artist unkown

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

~Dr. Carl Sagan~

Most scientists discount the existence of Bigfoot because the evidence supporting belief in the survival of a prehistoric bipedal apelike creature of such dimensions is scant. One notable exception is Grover S. Krantz (1931-2002), an anthropologist at Washington State University. For nearly forty years, Krantz argued for the probable existence of Bigfoot,but was unable to convince the majority of scientists. The evidence for Bigfoot’s existence consists mainly of testimony from Bigfoot enthusiasts, footprints of questionable origin, and pictures that could easily have been of apes or humans in ape suits. There are no bones, no scat, no artifacts, no dead bodies, no mothers with babies, no adolescents, no fur, no nothing. Not that there aren't "sightings" of such. There are "sightings" galore. Just check . However, there is no evidence that any individual or community of such creatures dwells anywhere near any of the "sightings." In short, the evidence points more towards hoaxing and delusion than real discovery. Some believers dismiss all such criticism and claim that Bigfoot exists in another dimension and travels by astral projection. Such claims reinforce the skeptic’s view that the Bigfoot legend is a function of passionate fans of the paranormal, aided greatly by the mass media’s eagerness to cater to such enthusiasm.

In addition to the eyewitness testimonials of enthusiastic fans, the bulk of the evidence provided by proponents of Bigfoot consists of footprint sand film. Of the few footprints available for examination in plaster casts, there is such great disparity in shape and configuration that the evidence "suggests many independent pranksters" (M. Dennett, 1996).

Probably the most well-known evidence for belief in Bigfoot’s existence is a film shot by Bigfoot hunters Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin on Oct 20, 1967, at Bluff Creek in northern California. The filmdepicts a walking apelike creature with pendulous and hairy breasts. Believers estimate its height at between 6' 6'' and 7' 4'' and its weight at nearly one ton. Non-believers make more human-sized estimates and consider the "beast" to be a costumed hoaxer. Over thirty years have passed, yet no cryptozoologisthas found further evidence of the creature near the site except for one alleged footprint.

The North American Science Institute claims it has spent over $100,000 to prove the film is of a genuine Bigfoot. However, according to veteran Hollywood director John Landis, "that famous piece of film of Bigfoot walking in the woods that was touted as the real thing was just a suit made by John Chambers," who helped create the ape suits in Planet of the Apes(1968). Howard Berger, of Hollywood’s KNB Effects Group, also has claimed that it was common knowledge within the film industry that Chambers was responsible for a hoax that turned Bigfoot into a worldwide cult. According to Mark Chorvinsky, Chambers was also involved in another Bigfoot hoax (the so-called "Burbank Bigfoot"). According to Loren Coleman,however, Chambers denied the allegations about the Patterson hoax in an interview with Bobbie Shortand claimed that Landis had in fact started the rumor about him (i.e., Chambers) making the suit. Apparently, Short did not ask Chambers about the "Burbank Bigfoot" incident, nor did he interview Landis for his version of the story (Chorvinsky 1996).

Short and Coleman remain convinced that the film is not of a man in an ape suit but is footage of a genuine Bigfoot. In 2004, Greg Long claimed that the Bigfoot in the Patterson film is indeed a man in a gorilla suit, but the man is Bob Heironimus, a retired Pepsi bottler from Yakima, Washington, and the suit was made in North Carolina for Patterson by a man named Philip Morris.Bob Gimlin, Patterson's associate, issued an ambiguous statement through his lawyer in Minneapolis: "I'm authorized to tell you that nobody wore a gorilla suit or monkey suit and that Mr. Gimlin's position is that it's absolutely false and untrue." What's absolutely false and untrue?

According to David J. Daegling and Daniel O. Schmitt, "it is not possible to evaluate the identity of the film subject with any confidence" (Daegling 1999). Their argument centers on uncertainties in subject and camera positions, and the reproducibility of the compliant gait by humans matching the speed and stride of the film subject.

According to Michael Wallace, Bigfoot is a hoax that was launched in August 1958 by his father Ray L. Wallace(1918-2002), an inveterate prankster. Shortly after Ray’s death, Michael revealed the details of the hoax, which were reported widely in the press. Ray had a friend carve him 16-inch-long feet that he could strap on and make prints with. Wallace owned a construction company that built logging roads at the time and he set the prints around one of his bulldozers in Humboldt County. Jerry Crew, a bulldozer operator, reported the prints and The Humboldt Times ran a front-page story about "Bigfoot." The legend was born. However, a former logger, 71-year-old John Auman, claims Wallace left the giant footprints to scare away thieves and vandals who'd been targeting his vehicles. His hoaxes didn't begin until after he'd seen what a stir he'd created.

