Searching For Bigfoot: The Endangered Sasquatch

THE ENDANGERED SASQUATCH

Will North America’s Most Elusive Mammal Become Extinct Through Scientific Neglect?

By Warren L. Cook

In what follows, it is my intention to document the likelihood that the sasquatch is very possibly Man's closest relative in the animal kingdom and the next most intelligent species on Earth, but has so far escaped being autopsied or otherwise documented as a real species to the satisfaction of scientists, where after it could come under protection. Hence it is in danger of becoming extinct, because inroads upon its habitat make for few and increasingly isolated breeding pools. Slaying even a single specimen, for the sake of identification, might push that particular band over the border of natural recovery. Scientific disinclination to research the subject seriously is therefore one of the primary problems. Sadly, divulgation of the many unusual encounters, annually is left to the tabloids.

In an excellent book titled Bigfoot: the Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality, first published in 1972, British anthropologist Dr. John Napier-, onetime head of the primate program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, set forth in great detail various lines of evidence leading him to conclude that a manlike ape actually roams certain areas of North America. In Napier's opinion, 'That such a creature should be alive and kicking in our midst, unrecognized and unc1assifiabJe, is a profound blow to the credibility of modern anthropology."

Dimitri Bayanov, Soviet hominologist (i.e. specialist in surviving hominoids), of Moscow's Darwin Museum, cites the opinion of the late San Francisco Bay area sasquatch study group leader George Haas that, to establish the species, films are needed, comparable to those taken by Adtien Deschryver of gorillas in Zaire(D. Bayanov, "A Hominologist’s” View From Moscow, USSR", in: The Scientist Looks at Sasquatch (II). Roderick Sprague and Grover Krantz. Moscow, Idaho, 1979). Bayanov is justifiably opposed to harming or capturing a sasquatch in the name of "Science", pointing out that "there was no need to shoot or cage a Tasaday to prove the existence of that Stone Age tribe In the Philippines."

Photographing the notoriously odoriferous and elusive sasquatch poses problems much greater than is the case with gorillas or the Tasaday, as I postulate that their behavior patterns are probably evolving, as a consequence of experience and natural selection, they have become for the most part nocturnal. and are so intelligent as to be extremely adept at keeping out of harm's way. Although there have been accounts of one being captured (1865, 1878,1884, ca 1940), slain or found dead (ca 1880, . 1903, 1905, 1920, 1965, 1967, 1970), in each instance those witness to the physical evidence were not sufficiently concerned, or were unable to get it preserved or scientifically studied. The two best documented cases in point are the hairy hominid captured near Yale, B. C., described at length in the Daily Colonist of Victoria, July 4th, 188-4, and the top portion of a skull, 1501 larger than human, found in California's Minaret mountains in 1965 by a medical doctor and sent to a pathologist at Ventura County General Hospital, who judged it to be "some anthropoid species other than human:'. He took it to the Department .of Archaeology at UCLA, where it was quickly dismissed as being an abnormal Indian, but retained (B. Ann Slate and Alan Berry, Bigfoot, N. Y., 1976, pp. 160-65). Berrts efforts to locate the skull failed, a decade later, but the anthropologists involved recollected it as "a peculiar thing--its morphology and markings," and that it didn't resemble any of the known aboriginal populations of California. I talked to the physician, who has performed enough post mortems to recognize a human cranium, and as of 1983 he still had no word of his find.

One Bigfoot investigator, on at least ten different occasions, has come forth with color stills and motion picture footage alleged to be of a sasquatch. Demonstrably, Ivan Marx of Burney, Shasta County, California, is a very accomplished nature photographer, skilled woodsman, and animal tracker. By inquiring of Indian and Eskimo informants, and studying sasquatch habit patterns. Marx would appear to have learned how-to be at the right spot at the right time, camera at the ready.

Ivan feels disoriented in the bowels of a skyscraper, and is happiest in the wilderness. He frets until back with his "sweetie", as he calls his devoted wife, Peggy, who often accompanies him in the wilds. Zealous to preserve their modest, unfettered life style, Ivan and Peggy have invested a major portion of their lives coming up with the.: Bigfoot photos for which he is well known--some say notorious--among hominologists. But precisely because, year after year, he comes forth with such pictures, they are scorned by some or the other. well known Bigfoot enthusiasts. He has . equivalent distaste for them as "great white hunter types" with a "sour grapes" attitude toward him because they lack the skills and patience to get anywhere near a sasquatch. except by chance. Marx’s footage sometimes does not conform to the expected image and the specimens in his photos vary in color. size. volume, body fat. and length or hair. When he first showed me his color photos. J carped at the domed appearance of .the creatures' skulls(a feature that has subsequently b(;~!.L corroborated by other eyewitnesses with whom I have spoken). and it got .back \0 me that Ivan had remarked to a mutual friend. "I can't photograph the creature the way them jollies think he ought to look, but only the way he is."

