Bigfoot legend lives large in Northwest lore, locales

JOHN TERRY - Sunday, June 05, 2005

Second of two parts

One of the myriad Web sites devoted to he/she/it/them puts it succinctly:

Born: c. 1811

Birthplace: United States and Canada

Best Known As: Big, elusive humanoid beast of North America.

The year 1811 was long before the beast, mythical or otherwise, became known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot. But it is the first formal record of such a critter.

The fellow who set it down was neither slouch nor faker in the exploration department. David Thompson is famous for tracking the Columbia River from its headwaters to the sea and establishing trading posts for the North West Co. on the Kootenai, Pend Oreille and Spokane rivers, several years before John Jacob Astor's crew set up shop at Astoria.

On Jan. 7, 1811, Thompson and party were slogging west across what we now know as the Canadian Rockies when they saw something worthy of a detailed journal note, which Thompson later expanded in "Narrative of His Explorations in Western America."

"I saw the track of a large Animal -- has 4 large toes abt 3 or 4 In long & a small nail at the end of each. The Bal of his foot sank abt 3 In deeper than his Toes -- the hinder part of his foot did not mark well. The whole is about 14 In long by 8 In wide & very much resembles a large Bear's Track. It was in the Rivulet in about 6 In snow."

In his "Narrative" he added: "We were in no humour to follow him; the Men and Indians would have it to be a young mammouth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzly; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a Bear, otherwise that of a very large old Bear, his claws worn away, the Indians would not allow."

In 1840, the Rev. Elkanah Walker wrote that members of the Spokane Tribe spoke of hairy giants that inhabited remote parts of their territory.

Indeed, Native American tradition across America is replete with creatures generally referred to by some native term for "Big Man." In his 1980 book "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," author Peter Mathiessen quotes Joe Flying By, a Hunkpapa Lakota:

"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. . . . Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, and they are already gone."

In the Chinook language, the term "Skookum" connotes a large, powerful entity who bestows ill fortune and makes bumpy noises in the night.

In 1893, no less a no-nonsense personality than Theodore Roosevelt wrote of his Western adventures and passed on an account of such creatures he attributed to "a beaten old mountain hunter named Bauman."

In his 1978 "The Apes Among Us," author and Sasquatchologist John Willison Green recounts Albert Ostman's 1924 claim that, while prospecting in the British Columbia wilderness, he was kidnapped and held for six days by the creatures:

"They look like a family, old man, old lady and two young ones, a boy and a girl. The boy and the girl seem to be scared of me. The old lady did not seem too pleased about what the old man dragged home. But the old man was waving his arms and telling them all what he had in mind."

Also in 1924, miner Fred Beck reported that a cabin he occupied with others in the wilds above Kelso, Wash., was assaulted by giant creatures that pounded on the structure, threw rocks and at one point thrust a hairy, outsized, menacing arm through the wall.

About this time the term "Sasquatch," derived from Northwest native dialects, came into vogue in reference to the creatures.

In 1967 came a defining event in Sasquatch history. Sasquatch hunters Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin took to the hills around Bluff Creek, Humboldt County, Northern California, and came up with about a minute of 16 mm film showing a form of Sasquatchian magnitude galumphing through some underbrush, obviously of no mind to be photographed.

A newspaper account, noting the size of the creature's tracks, called it "Bigfoot." The nickname stuck. So did the controversy surrounding the sighting.

Doubters point to such as retired logger Rant Mullen who in 1982 confessed to creating large footprints out of alder and whomping fake tracks into soft earth in various Northwest locales. Likewise road contractor Ray Wallace, who died in 2002 at age 84, told his family he had planted Sasquatch tracks in the area of the Patterson-Gimlin film.

Bigfoot partisans grant fakes abound. But, they say, experts have identified significant animalian tracks that can't be duplicated in wood and can't be equated with any other known biped.

Sasquatch sightings are frequent -- more than 500 in Oregon alone over the years. Many are by people otherwise trustworthy -- police officers, foresters, college professors, outdoor enthusiasts. Recent sighting hot spots include Northern California, the Cascade Range mountains above Estacada, and the Wallowa and Blue mountains.

Scientific inquiries are inconclusive. DNA samples from supposed Sasquatch hair and scat can't be verified. No skeletons or other remains have been found.

And although he or she (the Patterson-Gimlin film shows clear signs of femininity) is regularly the subject of news stories and TV documentaries -- trailing only Liz Taylor, Elvis and UFOs in tabloid coverage -- Sasquatch is shyly resolute in refusing to show face or provide other solid evidence of existence.

After 200 years, the reclusive, smelly (extreme body order is an often-reported characteristic) beasts seem content to remain an enigma wrapped in mystery cloaked in fur.

John Terry, terryjohnf@cs.com

A Bigfoot's infamous career leaves wide trail of mayhem

First of two parts

JOHN TERRY - Sunday, May 29, 2005

Make no mistake: There really was a Bigfoot.

Two of them, in fact, and not attached to the same person.

And whether there was/is a tribe of other such-named critters we will delay for a week in order to focus on one of local interest.

