What does this BF behavior suggest?

[Deleted]

www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/mightyfraser.htm

“Milestones on the Mighty Fraser”
by C. P. Lyons -- Pages: 28, 29, 30

As you read this, bear in mind the book was published in 1950, probably researched and compiled in the late '30's and 40's, certainly long before tabloid newspapers, general media interest and the internet wrecked havoc with the facts...

Hairy Giants
Laidlaw, British Columbia is a small station on the Canadian National Railroad. Close to it is an Indian Reserve. There are many such small reserves along the Fraser River, but this one had the doubtful honor not long ago of playing unwilling host to a fearsome hairy giant.

The oral history of the Indians has it that a mysterious race of giants, know as the sasquatch, live in the high mountains around Harrison Lake. Over the years, various Indians have reported brief encounters with these individuals. Such stories are not easily discounted, for the Indians have a remarkable memory for detail and find little purpose in distorting the facts as they know them.

Various people in close contact with the Indians have no doubts that, at least, the remnants of such a race of giants do exist in the hidden vastness of the Coast Mountains. One or two expeditions have even attempted to investigate, but were forced back by extremely rough and hostile terrain.

The following instances are only two of the many stories told by the Indians. An Indian woman living near Laidlaw related them in all seriousness.

“Over a hundred years ago (roughly 1850) when the Indians were berry picking, one woman who had strayed from the others was suddenly confronted by a giant. Too paralyzed with fear to scream or run, she was quickly carried up the steep mountainside. After a long climb, during which time she remained in a semi-coma and so did not note direction or length of time, she was carried through a rough door into a large rock cave.”

”Two other Indian women were crouched in the cave and, when left alone with the new arrival, told her they had been captured in a similar manner years ago. They had been brought as wives for the giants and had since borne children.”

“The men would disappear for months at a time and then return with food. For the new woman they brought flour and smoked fish that they knew she was accustomed to eating. (The fact that there was flour dates the story as taking place after the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Traders in 1827-1840).”

”Although the woman had been a captive for over a year and had borne a child, she was determined to escape. The other two women told her they would help and when the hairy giants left on one of their seasonal hunting trips, she was told to prepare all the food she could. She made bread, or **bannock, suggesting that these giant people or the Indian women, at least used fire and with a heavy pack of food set out across the mountains.”

** Bannock traditionally was a large, round cake like bread that required baking. It was usually made from barley, wheat or oatmeal, varying according to region.

”After almost unendurable hardships she became exhausted and was carried and helped along by the other two women who possessed the giants’ strength in some measure. She was left in a stupor near where she had originally disappeared.”

“The villagers saw her but she suddenly became afraid of them and fled. She was pursued and carried to her father’s house where she fainted and remained under a spell. (Perhaps nervous collapse from the birth and year long ordeal) The Indians believed that the giants held some mental power over her but with careful nursing she eventually recovered.”

“The second episode is still fresh in many of the Indians’ memories.”

”Several years ago, in the vicinity of Laidlaw, a hairy giant entered a house and caused a woman and her two children to flee in terror. Later, footprints approximately twenty inches long were found clearly imprinted in the mud along the route the woman had taken. Although she was not captured, she has since refused to live in the house.”
“Hair was caught in the door-jamb and was reportedly reddish in color. A forty gallon barrel of salted fish had been picked up and dumped over and the retreating footprints showed that the sasquatch had merely stepped over the railroad fences and returned directly to the steep mountain slopes.”

--End of the book’s excerpt on the Indians and the sasquatch. Lyon’s report mentions the use of fire to bake bread/bannock but leaves us to wonder if the Indian woman used fire, the sasquatch used it or just tolerated her use of fire and whether or not sasquatch and Native offspring survived. The text also suggests the sasquatch had knowledge of what the captive Indian women liked to eat and where to go to get it, but offers no conclusion, leaving the reader with more questions than answers . ...Bobbie Short

Lyons, C.P. “Milestones On The Mighty Fraser” published by J.M.Dent & Sons, Canada 1950

____”Milestone in Ogopogo Land: In which the many wonders of the land of Ogopogo and sunshine are revealed,” 1957
_____"Milestones on Vancouver Island: The Story of this "Island to the West" it's past and it's present." 1958

[lookoutman7]

Sierra4-

Based on the story presented to us:

The Sasquatch is a kidnapper. It seems no females of
the species were present - the next best thing to come
along...interbreeding between the two species.

