4. The Appearance of Bigfeet

Abominable Snowmen, by Ivan T. Sanderson, [1961], at sacred-texts.com

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4. The Appearance of Bigfeet

Mr. Ostman's story was related to Queen Elizabeth II when she visited British Columbia in 1959. The story is said to have been submitted to Her Majesty by an official, along with other Sasquatchery, in a remote vacation cabin at a lake near Kamloops on August 28. By coincidence, I was on that same day closeted in a small railroad shack with a charming Amerindian couple named Mr. and Mrs. George Chapman, at Jacko's old retreat of Yale, some miles lower down the Fraser River. I also was hearing a story, but firsthand, and in what turned out later to have been rather extraordinary circumstances.

We had crossed the log-filled Fraser in a small boat, rowing first away upstream, then very rapidly a long way downstream broadside, and then finally a long way back upstream again on the other side in the lee of a tall bank. Scrambling to the top of this we struck a railroad along which an Amerindian family were straggling in from the hills. By some strange quirk of fate, this turned out to be the Chapman family for whom we were looking. They hospitably invited us in to the freight office, behind which they had a small house.

That could have been a very tense or even profitless interview for several reasons. Here we were, two palefaces with locally odd accents—Robbie Christie, though born in New Jersey, has ranched in Colorado, wears a Texan-type hat, and has a vaguely British accent; while I talk a sort of bastardized Anglo-Saxon with an American intonation and a British accent

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neither of which are popular in Canada—who had met up with a reticent Amerindian couple, apparently quite by chance on a railroad track, and who now had suddenly demanded to hear the facts of a series of incidents that had happened to these good people 18 years before. Somehow, however, and perhaps due mostly to a kind of mild shock, we all got off on the right foot and within a surprisingly short space of time Mrs. Chapman was recounting those terrible hours with complete clarity, only every now and then being mildly corrected by her husband, or having her account augmented by details which she had not witnessed.

We had heard their story from several sources and had read it in several printed versions, but I wanted to get it firsthand and I wanted to be able to shoot my particular glossary of awkward biological questions at principals, who were alleged eyewitnesses of a living Sasquatch in daylight. It is just as well that we crossed the Fraser River just when we did, and so met the Chapmans, because about a month afterward they were drowned crossing at the same spot late one night. The irony and tragedy of this event upset me greatly for, as I have said, I have a great liking and respect for the Amerindian peoples and I not only found this couple graciously natural and friendly but they also impressed me, as very few other people have ever done, with their sincerity and honesty. The Chapman family at the time of the incident consisted of George and Jeannie Chapman and three children. Mr. Chapman worked on the railroad. They lived near a small place called Ruby Creek, 30 miles up the Fraser River from Agassiz. It was about 3 in the afternoon of a cloudless summer day when Jeannie Chapman's eldest son, then aged 9, came running to the house saying that there was a cow coming down out of the woods at the foot of the nearby mountain. The other kids, a boy aged 7 and a little girl of 5, were still playing in a field behind the house bordering on the rail track.

Mrs. Chapman went out to look, since the boy seemed oddly disturbed, and then saw what she at first thought was a very big bear moving about among the bushes bordering the field beyond the railroad tracks. She called the two smaller children

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who came running immediately. Then the creature moved out onto the tracks and she saw to her horror that it was a gigantic man covered with hair, not fur. The hair seemed to be about 4 inches long all over, and of a pale yellow-brown color. To pin down this color Mrs. Chapman pointed out to me a sheet of lightly varnished plywood in the room where we were sitting. This was of a brownish-ocher color.

This creature advanced directly toward the house and Mrs. Chapman had, as she put it, "much too much time to look at it" because she stood her ground outside while the eldest boy—on her instructions—got a blanket from the house and rounded up the other children. The kids were in a near panic, she told us, and it took 2 or 3 minutes to get the blanket, during which time the creature had reached the near corner of the field only about 100 feet away from her. Mrs. Chapman then spread the blanket and, holding it aloft so that the children could not see the creature or it them, she backed off at the double to the old field and down on to the river beach, out of sight, and ran with the kids downstream to the village.

