Second is Jeff Meldrum, also a Ph.D. physical anthropologist, who is at Idaho State and has just published an eye-opening book on sasquatch data, “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.”

Third is John A. Bindernagel, a Ph.D. wildlife biologist in British Columbia who has moved beyond dealing with the controversies of existence to addressing ecological questions that would concern an apelike creature in northern North America.

There are others, but these are the most prominent of the local scientists.

Also a prime influence in taking a serious look at sasquatch data is journalist John W. Green. One of the original reporters to do a story on the 1958 Bluff Creek tracks, he has followed and documented 50 years’ worth of happenings – obvious hoaxes included – since that time in numerous articles and books. His long-term perspective has been particularly important in bringing the study of Bigfoot to where it is today.

There are more questions, to be sure, and I have a few more answers, too.

What is the nature of the evidence for sasquatch? I think you will be surprised.

What of Bigfoot in North Idaho? Yes, there have been reports of sasquatch from the forests of eight of the northernmost counties of Idaho, including Kootenai County, as well as from three of the adjacent counties in Washington.

What, too, of the Walla Walla area? Someone – or something – has been very active there for a long, long time.

To answer these questions, in the next two parts of this series, I’ll summarize the evidence for Bigfoot and put together a collection of reports of an apelike creature in North Idaho and Walla Walla. We’ll see what answers are to be found in the growing body of scientific literature on sasquatch.