They're residing in high locations - steep slopes on the
menu - and are cave-dwellers, here. They may want to
live in very rough terrain. Protection purposes.

The males would hunt for food, and knew where to get
it approximately. And on seasonal hunting trips.

They knew what humans eat in this case, and had the
intelligence to make the choices.

The two women helped the third escape - had DNA
(strength) of the creatures to help her.

And the third woman speculated that they might use
fire?

-The behavior may suggest in this written case, that
the Sasquatch is very intellectual.

[Deleted]

If Sasquatch's behavior in that story is true, it would suggest to me that Sasquatch (whatever it is) is far more intelligent than we are giving it credit for being.
If indeed the creature can scheme, reason and plot, it is little wonder that it has been able to make fools out of us for so long.
If we are to outsmart such a creature in its own backyard, I think it will take very careful planning and perfect timing.

Bushman

[Deleted]

All great observations, but when I first read this article I was filled with questions! Some of what I wondered could not be rationalize.

Where and why did the sasquatch acquire this kidnapping behavior? This is not a behavior pattern consistent with that of the great apes and/or whatever napes are supposed to be...

What did they know that caused them to select Indian women instead of say.....some other forest dweller?

I assume by intense "watching" they learned initially that they were enough alike the Indians to make a selection or was the need to take Indian women some innate human desire? There are accounts from the Mt. St. Helens region and other areas that the sasquatch was a "cast out" tribe. Prior knowledge then, would explain this taking of Native women as wives. If this is true, much is explained.

And what of the enormous differences in size between the male sasquatch
and the rather smallish Indian maidens? By some accounts, the Canadian
sasquatch ranged upwards of twelve feet....the Indian maiden approx 5 feet tall.
An intimate relationship with a sasquatch size male sounds painful
and giving birth to what surely would be a very big baby sounds difficult
but not impossible. There are natural births of babies weighing 12-13 pounds
occasionally in modern times. But few.

Why is it, in these early day reports there is no mention of sasquatch odor?
Could this be a modern day myth?

How did the sasquatch "know" what the Indian women like to eat? How did they know where to obtain the ingredients for the bannock bread? Is this also the “prior knowledge” of a cast out tribesman?

And what of the fire? Who used it? Who collected the water, where was their water source and in what vessel did they collect it? In what did they bake the bannock bread?....although I suppose one could bake in hot rocks and leaves, still, fire is necessary. Again, …prior knowledge??

We call them sasquatch, the article says "the men" would disappear for months at a time.
That alone is thought provoking and not the behavior of an ape, nape or rake…

Why didn't the Indian women leave these hairy men, knowing they wouldn't be back for months?
Maybe the relationship wasn't that terrible..(?) ...because the Indians are by nature brilliant with forest savvy senses direction, following shadows and the sun. They knew where food was; they knew the time of year certain foods were available and ripe and in those days there weren't enough settlements to provide easily stolen provisions. Why didn’t the women leave?

I cannot imagine the women not leaving the cave, one simply cannot survive
locked up for months in a darkened, presumably smoke filled cave. The women
would have to be mentally structured very tough to survive that kind of confinement.
My sense is that they were free to go and chose not too leave. Those that did escape
and return back to their Native encampment may have used the words “kidnapped” to either
explain away their disappearance or make the relationship with the cast out sasquatch acceptable.

Either the Indian maidens or the sasquatch communicated VERY well together
in sign or language or C.P. Lyon's account is misunderstood or misinterpreted. I doubt the latter because there are so many similar Native accounts that mirror what Lyons reported in his book.

This and other published accounts suggest the sasquatch is more human than we have been given to understand (for whatever reason) and certainly what the Natives oral history teaches us is that the sasquatch is anything but an ape....or at least as we know the great apes to be.....

Fascinating subject.

Sierra4

[Deleted]

Holy smokes that's a lot of questions, sierra4.
Time for information searches allowing, perhaps we can look at your long list of questions one by one.

Where and why did the sasquatch acquire this kidnapping behavior? This is not a behavior pattern consistent with that of the great apes and/or whatever napes are supposed to be...