To avoid confusion, we should briefly mention Si Tanka (Spotted Elk), a Teton Sioux also known as Big Foot who lived from 1825 to 1890. He was a respected chief of the Sioux nation, fought beside Sitting Bull in the 1876-77 Black Hills War and was prominent in pleading his people's cause in Washington, D.C.

Then there was Starr Wilkinson (or Wilkerson). He is our Bigfoot -- one big, tempestuous, egregiously bad dude.

There are numerous engrossing, although at times conflicting, accounts of his infamous career (and 96.5 percent certain demise) on the Idaho-Oregon border.

He appears in, among others, Frances Fuller Victor's 1888 "History of Oregon"; Fred Lockley's Oregon Journal columns in 1924 and 1932; Annie Laurie Bird's 1934 history of the Boise Valley; a feature article by Barb Robison in The Oregonian for Aug. 16, 1953; Ralph Friedman's 1967 "Tales Out of Oregon"; and Mike Hanley's 1973 "Owyhee Trails." He also is a focus of a 2001 examination by historian Dorsey Griffin, who leans heavily on Lockley and Gale Ontko's "Thunder Over the Ochocos."

Our Bigfoot was, Friedman wrote, "seven feet tall, weight 300 pounds, and was so fleet he spurned the use of a horse. His foot prints measured 18 inches long and 6 inches wide, and he had the stride of a giant, which he was. He could cover 50 to 80 miles a day, sprawl on the earth for a few hours, then rise to travel another 50 to 80 miles. . . . In the Snake River country he was known as the Scourge of Idaho."

The others more or less agree. Robison put him at "from 6 feet 6 inches to 6 feet 8 inches in height and from 185 to 225 pounds. . . . " Hanley has him at 6 feet 8 1/2 inches with a 59-inch chest.

Wilkinson's story opens in the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma), the son of a white father, Archer Wilkinson, and a Cherokee and African American mother.

"His size haunted him," Hanley says. "He gained the name Bigfoot at an early age from other boys. He had a hot temper and a low boiling point, and several times nearly killed others over the hateful nickname."

"He joined an immigrant trail in 1856 after having nearly killed several persons in fights in Tiloqua, capital of the Cherokee nation," Robison adds. Wilkinson was about 18 at the time.

On the wagon train was a girl Wilkinson became enamored of. That apparently was OK with her until the train merged with a group from New York. With the New Yorkers was a young artist named Hart (first name unknown).

The girl (Ontko calls her Jessie Smith, but the others offer no name) and Hart fell into earnest romance, Wilkinson into raging jealousy.

One morning, Wilkinson came upon Hart and the girl in near-connubial bliss amid the sagebrush. Wilkinson violently dispatched the artist with his bare hands and heaved the body into the Snake River. Hanley says Hart may have ineffectively pumped a bullet or two into Wilkinson.

The terrorized girl retreated to the wagon train.

Wilkinson fled into the Idaho puckerbrush and shortly teamed up with Joe Lewis, the renegade French Canadian trapper infamous as an instigator of the 1847 Whitman Mission massacre, plus a handful of other renegades.

Thus launched on a bloody career, one of Wilkinson's first targets was the girl's wagon train.

"All who were with the train were killed, including the girl," Hanley says. " . . . From then on Wilkinson took part in many massacres and killed many times. . . . His hatred for the whites increased after he married an Indian woman and they had a son. She was killed and the boy carried off."

His head carried a bounty of $1,000 or $5,000 (accounts vary). He became known as Chief Nampuh. Nampuh means Bigfoot, hence Nampa, Idaho.

"One day his tracks would be seen on the Weiser, and the next day he would appear on the Owyhee, 80 miles away," Friedman says. "Though his warriors rode sturdy ponies, Bigfoot was never mounted. No ordinary horse could carry him."

In 1868, John Wheeler, a lawman cum highwayman, undertook to bring Bigfoot down. Wheeler armed himself with the latest in frontier firepower, a 44.-caliber Henry repeating rifle.

The face-off occurred along Reynolds Creek on the Boise-Silver City road. Wheeler perhaps correctly calculated that Bigfoot would arrive to rob a stagecoach. Or, says Hanley, Wheeler may have been on the scene with the same criminal intent as Bigfoot.

In any case, the ensuing shootout left Bigfoot, totally outgunned, at death's door.

William T. Anderson, who happened along, took cover, recorded the scene, including Bigfoot's vitals, and left to round up his runaway horses. (It's his account that Lockley relied on.)

Then, mysteriously, Bigfoot vanished.

Some speculate that Wheeler, himself part Cherokee, buried the big man out of mutual respect. Others think that when Wheeler left to fetch the means to remove the body, Bigfoot's compatriots sneaked in and took him away. Maybe even nursed him back to health. To rob and pillage again.

No grave was ever found. Bigfoot was never sighted again. But, it's said, huge moccasin prints were evident at some later scenes of mayhem.

Wheeler went on to a life of crime, served 10 years in the Oregon penitentiary and cheated the hangman in Ukiah, Calif., by swallowing poison.

Next week: Catching Sasquatch

John Terry: terryjohnf@cs.com