Do Sasquatches have a Language?
by Micah A. Hanks, freelance writer for Fate Magazine October 2004 Issue ...with comments
Albert Ostman had been restricted to a sitting position for the better part of what he guessed was three hours, a prisoner inside his own sleeping bag. He could barely move and he had nearly passed out more than once already since the mouth of his bag was kept closed and he had been forced to recycle the same air since his strange journey had begun. As best as he could gather from the bouncing he’d felt since he awoke, something large had thrown him over its shoulder while he was sleeping and carried him off into the night.

Whatever was carrying Albert had taken him from his campsite in the mountains on Vancouver Island and though he wasn’t sure what time it was, he could sense it was still dark as he and his captor traveled. Finally all the motion stopped and he felt himself being lifted up, then gently placed on the ground. Albert could hear voices, but he couldn’t understand any of the words he heard, though he could certainly tell that there were more than only the once that had brought him here. Crawling out of his sake, he tried to massage his legs, which were cramped from holding the same position for so long. In the faint moonlight, he could make out little more than the silhouettes of four figures around him.

The chattering continued and Albert remembered legends that the natives in the area had told him of creatures called sasquatches, a race of hairy giants that haunted the highest most inaccessible regions of the island. Though he couldn’t yet see the things standing all around him, he knew now what they were.
He was a little frightened and finally asked them why they had brought him here. Only more chatter, this time a female voice expressing what Albert took as anger that he’d been brought to the sasquatch home. Dawn came slowly and as the dim light of morning began to fill the sky, he began to see clearly how hairy these “people� were, despite which they certainly looked like people. The large male waved his hands wildly, presumably relating the ordeal of bringing Albert back with him and drawing closer tro him said something that sounded to Albert like “sooka sooka.�

The young boy came near also and grabbed Albert’s can of snuff, tasting a bit of it. He too spoke with his new prisoner proclaiming “ook� which Albert took as a request for a can of snuff from the young sasquatch.

If you thing this sounds like the dialogue from a television show or a grade B horror flick, think again. This is actually a portion of a story dating back to the late 1920’s describing how Albert Ostman, a construction working looking for a lost mine near the head of Toba Inlet, Vancouver Island, was kidnapped by what he believed were sasquatches, the legendary beasts that haunt the mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest. According to his account he was kept with the creatures at their home in the mountains for several days before he fed them snuff, on which they choked, allowing him to escape.
Stories like Ostman about humans interacting with sasquatches may actually provide more than just entertainment and fuel for the fire of investigators in search of proof. There seems to be recurring element in most tales where sasquatches are wither surprised by or are in regular contact with humans; they are often observed speaking and in a few odd cases, have actually said things that people were able to understand.

Just what is speech?
Speech can be defined as verbal communication through air vibration. As far as science can prove, humans are the only creatures on Earth with a sophisticated verbal language based on this principle. It has been proved in recent years under lab conditions that some animals, including parrots and gorillas can learn to communicate with humans. You ay have seen gorillas on television communicating by use of sign language not only with humans but with each other, and parrots have been able to learn human names for objects and solve puzzles with the air of verbal communication on about the level of a second grader.

Obviously, animals can communicate. We see them do it every day from dogs marking their scent to define territorial boundaries to bees directing other workers to a source of nectar with their dance. Animals can also communicate pretty successfully with humans. Just try surprising a rattlesnake on a warm day in the woods – I’m sure you’ll know just what he means when he rears back and rattles his tail!

But wouldn’t it be a little strange to try and call this form of communication a language? There obviously has to be more present before intelligent, comprehensive communication in the form of verbal speech can be recognized.
J.W. Burns and the Chehalis Indians
In the 1920’s, a man named J.W. Burns began collecting odd stories of hairy giants that haunted the mountains, legends of the Chehalis Indians whose reservation was located near the southern end of Harrison Lake, British Columbia. Burns had worked for a number of years as the government Indian agent of the Chehalis reservation and had noted that the Chehalis people were reluctant to talk about their bizarre experiences with these hairy savages of the mountains.