I asked her a leading question about the blanket. Had her purpose in using it been to prevent the children seeing the creature, in accord with an alleged Amerindian belief that to do so brings bad luck and often death? Her reply was both prompt and surprising. She said that, although she had heard white men tell of that belief, she had not heard it from her parents or any other of her people, whose advice regarding the so-called Sasquatch had been simply not to go farther than certain points up certain valleys, to run if she saw one, but not to struggle if one caught her, as it might squeeze her to death by mistake.

"No," she said, "I used the blanket because I thought it was after one of the kids and so might go into the house to look for them instead of following me." This seems to have been sound logic as the creature did go into the house and also rummaged through an outhouse pretty thoroughly, hauling from it a 55-gallon barrel of salt fish, breaking this open, and scattering its contents about outside. (The tragic irony of it is that all those original three children did die within 3 years, while,

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as I have said, a month after we interviewed them, the Chapmans and their new children drowned as well.)

Mrs. Chapman told me that the creature was about 7½ feet tall. She could easily estimate the height by the various fence and line posts standing about the field. It had a rather small head and a very short, thick neck; in fact really no neck at all, a point emphasized by William Roe and by almost all others who claim to have seen one of these creatures. Its body was entirely human in shape except that it was immensely thick through its chest and its arms were exceptionally long. She did not see the feet which were in the grass. Its shoulders were very wide and it had no breasts, from which Mrs. Chapman assumed it was a male, though she also did not see any male genitalia due to the long hair covering its groin. She was most definite on one point: the naked parts of its face and its hands were much darker than its hair, and appeared to be almost black.

George Chapman returned home from his work on the railroad that day shortly before 6 in the evening and by a route that bypassed the village, so that he saw no one to tell him what had happened. When he reached his house he immediately saw the woodshed door battered in, and spotted enormous humanoid footprints all over the place. Greatly alarmed —for, like all of his people, he had heard since childhood about the "big wild men of the mountains," though he did not hear the word Sasquatch till after this incident—he called for his family and then dashed through the house. Then he spotted the foot-tracks of his wife and kids going off toward the river. He followed these until he picked them up on the sand beside the river and saw them going off downstream without any giant ones following.

Somewhat relieved, he was retracing his steps when he stumbled across the giant's foot-tracks on the river bank farther upstream. These came down out of the potato patch, which lay between the house and the river, milled about by the river, and then went back through the old field toward the foot of the mountains where they disappeared in the heavy growth.

Returning to the house, relieved to know that the tracks

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of all four of his family had gone off downstream to the village, George Chapman went to examine the woodshed. In our interview, after 18 years, he still expressed voluble astonishment that any living thing, even a 7-foot-6-inch man with a barrel-chest could lift a 55-gallon tub of fish out of the narrow door of the shack and break it open without using a tool. He confirmed the creature's height after finding a number of long brown hairs stuck in the slabwood lintel of the doorway, above the level of his head. George Chapman then went off to the village to look for his family, and found them in a state of calm collapse. He gathered them up and invited his father-in-law and two others to return with him, for protection of his family when he was away at work. The foot-tracks returned every night for a week and on two occasions the dogs that the Chapmans had taken with them set up the most awful racket at exactly 2 o'clock in the morning. The Sasquatch did not, however, molest them or, apparently, touch either the house or the woodshed. But the whole business was too unnerving and the family finally moved out. They never went back.

After a long chat about this and other matters, Mrs. Chapman suddenly told us something very significant just as we were leaving. She said: "It made an awful funny noise." I asked her if she could imitate this noise for me but it was her husband who did so, saying that he had heard it at night twice during the week after the first incident. He then proceeded to utter exactly the same strange, gurgling whistle that the men in California, who had told us they had heard an Oh-Mah (or "Bigfoot") call, had given. This is a sound I cannot reproduce in print, but I can assure you that it is unlike anything I have ever heard given by man or beast anywhere in the world. To me, this information is of the greatest significance. That an Amerindian couple in British Columbia should give out with exactly the same strange sound in connection with a Sasquatch that two highly educated white men did, over 600 miles south in connection with California's Bigfoot, is incredible. If this is all a hoax or a publicity stunt, or mass hallucination, as some people have claimed, how does it happen that

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this noise—which defies description—always sounds the same no matter who has tried to reproduce it for me?

