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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 to 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 he 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 located 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 certain 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 cryptid 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 stern words to
its youngster while it was behaving badly. It appeared to be a verbal
correction of behavior in some language 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
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There is also this newspaper account
from 1935 with these words worth noting:
VANCOUVER, B. C.—(U.P.) —
Sasquatch men, remnants of a lost race of "wild men" who
inhabited the rocky regions of British Columbia centuries ago, are
reported roaming the province again. The strange men, it was
reported, after emerging from the woods, came leaping down the jagged
rocky hillside with the agility and lightness of mountain goats. Snatches
of their weird language floated on the breeze from across the
lake to the pioneer settlement at the foot of the hills. The giants walked
with an easy gait across the swamp flats and at the Morns Creek, in the
shadow of Little Mystery Mountain....
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/1935.htm
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---
...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 various databases, 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
speechless creatures." I don't pretend to know how science will
classify the sasquatch, I only know these can't possibly be apes, - not as
we currently know the great apes to be and that opinion is based primarily
on the sasquatch's bipedalism. No ape has ever evolved to walk upright as
a normal course of locomotion. It would take major anatomical
modifications to achieve true bipedalism in apes. If more accounts of
language skills are uncovered, that would definitely eliminate the ape.
Add to the mix the "human element" found in hair and scat analysis. Not
all of that can be attributed to contamination by the investigator,
assuming so is too convenient. ...Bobbie Short, October 2005
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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
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..."and don't for get
the language abilities being reported and published by people in
Tennessee." I believe the publication was "50 Years With Bigfoot." Els Brickman, Overton County, TN November 2005
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