Through years of inquiry, Burns began gathering tales from the natives on the reservation about their encounters with this entity. Many of these tales came from hunters or others who happened upon one of these creatures by chance while alone in the forest. These tales often ended with one or both parties fleeing from the scene. But in a few of the accounts gathered by Burns, some of the natives had actually said they heard the sasquatches speak and a few even claimed to understand what they were saying.
In one case Burns collected, an Indian named Charley reported coming across a sasquatch woman while on a hunting trip. While in the woods with his hunting dog, Charley heard what eh thought was a bear crying from a hole inside a redwood tree. When his dog disappeared into the hold, Charley shot the first thing that came running out, which he said looked to him like a young Caucasian boy. The injury was only a flesh wound and Charley tried to comfort the boy who continued to cry out into the empty forest around them. Before long, a voice began answering from off in the distance and finally a large female sasquatch appeared. Charley was frightened already but his apprehension only increased when the creature turned to him and said, “You have shot my friend.�

The Douglas Dialect
The interesting part about this is that in many similar cases related by the Indians of the Chehalis reservation about sasquatches speaking, the creatures are nearly always understood to be speaking in what is referred to as “the Douglas dialect.�
I first found mention of the Douglas Dialect in stories from Burns’ collections. But there was little else said about it in these texts and I had a difficult time digging up much additional information on my own. Finally, thanks to a native British Columbian I contacted named Ken Kristian, I learned that “Douglas� was reference to Salish Indians living in the area of Port Douglas at the north end of Harrison Lake. This particular band is known as the Douglas First Nation. Kristian also told me that the Chehalis band that Burns had worked for as an agent was location on the south end of Harrison Lake. Each band’s dialect differs slightly from one to the next but as one could guess, there would obviously be recognizable trails between dialects just as well as the differences. The aforementioned Charley was said to be part Douglas himself.

But why has the Douglas Dialect been associated with sasquatch speech patterns? Although the region in which this dialect originates also happens to have been a hotbed for sightings over the last several decades, it still seems strange that there might be a specific Northwestern Indian dialect associated with this entity.
What if it were a regional variation on what is known to be the Douglas Dialect? Perhaps cerain groups of sasquatches borrowed portions of an existing language from other people in the region.
Charley recounted the sasquatch calling the child her “friend.� He took this to mean that the creature had probably kidnapped the while Caucasian boy, hence “friend� supported the fact that the child wasn’t her own. But could Charley have been mistaken in his interpretation? Cold the sasquatch have meant “child� after all, but opted for this term because she didn’t know the correct word?
Such speculation still leaves us with the question of how these creatures started speaking a language so similar to that of a particular group of humans. Might this suggest that the sasquatch and human races had common ancestors? It is said that Charley himself guessed that the sasquatches were somehow related to the Douglas band.

Into the Modern Era
At the current time, the field is simply to broad to even try and make guesses, at least until we are finally able to interact with a living specimen of bigfoot.
I’ve spoken with a number of experts and researchers about the possibility that bigfoot may be able to speak. The general consensus, it seems, is that they probably don’t have language. Even when shown the stories of J.W.Burns, many people say that such tales are outdated and merely reflect the cultural beliefs of a secluded group of people.
But Native Americans are by no means the only people to report experiences in which sasquatches appear to be trying to communicate. A man named Alexander Katayev told of an experience he had in Russia in August 1974, where he witnessed two large hairy creatures eating together. He reported that one appeared male, and other female, and that they seemed to speak to one another in voices that reminded him of how deaf people sound when speaking. At one point the female appeared to respond with laughter to something her male counterpart said. The creatures were also described using hand motions.
Arthur Buckley once said of his research, “They communicate orally. On two separate occasions with colleagues, we have surprised a small group in their base camp -- who upon a hurried retreat have resorted to a jargon that has the phonetics of a language when we got close to them.�

Another strange account from September 1955 is presented by J. Robert Alley in his book Raincoast Sasquatch:

Just as it was getting dark, we heard a noise coming from the far bank; it sounded like rising and falling series of barking chattering sounds. We answered back, but it waited a minute before answering and was moving along the edge of the trees. It was wailing and making different sounds, and I asked Ed, who had a lot of experiences down south with coyotes, if it was a coyote, but he said not.�
“The sounds were all jumbled together and it sounded as though whatever it was, were trying to put words of sorts together, like it was trying to communicate with us. This would go on every minute or so.�
“Whatever it was circled around our camp in the forest without ever coming out. It sounded like it was trying to talk to us but didn’t quite have the nerve to step out and let us see it. It wasn’t real high pitched and was about as loud as us, like a man talking in a normal voice.�
Even with as many accounts as there are, we’ll never be certain as to whether or not people may actually be witnessing sasquatches performing anything close to speech as we know it until we can actually sit down with one and attempt to communicate verbally with it. The idea that we could share language with another species on this planet is fascinating for us as humans, no matter how far-fetched or even frightening it may be for some of us. Ultimately, such a discovery would certainly make this strange planet of ours feel a little smaller.