A somewhat more colorful story was told by a well-known old Amerindian "medicine man" named Frank Dan. (This I reproduce by the kind permission of Mr. J. W. Burns.) This, he says, occurred in July, 1936 along Morris Creek, a small tributary of the Harrison River (see Map II). J. W. Burns writes of Frank's story:

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I include this story not so much for anything it might add to the general picture of ABSMs in the area—there is ample evidence of that in any case—but to exemplify the type of tale told by the Amerind that cause the white man to doubt his veracity. Frank Dan was an old and respected medicine man living by the precepts and beliefs of his ancestors. Thus, his interpretation of events had to be in accord with his position in the community. I believe that facts colored by these precepts may be readily spotted in his account and just as readily eliminated. If this is done, we are left with a pretty straightforward account; namely, that while fishing, a Sasquatch appeared, hurled some rocks at the old gentleman, and stank like hell. The induced landslide and the weight of the second rock hurled, or perhaps merely dislodged into the river, as well as the giant's implied curse, are pure embellishments. Even the mass exodus of the trout might well be perfectly true and due to a cascade of boulders rather than to a stink in the air that they could of course not smell in the water. Besides, Frank Dan's "medicine" came off second best and he had manifestly fled. He couldn't explain this fact away, so he just did the best he could so not to show up in too poor a light. As a matter of fact, Mr. Burns records that he gave up being a medicine man from then on, saying that his powers

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had been finally defeated. That would seem to be the act of an honest man.

During this decade the Amerinds of this area appear, by all accounts, to have suffered quite a spell with their Sasquatches. One by the name of Paull, in company with others returning from a lacrosse game, met one on the main road near Agassiz; another party only a few miles away ran into one on a mountain, and one of the men fired at it in pure fright, whereupon it pursued them to their canoe, in which they just managed to escape. Another local man, when dressing after a swim in a river on a hot summer day was confronted by one near a rock, and was just about to address it in his language when it rose to its full height and nearly scared him out of his wits. Still another group told Mr. Burns that they had watched one fighting a large bear for a long time and finally killing it by strangulation. In another place, an old man said that a party of Sasquatches used to watch loggers at work and then, after they had gone home for the evening, come out and imitate their activities as if playing a game. But, perhaps the most curious is an incident told to the same indefatigable investigator, Mr. Burns, by the same Charley Victor of Chilliwack already mentioned, and which I herewith reproduce with the former's permission. Charley speaks, and says:

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The old man remarked that he had met several "Wild Persons" in his time but had never seen anyone half so savage in appearance as this woman. The old brave confessed that he was really afraid of her and that he had fled.

This story does add some significant facts to the over-all picture because of the details given of the youngster's fur color compared to that of the female, and the curious statement about the length of her head-hair. The former agrees with the accounts of Jacko and some other reputed ABSM youngsters: the latter is, as far as I know, a completely unique item. I wonder about this latter because I have noted a distinct tendency, perhaps psychological, for people to assume that the head-hair of wild people would be of the Lady Godiva type. A good friend of mine, a well-known artist who has illustrated many scientific works and natural history books, once sent me his "impression" of a Californian Oh-Mah which greatly surprised me. Despite this man's extensive knowledge of mammalian anatomy and long experience in drawing animals to the specifications and approval of zoologists, he had depicted just a great big white-type man with long flowing hair and an immense beard. This seems, indeed, to be the popular conception of an ABSM; yet, everybody who claims to have seen one makes special mention of the small pointed heads, small round eyes close together and directed straightforward, extra long arms, and short head-hair, a naked face without beard and prognathous jaws but no lips (i.e. no eversion of the lips) . The picture given of all of them