Over the years, Ray Wallace produced Bigfoot audio recordings, films, and photographs. At one time, he even put out a press release offering $1 million for a baby Bigfoot. He published one of his photos as a poster depicting Bigfoot having lunch with other animals. He also published photos and films of Bigfeet eating elk, frogs, and cereal. Michael Wallace claims that his mother told him that she participated in some of the pranks and had been photographed in a Bigfoot suit. Chorvinsky claims that Ray told him that the Patterson film was a hoax and that he had alerted Patterson of the sighting at Bluff Creek. According to Chorvinsky, Ray knew who was in the Patterson suit, but said he had nothing to do with it (Young, Bob. 2002. "Lovable trickster created a monster with Bigfoot hoax," The Seattle Times, December 5).

The news of Wallace’s 1958 hoax did not daunt Bigfoot enthusiasts such as Loren Colemanor Idaho State University anatomy professor Dr. Jeff Meldrum, who has casts of 40 to 50 big footprints. Coleman asks

Why is the testimony of an admitted liar, now being feted by a skeptical magician as the truth, having the newspapers believe it all? The media mixing of the lies and rumors with a few facts in the Wallace story is pushing this one to the edge. This is Ray Wallace's ultimate hoax and bitter seed.

Meldrum believes such a large number of casts couldn’t all be hoaxes (ibid.). The same has been said about the large number of crop circles, but it appears that hoaxers are not deterred from their activities by the belief that their numbers are small.

The interest in Bigfoot seems to have been succinctly captured in the saying of an old Sherpa: There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it.

source:

http://www.skepdic.com/bigfoot.html

On October 20, 1967, ex-rodeo cowboy Roger Patterson and partner Bob Gimlin filmed what appears to be a female Sasquatch traversing a sand bar in Bluff Creek.

Attitudes Toward Bigfoot in Many North American Cultures

In the Northwest, and west of the Rockies generally, Indian people regard Bigfoot with great respect. He is seen as a special kind of being, because of his obvious close relationship with humans. Some elders regard him as standing on the "border" between animal-style consciousness and human-style consciousness, which gives him a special kind of power. (It is not that Bigfoot's relationship to make him "superior" to other animals; in Indian culture, unlike western culture, animals are not regarded as "inferior" to humans but rather as "elder brothers" and "teachers" of humans. But tribal cultures everywhere are based on relationship and kinship; the closer the kinship, the stronger the bond. Indian elders in the Northwest refuse to eat bear meat because of the bear's similarity to humans, and Bigfoot is obviously much more similar to humans than is the bear. As beings who blend the "natural knowledge" of animals with something of the distinctive type of consciousness called "intelligence" that humans have, Bigfoot is regarded as a special type of being.

But, special being as he is, I have never heard anyone from a Northwestern tribe suggest that Bigfoot is anything other than a physical being, living in the same physical dimensions as humans and other animals. He eats, he sleeps, he poops, he cares for his family members. However, among many Indians elsewhere in North America... as widely separated at the Hopi, the Sioux, the Iroquois, and the Northern Athabascan -- Bigfoot is seen more as a sort of supernatural or spirit being, whose appearance to humans is always meant to convey some kind of message

The Lakota, or western Sioux, call Bigfoot Chiye-tanka (Chiha-tanka in Dakota or eastern Sioux); "chiye" means "elder brother" and "tanka" means "great" or "big". In English, though, the Sioux usually call him "the big man". In his book "The spirit of Crazy Horse," (Viking, 1980), a non-fiction account of the events dramatized by the excellent recent movie "Thunderheart", author Peter Mathiessen recorded some comments about Bigfoot made by traditional Sioux people and some members of other Indian nations. Joe Flying By, a Hunkpapa Lakota, told Mathiessen,

"I think the Big Man is a kind of husband of Unk-ksa, the earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this One is a kind of reptile from the ancient times who can take a big hairy form; I also think he can change into a coyote. Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, and they are already gone."

There is your Big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day," Oglala Lakota Medicine Man Pete Catches told Mathiessen. "He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren't there... I know him as my brother... I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me."

Ray Owen, son of a Dakota spiritual leader from Prairie Island Reservation in Minnesota, told a reporter from (the) Red Wing (Minnesota) Republican Eagle, "They exist in another dimension from us, but can appear in this dimension whenever they have a reason to. See, it's like there are many levels, many dimensions. When our time in this one is finished, we move on to the next, but the Big Man can go between. The Big Man comes from God. He's our big brother, kind of looks out for us. Two years ago, we were going downhill, really self-destructive. We needed a sign to put us back on track, and that's why the Big Man appeared".

Ralph Gray Wolf, a visiting Athapaskan Indian from Alaska, told the reporter, "In our way of beliefs, they make appearances at troubled times", to help troubled Indian communities "get more in tune with Mother Earth". Bigfoot brings "signs or messages that there is a need to change, a need to cleanse," (Minn. news article, "Giant Footprint Signals a Time to Seek Change," July 23,1988).