And besides, until proven under biological conditions, we may never know whether or not the sasquatch is really anything more than a figment of our collective imaginations. But for the time being, the more we can learn about them, the closer we may come to actually providing the hard evidence for which we’ve searched for so long. So we might as well turn over every stone we can, no matter how strange the notion behind them. For all we know one day we may be able to learn much about the sasquatches from their “language� alone. -- Micah A, Hanks is a freelance writer and crypid researcher. He is also the public relations affiliate and resident cryptozoology expert with the L.E.M.U.R. paranormal investigation team based out of Asheville, North Carolina. Article photos by Ken Kristian and sketches by R. Crumb
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Article transcribed from Fate Magazine for Bigfoot Encounters.com by Bobbie Short, who pulled the following accounts regarding language from her database:
There is the report from Navajo sheepherders of old in the four corners district (where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico come together) who believe to this day that the Ye'iitsoh speak the language of the northern tribes, "a tongue that we do not understand here in the southwest. They come here in the season of the long shadows to winter in our warmer climate and exchange sheep and goats for the fish they bring from the north -- fish that is not known to this area, making talk with us in a language that is not ours, but of the tribes who live in the north. They are of great size and have a body covered in long hair; they are the giant people from the mountains and traveling here is a great distance. " (Short)
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The late Gloria and John Millard emailed excerpts from their journal in 1997 in which they observed a large male sasquatch for three years in the high forest range of Arizona. I remember Millard emailing me that the male spoke sternly to its youngster while it was behaving badly. It appeared to be a verbal correction of behavior for the little one's temper tantrum and dirt throwing display. (Millard to Short, 1997-8)
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From Wrangell, AK a 1918 story about the gold miner who was awakened from a cat-nap in a field of berries by "people talking." Upon his investigation he encountered a mother-bushwoman feeding berries to a little one and talking to it in the manner of the Tlingit language. (Petermann to Short) http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/wrangell.htm

...and finally, there is this recently acquired report from a woman who befriended a sasquatch family as a little child on her father's Salmon River Ranch in Idaho who said they spoke and communicated together; they were her "friends".... published in Fate Magazine, 2004 http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/salmonriver2.htm

...there are many incidents of vocal interaction and language skills by sasquatches collected in the database, ...why it has been overlooked or discarded as a possibility is anyone's guess. Thirty eight years since the Patterson Film and we are just becoming interested in their language skills? It is blatant testimony to how backward North American research still is or perhaps how stuck research is in their collective assumption that sasquatches must be apes, napes or "animal-like creatures." ...Bobbie Short
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Other comments:
From Prince George, B.C., Canada:
I read this article of sasquatch having language, and the attached stories and accounts. God Bless you for putting this on your website. I have heard Sasquatch speak with my own ears. I couldn't understand much of what was being said because it was not loud enough, but what I did hear was definitely communication language.

My research assistant Mike was having a bit of a tough time grasping that the sasquatch does have language until just last week. He lives just above the shore of a lake. Only 10 minutes drive from his home.

Back in July 2005, he helped me investigate a clear sighting by some Saskatchewan visitors. Now here we are 2 and 1/2 months later, he takes his dog for a walk down to the lake and he hears voices across the lake. Voices of people talking but the voices seemed a bit different for some reason, almost immature in some ways, but the vocal range of adults.

There were no people over there and he says that the voices were saying words like we hear on the High Sierra CD's, Bigfoot Recordings. I bought these CD's myself a few months back and found that what I heard back in 1994 was much of the same that is on these CD's. If you go to my website, http://sasquatch-pg.net you will see in my home page where I explain my position quite clearly about sasquatch language.
Also I noticed in the article that a reference to the Sasquatch is being made in a human sense of being. In the past I personally have found it quite difficult to view these as people.

But, with all that I have heard, seen, and learned about Sasquatch, in my personal encounters and in my research studies, I find it absolutely impossible to view them as mere apes.

They most definitely are not mere apes and people who view them as such need to experience their presence and vocal talents first hand. Should people of this thinking experience what I have and many other people have experienced I will absolutely guarantee that the mind of the skeptic will change immediately.

I am becoming a very strong believer in what our Native First Nations People have said about
Sasquatch for centuries; that being; that they are a people, that they do speak language.