Q: Did American Indians really steal people's children, or was that just something white people made up to scare their kids?
A: No, unlike many tales of Indian savagery, this one has a real basis in fact. It was common practice throughout the Americas to capture and adopt people from enemy tribes (particularly children, teenagers, and women). In a few tribes this was a traumatic kidnapping, sometimes involving a violent hazing ritual prior to adoption. In other tribes it was a mere formality, with eligible young women going out to a rendezvous point at night to be "carried off" by a neighboring tribe so they could find husbands there. In most tribes, intertribal kidnapping fell somewhere in between those two extremes--a well-established convention of war that simultaneously encouraged exogamy (new blood in the tribe) and ensured the safety of women and children on both sides. Most Indians tried to avoid being captured, but few captives tried to escape and there were few rescue attempts by their kinsmen, who could reasonably expect them to be well-treated and well-cared for. Mistreating someone once he or she had been adopted into a tribe was considered evil (many Indian legends and folktales revolve around some villain who abuses an adoptee and is punished for this misdeed). Adoptees usually also had full social mobility, and often wound up in leadership positions or married to an important person in their new tribe.

So was this a barbaric custom? Well, the Europeans were certainly horrified by it (particularly the English, who tended to consider a white woman being married to a nonwhite man offensive). On the other hand, the Indians were equally horrified to find that the Europeans routinely killed women and children while raiding Indian villages, and that when they did take captives, they were frequently treated as slaves. Each side definitely came away with the impression that the other was dishonorable at war and couldn't really be trusted. When both sides are in mutual understanding about it, the adoption of prisoners-of-war is a reasonable system that preserves life as well as ransoming them back does (and much better than taking no prisoners). When only one side assumed it was the standard, though, the end result was a lot of dead Indian civilians who had incorrectly assumed their safety would be guaranteed and a lot of grieving English families who had no way of maintaining contact with their loved ones or even knowing if they were still alive.

Source: www.native-languages.org/iaq17.htm

What did they know that caused them to select Indian women instead of say.....some other forest dweller?

If perhaps Sasquatch is related to humans somewhere along the line, selecting and abducting a woman (be they Indian, white or any color or race) would make some sense to me being a male. A woman would probably make a better companion than a bear since their teeth are not as sharp and their claws are not as long. ;D

And what of the enormous differences in size between the male sasquatch
and the rather smallish Indian maidens? By some accounts, the Canadian
sasquatch ranged upwards of twelve feet....the Indian maiden approx 5 feet tall.
An intimate relationship with a sasquatch size male sounds painful
and giving birth to what surely would be a very big baby sounds difficult
but not impossible. There are natural births of babies weighing 12-13 pounds
occasionally in modern times. But few.

I have seen some strange matches between different size men and women in my time. Size difference never seems to be much of an issue.

Bushman

[Deleted]

Why is it, in these early day reports there is no mention of sasquatch odor?
Could this be a modern day myth?

Now this is just my opinion, but I don't think the smell of person's foul body odor was such a big thing during the 1800s and early part of the 1900s. Indoor plumbing with warm running water and the bathes and showers that went along with it were not available at the time. It may have been a good long stretch of time between each bath back in those days and smelling a little may have been taken in stride.

On the other hand, there might be dirty, stinky Sasquatch just like there are smelly people. Some Sasquatch might like going for a swim or dip in the water and some might hate it.

In the past I have had dozens of beautiful Labrador Retreivers for hunting, and strangely enough it seemed that some of those dogs would stink to high heaven and some would just have a pleasant dog odor. In other words, the smell may simply be the nature of the particular beast.

Bushman

[lookoutman7]

I wouldn't want to be an Indian Hand Maiden. And
what about the entire female species?

This is a very touchy subject.

[Deleted]

Just repeating what the white man's written and Native Indian oral history states, Lookoutman7.

Mystery of The Sasquatch

The Sasquatch (sesxac) occupies a unique niche in the traditions of the Indians of Harrison Lake and River. White Anthropologists feel quite safe in classing them as one of the "slalakums", strange unnatural creatures inhabiting the deep forests, mountains , and certain bodies of water, such as the cannibal woman, the two headed snake and the bear that lives under the water.

There is a difference, however, in that the Sasquatch are still seen, by white people as well as by the Indians, and that they leave huge footprints that can be photographed and cast.