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by those who claim to have seen them, is of creatures with several distinctly nonhuman characters, especially about the head and face. However, the same witnesses everywhere, and all natives who say they know of the existence of ABSMs—and this goes for the Central Asiatics, as well as Malays, African, and North and South Americans—insist just as vehemently that the creatures are human rather than animal. Quite where various people draw the dividing line between the two presents other puzzles, but the Kazakhs of the U.S.S.R. who caught one of their Ksy-Giiks, thought it was a man wearing a disguise, while the Soviet Army medical officer who examined a Kaptar, pronounced it so human that it should be released. Even the Hill Batuks of Sumatra, who are themselves just about at the bottom rung of the cultural ladder, call their local Orang Pendeks and Orang Gadangs by a name that denotes "wild men." The Malays of the same country, however, call even the Mias (their great ape), the Orang-utan (i.e. "hutan" ^*), which simply mean wild (utan) man (orang) . The Amerinds of our Northwest insist that the Sasquatches are very lowly forms of men, so lowly that they, Amerinds, do not want to associate with them in any way; preferring not to talk about them and especially about the possibility of mating with them. That would lead to contamination of their race, and, if the very idea got into the white man's head, it would lead to a further degradation of their status by the implication that they might be partly wild themselves.

The basic "humanity" of ABSMs is perhaps understandable as regards the pigmy and the giant types, for both leave what at first sight look exactly like either very small or very large human footprints, as most certainly do the Eurasian Almas. The man-sized Meh-Teh type, on the other hand, leave a most unhuman type of footprint (see Appendix B). Encounters with Sasquatches are really so common that they become boring in the telling. I could give dozens more, all

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of which were allegedly witnessed by more than two people and occurred between 1930 and 1960, but I shall refrain and confine my concluding remarks to three cases that for some reason created great stirs and which appear to have finally convinced the general public that something was going on.

The first would not appear to have been any more outstanding than dozens of others, but the personalities of the couple concerned played a considerable part in the formulation of public opinion. These were two young people named Adeline August and her boy friend William Point. They happened to be particularly popular and attractive, and were then attending the local high school. They had been on a picnic and were walking home along the Canadian Pacific Railroad track right by Agassiz when a large Sasquatch stepped out of the woods ahead of them. Adeline sensibly bolted, but young William stood his ground to cover her flight and grabbed up two rocks with which to defend himself. However the ABSM kept steadily advancing and when it was only 50 feet away William Point decided to retreat. He said that it was about twice the size of an ordinary, large, well-built man, covered with hair, and had arms so long that they almost reached the ground. William Point also said, "It seemed to me that his eyes were very large, and the lower part of his nose was wide, and spread over the greater part of his face." Locally, the account of this young couple was fully believed, and despite the fact that they were Amerinds.

This was in 1954. The following year the most outstanding of all Canadian cases occurred. This was related by one William Roe, mentioned above, and is succinctly and amply covered in the following affidavit:

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This priceless document was also unearthed by the indefatigable John Green of the Agassiz-Harrison Advance, upon whom the mantle of Sasquatch research, nobly worn by Mr. J. W. Burns for so many years, seems to have fallen. He published it in his paper and the results were electric. Not only did it bring Mr. Ostman's story to light; it got the whole neighborhood on its toes, including even the Chamber of Commerce of the resort town of Harrison which made moves to advertise a Sasquatch hunt as a come-on for its centenary celebrations! Fortunately, and decently, this idea was dropped but $5000 is said to have been offered for the capture of a Sasquatch. This was not, of course, collected but it brought forth another rash of encounter stories. Notable among these—and most noted in the world press—was a story reported by a Mr. Stanley Hunt of Vernon, B.C., a respected and widely known auctioneer, who, when driving at night along the Trans-Canada Highway near a place called Flood on the lower Fraser River south of Yale, on May 17, 1956, had to slow down to permit one of them to cross the road. It was immense and covered with "gray hair," and, waiting for it on the other side of the road, there was, Mr. Hunt relates, another one "gangly, not stocky like a bear."

According to C. S. Lambert, writing in 1954, the situation changed considerably in 1935 when:

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In the fall of the following year large human-like footprints turned up overnight all over the place in this area. Throughout a hundred years of Sasquatchery, footprints are often mentioned casually, but nobody seems to have been particularly impressed by them or to have done anything about them. Suddenly they took over the front pages.

Footnotes

74:* This is the correct spelling in Malay, and "orang" really means "person," not "man."—Author.

78:* [I add here the following note that I presume he is referring there to droppings or faeces of this animal of which he says he found evidence in five different places.]