With that being said, would they actually be human or a sub species of human?? I don't know, but this I do know. God has given them life the same as He has given us life. If they are in fact human it just means that we are the higher order of our species. I know that this line of thinking will likely offend a lot of people. But, why should we be so pompous as to think that we are the only representation of our species.
When Scientists wake up to this fact and more Researchers begin to accept the possibilities then maybe we can get more serious work done in creating contact and communication with Sasquatch/Bigfoot. Hopefully this would also result in proper funding coming forward to help carry this very important work. - Leo Selzer, Prince George, BC, Canada (…. with permission) October 13, 2005

Compiled by Bill Sullivan for Bigfoot Encounters website...

They come here in the season of the long shadows to winter in our warmer climate and exchange sheep and goats for the fish they bring from the north -- fish that is not known to this area, making talk with us in a language that is not ours, but of the tribes who live in the north. They are of great size and have a body covered in long hair; they are the giant people from the mountains and traveling here is a great distance.

... How many sightings do you read about where people actually say something to the BF?...

I've had interesting results after talking to various wild animals. It has generally had a result of curiosity.

...If you did manage to do it would Bf also become more curious about you like other animals sometimes do?

Sleep talking can occur at any point in the slumber cycle. The lighter the sleep, the more intelligible the speech. During the early stages of the cycle, people may have entire conversations while asleep. In deeper slumber, somniloquy may be restricted to moans and gibberish.

A couple of things to ponder....

First, strange human-like mumbles at night may be somniloquy



(I only throw that out since I had a backpacking buddy that made those freakish grunts / language utterances in his sleep -very bizarre - may as well have been a bigfoot)...

...Second about language, it's not about the aparatus to utter sounds, it's about the brain circuitry to assemble thoughts into sentences. It's a huge leap...

See, this gets back to the we need a body thing,, so we can check for vocal cords!!!!!!!!!!

Crew Chief

..Verbal communication requires speech, reception, and processing into understanding. Since verbal communication among most other higher mammals is universally limited to the most basic of messages ("here I am", "I'm pissed off", "Look out", etc), and is nearly always dependant upon the associated body language, it's difficult to accept the possibility that sasquatches communicate on a much higher plane.

Also, the lack of evidence that these creatures create and use tools indicates a level of intelligence that is low enough to make one wonder how they can "talk".

But, considering the evidence that these creatures appear to be the only other bipedal primate out there, and that they also appear to be quite intelligent, it's not unreasonable to think that it's possible that these things are in an evolutionary stage of early vocal communication.

...too bad you don't get a dollar for every time you're quoted as Hunster....

...The gorillas/chimps that have learned sign language actually construct sentences, with syntax and can communicate on a high level. They just haven't developed a verbal language to match their potential to communicate...

...I also wouldn't be too quick to correlate tool use with intelligence. Tools are the great equalizer for humans and they were likely first used as weapons. Tools more than compensated for our lack of physical prowess in the animal kingdom. Sasquatch might be less likely to need weapons so they didn't get on the tool using bandwagon. ...

...It wouldn't surprise me if they were beyond the early stage of vocal communication...

...Lastly, I'd just like to say that my all time favorite bigfoot encounter is Albert Ostman's. Damn what a fine yarn he came up with. You don't just pull a story like that out of your butt. That's one well crafted tale, delivered by a pro!...

I strongly agree. Verbal communication requires speech, reception, and processing into understanding. Since verbal communication among most other higher mammals is universally limited to the most basic of messages ("here I am", "I'm pissed off", "Look out", etc), and is nearly always dependant upon the associated body language, it's difficult to accept the possibility that sasquatches communicate on a much higher plane.

Also, the lack of evidence that these creatures create and use tools indicates a level of intelligence that is low enough to make one wonder how they can "talk".

But, considering the evidence that these creatures appear to be the only other bipedal primate out there, and that they also appear to be quite intelligent, it's not unreasonable to think that it's possible that these things are in an evolutionary stage of early vocal communication.

*ahem* Call me all the names you wish to ... but , it has been MY experience, that "they" have a language, complete with syllables and syntax.
The second most intelligent animal in North America. "Us" being the ones who drive cars.
I've heard it, other witness' have heard it also.
I think its a matter of "comfort zone" wth them, if they feel your not a threat, you may hear them "speak", otherwise, its just grunts, moans, whistles, chirps.