In the old stories women were often kidnapped by the Sasquatch - hair covered giant men, often overeight feet tall. Some escaped and told of having met friends abducted years before who would no longer leave their Sasquatch husbands and children. The giants were sometimes in a murderous mood. One story tells of the slaughter of a whole group of women, camped at the foot of the mountain on the left as you enter Harrison Hot Springs.
In the 1920's and 30's there were many reports of the monsters being seen in the Chehalis-Harrison Mills area. They received contintent-wide publicity through the writings of the school teacher at Chehalis, J. W. Burns, and the Sasquatch Inn at Harrison Mills was named for them. Often a giant would follow someone keeping pace with them in flight even though he did not break out of a walk himself, or would raid a garden or store-house.

Capture of a small Sasquatch by a train crew at Yale is described in the July 4, 1884, edition of the Victoria Colonist, and newspaper files in various B.C. Centres contain numerous accounts by white people of encounters with them, the most recent being within the last year or so.

The subject came into prominence in 1957, when Harrison Hot Springs Village council proposed to launch an expedition in search of the creatures. Publicity for this project resulted in a number of people volunteering information about encounters with Sasquatch. One man, Albert Ostman, of Fort Langley, described in a sworn statement how he was held captive by a family of them for several days. The past years since have seen many such reports originating all the way from California to the Kitimat area on the northern B.C. Coast. These, with casts of footprints, have even awakened some interest among zoologists. There have been expeditions, and the Sasquatch has taken its place along with the Abominable Snowman as an unbelievable monster that may actually exist.

Source: www.harrison.ca/harrison/sasquatch.shtml

[Deleted]

In the Harrison River area, local native Indians and descendants of early European settlers consider the Sasquatch as real. Indeed, they say Sasquatch are not monsters or animals but giant, hairy humans - the last of a primitive tribe that lived on this continent ages ago and are referred to by them as Sasquatch. Their ancestors defeated the primitive tribe and drove it into the mountains about ten thousand years ago. Few in number, they cling to the remote fringes of what was once their homeland.

Chehalis Reserve Indians, living on the Harrison River, also call the Sasquatch Hairy Mountain Men. Other names given are SEEAHTIK, WAUK-WAUK, TE SAMI'ETL SOQUWIAM and SASKAHEVIS. They are often encountered on the Harrison River and Chehalis Reserve. The Indians are very wary of them as the Sasquatch are said to try and kidnap Indian children. They believe that this primitive race of long-armed, flat-nosed, giant, hairy people lived in caves in the remote country near the top of Morris Mountain. Search parties have explored the Harrison Lake country without success, though fires have been observed at regular intervals on top of Morris Mountain for many years until 1946.

An Indian woman was abducted by a Sasquatch in 1871 near the community of Harrison Mills, and was able to escape the creature.

Peter Williams, in May 1909, was chased by a Sasquatch to his home where it pushed against the walls of the wooden house. An native Indian and a friend, while walking on a Canadian Pacific railway tracks near Agassiz to the southeast of Harrison Lake in September of 1927, saw a creature resembling the legendary Sasquatch coming towards them. They did not remain in the area very long to get a better look at it. In March 1934, Frank Dan saw a hairy giant near his home in Harrison Mills area.

In the 1940's and in April of 1961, a number of large humanoid tracks were found in the area. They were thought to have been made by the mysterious Sasquatch. Henry Charlie, a local Indian, reported in 1948 that while riding on a bicycle, he was chased by a Sasquatch, which kept up with him for over a mile near Harrison Mills. During the autumn of 1965, an unnamed man reported seeing a female Sasquatch in brush nears a road in the vicinity of Harrison Mills.

On April 2, 1970, Keith Shepard saw an eight foot tall, dark-haired Sasquatch "ambled" across the road in front of his car near Harrison Hot Springs. One night on 18 July 1974, Wayne Jones was sitting by his campfire near the head of Harrison Lake when he saw a Sasquatch, seven to eight feet tall. He watched it for five minutes licking something off its fingers before other people disturbed it.