My concern, from the beginning, was to establish whether Marx is. telling the truth or faking. in photos, words. and deeds. Anyone who knows him will report that he is one of the greatest story tellers going--a contemporary Will Rogers. John Green's Sasquatch, The Apes Among Us (Saanichton, B. C., and Seattle. Wash. 1978). best book to date on the creature, has an unforgettable chapter titled, simply. “Ivan”. Because my own professional reputation was at stake, since I first met Ivan and at the risk of losing his confidence I have ceaselessly sought to probe for inconsistencies, approaching the same point from different angles, months and years apart. Doubtless conscious. of this, it probably discomfits him, but he has always been patient and never failed to give answers that seemed honest and frank. Initially, he and Peggy were unaware of being protagonists in a historical process, and that. it was important to document their photos chronologically and provide details of the content in which they were taken. This had never been done. Plain, unassuming folk, to them it was simply life experienced, year to year.

Until a sasquatch is examined, in the flesh, and the Marx photos are validated or refuted, I cannot be certain my judgment is correct, but I am or the opinion that Ivan and Peggy, while reticent in their personal lives, are steadfastly honest and it would be out of character for them to jeopardize their goal of documenting sasquatch by tainting genuine photos just to produce more. Unwilling to lake them on faith, I have studied each or the photos in the light or what we know from the studies or Goodall, Fossey, Galdinkas-Brindamoor et al., and from sasquatch reports independent of Marx. As Grover Krantz. Associate Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University told me, “Pictures do not constitute proof”. - But they are the best evidence to date of our relationship to what might be our-closest relatives among other living species.

In one of our most fruitful sessions together, in his Burney home, after I hearty Sunday dinner of roast bear and "Cibeque" pie. a rice and prickly pear casserole from Peggy's home state of Arizona. Ivan and Peggy consented to my taping an interview without foreknowledge of what would be asked. They gave straightforward answers to the most delicate of issues.

Competition between some of the most dedicated Bigfoot enthusiasts has been intense, and Marx's successive footage was bound to be challenged as to authenticity, from the outset. Consequently, it has not been subjected to the extensive scientific scrutiny that Napier and Russian scientists lavished upon the late Roger Patterson's famous 18-second film taken in 1967 at Bluff Creek, Humboldt County, California, .

A 1983 feature-length documentary, "In the Shadow of Bigfoot," an Amazing Horizons, Inc., production, incorporates Marx's most recent, dramatic, and potential1y most valuable sasquatch footage from the point of view of physical anthropology. Some will hail it as a worthy response to the Haas-Bayanov plea and others will attempt to "laugh it out of court". Marx's latest stills are fine-grained and full of details, and his action footage so revelatory of musculature and behavior patterns that they should shift the debate from "whether such a creature exists,” where it now languishes, on the periphery of scientific awareness, to "what can we learn about this relict manlike ape, and from it, about ourselves,” and "how can we prevent it from coming any closer to extinction?"

Gordon Strasenburgh ("Perceptions and Images of the Wild Man," in: Sprague and Krantz, op. cit.), has set forth evidence of the extinction of similar hominoids in Europe within historical times, but they survive and are being scientifically studied in the U.S.S.R. and China. Dr. Krantz makes a case for the sasquatch's increasing in North America, but others perceive reasons to disagree. In any case, Bayanov chides, "Cannot homosapiens afford to be magnanimous- enough to grant Most Favored Creature Status at least to his nearest kin in the animal kingdom?"

Ivan Marx saw his first sasquatch footprint in October 1951, at Dead Horse Summit, Siskiyou County, in Northern California. The term "Bigfoot" had not yet been invented. and until then Ivan did not believe such a creature existed. While hunting cougar (he captures them alive, including the one in a current automobile advertisement), in 1958 in Nevada's White Mountains, just east of Bishop, California. from 500 yards away Ivan spotted a tall, black, ominous, manlike creature. Using a 400 mm telephoto lens he filmed it for about fifteen seconds, as it strode ponderously down an open slope among what appears to be sage brush, and then stoops to feed off one clump. Ivan says it was "too strange, unknown, and potentially dangerous to want to get any closer.” Nine years later, when the Patterson 1967 footage made headlines, Marx disclosed to very few persons his own, less detailed film. Inspecting the original, I could see the numerals "57" at intervals along the sprocket holes, the year of manufacture, corroborating Ivan’s chronological sequence.

The Bossburg Episode

The Shooting Sequence

The Snow Sequence

Warren L. Cook, Professor of History & Anthropology at Castleton State College, Vermont, holds doctorates from the Universidad Nacional de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, and from Yale. He was nominated for the Pultizer Prize and won the Herbert Eugene Bolton Memorial Prize for Flood Tide of Empire: Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543 - 1819 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1973).

From HomePage

GO BACK TO THE; FRONT PAGE OR HomePage OR TABLE OF CONTENTS

“BIGFOOT LIVE”

(RADIO SHOW)

Listen to Tom live every Wednesday at 7PM pacific time at “www.bigfootliveradioshow.com”

CYBERSIZZLE

Hola!

WANT FREEDOM?

THE ENDANGERED SASQUATCH

Will North America’s Most Elusive Mammal Become Extinct Through Scientific Neglect?

Copyright Searching for Bigfoot Inc., © Searching for Bigfoot Inc. 2005-2006-2007-2008-2009

Elapsed:0