Native languages have some extraordinary differences than European languages, for instance, some have different dialects spoken by men and women, a well-known example being Yana from California. A Yana man would say "pana" for "deer," while a woman would say "pah" (Champagne 418). Some languages, such a Bella Coola, a Salish language from British Columbia, has words without any vowels, such as "sk'lxlxc," which means, "I'm getting cold" (Champagne 416). Musical pitch can play a role in the meaning of a word. As Duane Champagne writes, "in Navajo, high pitch can be written with an acute accent [...] there are contrasting words like bíní' 'his nostril,' bìnì 'his face,' and bìní,' 'his waist' (Champagne 417).

Very much unlike English, many Native American languages are polysynthetic, which means a word is a combination of many element with many specific meanings. For instance, the single Wichita word "kiyaakiriwaac'arasarikita'ahiiriks" means "He carried the big pile of meat up into the top of the tree" (Champagne 418).

While today in English we try to avoid being sexist and stumble over awkward phrases such as "he or she should look out himself or herself," Cherokee pronouns are not gender specific at all. Therefore "Ost(i) digon'ti ageya" could mean: "There's a good-looking woman" or "There's a good-looking guy," according to the authors of How to Talk Trash in Cherokee (Oocumma 60).

"There is so much to learn from all these different languages, about the amazing choices humans have in organizing and talking about the world around them," write Hinton. "There are so many ways to construct language itself, many ways to play with it or to use it to powerful effect" (Hinton 13).

Language gives many clues to the culture. For instance, in Hasinai there is a completely separate common speech and a ceremonial speech. Both Cherokee and Hasinai have modifiers to distinguish between what is directly observed and what is gossip. Most native languages have extensive lists of high specific kinship terms, which show a greater emphasis on family than what is found in Anglo cultures. Again, using Hasinai as a typical example, "E'but" means "Grandfather on the male side of the family" and "Enahe'" may means "older aunt on the maternal side of the family" (Newkumet 116)

Action is paramount in Native languages. Nouns are expressed not so much as what something is as by what it does. The Cherokee word for "lawyer" is "ditiyohihi," which literately translates "s/he argues repeatedly and on purpose with a purpose," and "California" is "adel'tsuhdlv" or "where they find money" (Holmes, vi). Finally each language has its own unique sense of humor. Many west coast languages have silly nonsense speech for animals. For instance, in Yahi, when Coyote is imitated, l's or r's are turned into n's, so "yap'lasa:sithi" ("it is well done") turns into "yap'nasha"shithi" (Hinton 45). Other twists of humor include strange puns like the Cherokee "Ani?sasa," which can mean "Osage people" or "they are geese" (Holmes 280), or "uyv:dla," which means "Republican" or "cold" (Holmes 279).

Having spent hundreds and hundreds of hours listening to what were probably several different dialects of the Salish Indian language being spoken over radio phones during my long commercial fishing career on British Columbia's West Coast, I can honestly say that what I heard being spoken over the air waves always sounded strange and undecipherable to me.

I think language is the primary reason they haven't been officially discovered by western science.

-Ray

Well of course the 'native americans' should be better called the 'first immigrants'. No evidence is available that they evolved in North America, and it seems they came from Asia or Africa like everyone else.

Indigenous languages of the Americas

Since the asian language uses completly different phonemes it's difficult to understand for someone using an Indo European Language.

...Some languages, such a Bella Coola, a Salish language from British Columbia, has words without any vowels, such as "sk'lxlxc," which means, "I'm getting cold" (Champagne 416)....

...Sasquatch probably made its way from Asia to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene Ice Ages some 13,000 or more years ago...

...The Cherokee word for "lawyer" is "ditiyohihi," which literately translates "s/he argues repeatedly and on purpose with a purpose..."

Let me see if I can put the pieces of the puzzle together here:
Since Sasquatch probably made its way from Asia to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene Ice Ages some 13,000 or more years ago, and possibly brought with it a crude form of an asian language that used completly different phonemes, it should not be too difficult to understand why most of us who use forms of Indo European Language can't comprehend or decipher what Sasquatch is saying. Yet, on the other hand, the 'native americans' who have some extraordinary differences in their languages from Indo European Language, have stated many times that Sasquatch speaks the language of the northern tribes.

Now again, I'm certainly not suggesting that what witnesses I have personally interviewed stated they heard was any form or dialect of Native AmerIndian language, I'm stating that the witnesses I interviewed described hearing unknown, unintelligible, human-type mumbling sounds.

Bushman

While I suspect sasquatches did, indeed, immigrate to North America across a land bridge at one time, I think it's an assumption that humans did the same.

What's the difference between 'suspect' and 'assumption'?

"Suspect" is a verb, and "assumption" is a noun.

Otherwise, I think they mean the same thing.