Source: www.suite101.com/article.cfm/jims_world/112837

[Deleted]

Here's a Native Indian legend that may be of interest to you, Sierra4:

UNMASKING DASHKAYAH

With that in mind, let me tell you a story. Ana Kush Iwasha…
There is a story that comes from the Pacific Northwest, about a boy
who went camping on the wrong side of the tracks one night, and
met Dashkayah. Now Dashkayah is a distant relative of the Swift-
Moving One…or the being the White people call Bigfoot or Sasquatch.
And she’s not alone. She’s got sisters. But we won’t concern
ourselves with her sisters right now. This little boy had not actually
gotten lost. He had left home that morning to go hunting and was
enjoying the day so much—it was bright and sunny, one of those
rare days in the Pacific Northwest—that he wandered too far from
his Longhouse to make it back before sundown. So he thought, “I’d
better just camp out where I am for the night and start back first
thing in the morning,” just as his elders had taught him to do.
Well, it wasn’t long before Dashkayah smelled the boy. She’s got a
supernatural sense of smell, and for a good reason. She eats
children. She carries a big basket on her back that can hold as
many children as she can eat in a sitting. And she’s always hungry.
This little boy had just gotten settled in, when all of a sudden, he
heard an eerie whistling in the dark. After a while, the clouds slowly
moved across the face of the moon to reveal a giant, hairy figure
standing quite still, looking directly at him. Now this boy had taken
Monsters 101 and knew that what was standing over him was none
other than Dashkayah, the celebrated devourer of children. Besides—
nothing human could smell as bad as she did.
I should mention here that Dashkayah’s no dummy. Catching kids
with all her unwanted notoriety was a tricky business. She knew
that if she were going to nab this morsel of a kid, she’d have to use
cunning. She heard the boy’s stomach grumbling from hunger. He
hadn’t caught much that day to eat. She put on the best face she
could muster under the circumstances—and by this we mean she
was so ugly, even a smile looked terrifying—and teetered over the
boy who was shaking rather uncontrollably.


“Know who I am,” she grumbled to the boy, who was now covering
his eyes and nose. “Well, never mind what you’ve heard about me,
I’m sure it’s all negative. But it’s all untrue. In fact,” she muttered,
and leaned over to assess the boy’s plump little arms,” In fact,” she
continued saying, as she reached into the basket on her back, “I’m
not really a bad person at all.” She smiled—her teeth eating the
slight light of the moon—“I know little children need lots of good
food, and I bet you haven’t eaten a thing all day.”
And she stretched out her hand to the boy, and piled high on her
palm, were juicy berries. “Open your eyes!” she screeched despite
herself. “I’ve got something good to eat here.”
And he did, slowly at first, until he saw the hairy outstretched hand
of Dashkayah, which resembled the hard claw of a bird of prey, an
owl perhaps, and piled high on her palm, were the biggest, juiciest
berries he had ever laid eyes on. Just then, they both heard his
stomach grumble.
“Go on,” Dashkayah purred with only a hint of impatience. After all,
there were more children to catch and this one was taking forever
to make up its mind. Well, there was no denying the boy was
hungry. And children don’t deny themselves things like some adults
might. Dashkayah knew that.
So as the boy tentatively reached out his own hand, carefully avoiding
the menacing talons, Dashkayah was busy wiping a sticky resin across
her other palm, which she had carefully hidden behind her hairy
back. And just as the moon was once again obscured by the clouds,
she struck out, smearing the boy across the eyes with that sap,
blinding him, and gluing his eyes together so he couldn’t see to run
away. With a grunt, she grabbed hold of him within his blanket with
her talons, and heaved the boy over her shoulder and into her basket.
“Now, maybe a little girl,” she thought to herself as she disappeared
back into the woods, whistling her eerie song.
Dashkayah blinds the young boy in order to capture him. As the
story goes, the boy is carried off to Dashkayah’s campsite and dumped out of
the basket on to the ground, next to other children she had captured. Soon
Dashkayah begins to build a huge campfire to barbecue the boy and his
companions.