Mathiessen reported similar views among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway in North Dakota, that Bigfoot --- whom they call Rugaru -- "appears in symptoms of danger or psychic disruption to the community." When I read this, I wondered if it contradicted my hypothesis that the Ojibways had identified Bigfoot with Windago, the sinister cannibal-giant of their legends; I had surmised that because I had never heard of any other names for, or references to Bigfoot in Ojibway culture, even though there must have been sightings in woodlands around the Great lakes, and indeed sightings in that region have been reported by non-Indians. But the Turtle Mountain band is one of the few Ojibway bands to have moved much farther west than most of their nation; and Rugaru is not a native Ojibway word. Nor does it come from the languages of neighboring Indian peoples. However, it has a striking sound similarity to the French word for werewolf, loup- garou, and there is quite a bit of French influence among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway. (French-Canadian trappers and missionaries were the first whites that they dealt with extensively, and many tribal members today bear French surnames), so it doesn't seem far-fetched that the Turtle Mountain Ojibway picked up the French name for hairy human- like being, while at the same time taking on their neighbors positive, reverent, attitude toward Bigfoot. After all, the Plains Cree -- even though they retain a memory of their eastern cousins tradition of the Wetiko (as the Windigo is called in Cree) -- have seemed similarly to take on the western tribes view of Bigfoot as they moved west.

The Hopi elders say that the increasing appearances of Bigfoot are not only a message or warning to the individuals or communities to whom he appears, but to humankind at large. As Mathiessen puts it, they see Bigfoot as "a messenger who appears in evil times as a warning from the Creator that man's disrespect for His sacred instructions has upset the harmony and balance of existence." To the Hopi, the "big hairy man" is just one form that the messenger can take.

The Iroquois (Six Nations Confederacy) of the Northeast -- although they live in close proximity to the eastern Algonkian tribes with their Windigo legends -- view Bigfoot much in the same way the Hopi do, as a messenger from the Creator trying to warn humans to change their ways or face disaster. However, mentioned among Iroquois much more often than Bigfoot are the "little people" who are said to inhabit the Adirondacks mountains. I never heard any first-hand stories among the Iroqouis about encounters with these "little people" -- for that matter, I never heard and first- hand stories in that region about Bigfoot, either -- but the Iroquois pass down stories about hunters who occasionally saw small human-like beings in the Adirondacks (which are not all that far from the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle was alleged to have met some little bowlers) (and slept for 100 years -HF). Some present-day Iroquois assert that the "little people" are still there, just not seen as often because the Iroquois don't spend as much time hunting up in the mountains as they used to. many Iroquois seem to regard both Bigfoot and the "little people" as spiritual or interdimensional beings who can enter or leave our physical dimension as they please, and choose to whom they present themselves, always for a reason.

Stories about small, humanoids who inhabit wild places are found in many areas of the world, especially Europe. (The Kiowa tell a story about several young men who decide to go exploring south from their Texas home for many days, seeing many new things, until they came to a strange forest [obviously the jungles of southern Mexico] whose trees were home to small, furred humanoids with tails! This they found to be too weird, so they immediately headed back for home). I never thought to connect the stories about the "little people" with the Sasquatch until Ray Crowe brought up the possible connection. After all, if there may be large relatives of humans living in remote areas, would it be so impossible for there to be small ones? Details that stretch credibility, such as pots of gold, pointed and belled caps, games of ninepins, etc., could conceivably be embellishments added over generations to some genuine accounts of sightings.

Throughout Native North America, Bigfoot is seen as a kind of "brother" to humans. Even among those eastern Algonkian tribes to whom Bigfoot represents the incarnation of the Windigo -- the human who is transformed into a cannibalistic monster by tasting human flesh in time of starvation -- his fearsomeness comes from his very closeness to humans. The Windigo is the embodiment of the hidden, terrifying temptation within them to turn to eating other humans when no other food is to be had. he was still their "elder brother", but a brother who represented a human potential they feared. As such, the Windigo's appearance was sort of a constant warning to them, a reminder that a community whose members turn to eating each other is doomed much more surely than a community that simply has no food. So the figure of the Windigo is not so far removed from the figure of the "messenger" coming to warn humankind of impending disaster if it doesn't cease its destruction of nature.

The existence of Bigfoot is taken for granted throughout Native North America, and so are his powerful psychic abilities. I can't count the number of times that I have heard elder Indian people say that Bigfoot knows when humans are searching for him and that he chooses when and to whom to make an appearance, and that his psychic powers account for his ability to elude the white man's efforts to capture him or hunt him down. In Indian culture, the entire natural world -- the animals, the plants, the rivers, the stars -- is seen as a family. And Bigfoot is seen as one of our close relatives, the "great elder brother".

By Gayle Highpine

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http://www.wikipedia.org/

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