She is so delighted by her catch, she begins to sing and dance
around the campfire. The boy hears her song and his heart sinks,
the way the moon has gone beyond the horizon. He begins to think
about how his day had started, wishing to himself that he had never
walked so far from his home that morning. He wishes the day could
start over again. He begins to think about how the day began, so
warm and so wonderful. The warmth of the fire reminds him of the
sun against his face, and he draws closer and closer to the campfire
to feel the heat against his face. The heat of the fire begins to
warm the sap across his eyes and ever so slowly, the sap begins to
melt. Soon the boy can see out of one eye, and the world comes
into focus.
He sees the hulking figure of Dashkayah dancing around the fire,
and around him he sees many children, blinded as he was, all around
the campfire. Next to him, is a little girl. He turns to her very slowly
and tells her how he managed to melt the sap from his eyes. He
tells her not to be afraid—that he has thought of a way to save them
all, and instructs the girl to turn to her neighbor and whisper the
secret into her ear. Soon, all the children begin to see again. Now,
Dashkayah had been dancing for some time, and her voice had
grown hoarse and she was tired. After all, she was no young woman
as far as supernatural monsters go. So she turns her back to the
fire, and faces the children she had readied for roasting. And just
as she does, the children jump up at once, and run directly towards
her, pushing her with all their might, into the fire. And she begins to
burn, her long hair singes, and she begins to crackle and hiss and
her burning body explodes into sparks which light up the sky, and
from these points of lights, emerge mosquitoes. That is why, even
today, mosquitoes live off the blood of young children.
Stories, as so many people of the First Nations have said, are a
form of medicine. For most American Indian peoples, whose first language
is not English, the word “medicine” has an additional meaning beyond its
connection with healing—it normally carries with it a connotation of sacredness.
Having taught at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine for a
number of years, I was fascinated to discover that the only difference between
medicine and poison is the dosage.
American Indian elders tell us it is important for us to tell these
types of traditional stories because there is something about them for the
past, for the present, and for the future.

Source: 66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:YdjoeN-H7aoJ:www.uchsc.edu/ai/ncaianmhr/pdf_files/9(2).pdf+has+sasquatch+abducted+Indian+women%3F&hl=en

[lookoutman7]

STOP...it, Bushman - you're scaring me!

We've talked about a number of things - one of them
being, not trusting a wild animal in the forest. Sasquatch
pretty much gets away with what he goes after. If it
was like that though, it seems the biped has turned it
down a notch. Let's hope he never goes queer on us!

[thomassteenburg]

There are several similar stories about women being cared off by the Sasquatch. All passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. Weather or not they really happened is th e question and judging from other stories from first nation history I would doubt it. Manly due to the fact that it no longer occurs.
The second story from the book is a obvious reference to the Chapman family incident at Ruby Creek in 1941. The author simply had the location wrong.

Thomas Steenburg

[Deleted]

Strange as it may be, who is to say how a missing person became classified as missing and what exactly was the cause of their disappearance?

A number of hikers, explorers and hunters go missing in the British Columbia's wilderness each and every year. Certainly many people must disappear due to wild animal attacks, being unprepared for travel in the wilds and a lack of knowledge and understanding about the great outdoors. However, some of these cases of missing people cannot be explained away so easily.

The general area in the Coast Range Mountains around Pitt lake has had 22 people go missing over the last century. While I'm certainly not saying that Sasquatch had anything to do with their demise, who's to say it didn't? One would think that some small trace of these missing persons would have turned up by now with so many hikers visiting this region each year.

Because we no longer hear of Sasquatch kidnapping Native Indian women (remember that the Indian way of life in the wilderness has also greatly changed over the last 100 years), who is to say that Sasquatch does not have something to do with lone female hikers, young children or hunters going missing in British Columbia's wilderness each year?

I have a few cases of missing people (both male and female) on file that involved hundreds of searchers equipped with modern tools and technology to aid them, yet no trace of these people has ever been found.

What is a “missing person”? How many are there?

Every year, Canadian police receive about 100,000 reports of persons who have gone missing. L aw enforcement agencies use the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) to record and report missing persons cases nationally.

People of all ages may be missing for a number of reasons -- for example, intentionally (either as a deliberate disappearance or as a runaway), as a result of mental illness or accident, parental abandonment or abduction, or as a consequence of kidnap or other foul play.

Many mechanisms already exist for providing assistance in different types of case -- for example, Child Find, and the Alzheimer’s Society’s system for notifying police. Of the 100,000 persons reported missing each year, the overwhelming majority return or are found very quickly. Nevertheless, the RCMP estimate that, a year after being reported missing, around 4,800 people are still missing, with an average increase of around 270 new, long-term missing persons each year.

Source: www.psepc.gc.ca/publications/Policing/mpi/index_e.asp

[sebastian]

1. First Nations' oral tradition of sasquatch may not necessarily to be a fact. May be sasquatch is used as a cultural control. Fact from the past can only be determined by archaeologically. Unless bones of the "half-breed" are found, I don't really buy their stories. Oral traditions are useful to help interpretating their archaeologically past.
2. Sasqauatch behaviour changes through time. Sasquatch may have noticed our changes in settlement pattern and technology and stop certain behaviour (such as kidnapping people) in order to aviod endangering themselves.
3. Consider kidnapping and sasquatch's social structure: if kidnapping is a behaviour that can be applied to the "orangutan model", it may show that there are more young sasquatch males reach the breeding age. These young males may require to establish their own territories and expand into new area where there is no sasquatch female.
4. The cease of kidnapping today can also be explained by sasquatch population change (M/F ratio and infant survival rate). Self regulation in population in a species is important to the survival of the species. We, human, spread into new area. Bears, the males kill cubs. The main question is that how does sasquatch polution self regulate?
cheers,
seb

[Deleted]

Hi Sebastian,

While I wholeheartedly go along with much of what you said, I simply can't agree that Sasquatch was used as a form of native cultural control. From my experience with speaking with many Katzie and Chehalis First Nations along the Fraser and Harrison Rivers, Sasquatch was (and still is) held in high regard and not something used as a tool to scare or control children with. Parents told their children that Sasquatch might grab them if they played alone near the edge of the forest because it probably happened. J.W. Burns stated in his writings that he always knew when Sasquatch was around because the parents kept their children at home and away from his school when it was spotted close to the Chehalis village.

In my opinion, many of our local Native legends regarding Sasquatch, most probably have some basis in fact somewhere along the line. In fact, it was the Chehalis Indians who first said that Sasquatch inhabited the mountain areas around Harrison River and Lake. Coincidentally, this area is still considered a hot-bed for Sasquatch activity by many experienced researchers today.

I found the following excerpt from an article on native oral traditions and culture both interesting and informative:

Cultural landscapes are social and cumulative. They are the natural result of a process which has been carried on for centuries in native communities on this continent. Cultural landscapes are made whenever communities of people join words to place. They enable man to feel a sense of place, to hear the darkness rub the water.

The remarkable thing about the cultural landscape that whites call the "American West" is that it was created in absolute ignorance of the cultural landscapes of the native communities it displaced. The explorers, missionaries, trappers, ranchers, and settlers who flooded the West saw it as had Lewis and Clark, "a void to be imagined." It was only in the late nineteenth century, when most native American peoples were safely confined on reservations, that we began to recognize the achievement of native verbal artists and to realize the intimate imaginative relations their stories and songs shared with the earth.

To speak of these native verbal arts as literature has certain dangers. In a few significant cases, they were literally so: the Toltec and Mayan glyphic systems of Mesoamerica and the pictographic systems of the north Pacific coast, Plains and Southwest. More commonly, they were preserved wholly in the memory of those who performed them, each performance being at once a kind of publication and reading. Traditional native American literatures are thus predominantly oral and aural, not literal. So to speak of a native American literature might have two meanings. First and most significantly, native American literature consists of stories and songs as they are performed in natural contexts in the communities which support them. Secondly, native American literature might be said to refer to those transcriptions of story and song from native American communities which record in print the oral performances of native people. It is the latter, of course, that academics usually think of when they speak of native American literature.

There is a connotative problem as well. In the Euro-American tradition, we tend to think of literature, indeed all the arts, as something associated with marginal misfits and the discontented. 3 These are associations to leave aside in approaching native literatures. In native communities stories and songs count, they make a difference, and those who make and perform them are among the most valued members of the community. They remind the people of who and what they are, why they are in this particular place, and how they should continue to live here. A Navajo singer recently told us: "When one has even one song, he will live for a long time. He will live by it. He will guide his children by it. He will guide his people by it." 4 Literature in native American communities has always been central to man's existence.

It is not possible here to discuss all the native literatures of the American West. Both space and experience limit this discussion to some thematic and generic similarities among them. To an explication of these is added a brief review of the history of collecting, translating, and studying native oral literatures, as well as a final comment on the continuing presence of native literatures in the West.

Source: www2.tcu.edu/depts/prs/amwest/html/wl0011.html


Bushman