Sasquatch Wiki: Lincoln Palmer

The Sasquatch has been described by all who have had encounters with it as a very large humanoid creature that is covered in fur. He appears in many different cultures and has been given several different names such as the sasquatch, the bigfoot, yowie, skunk ape, etc. According to the government, [the first sightings started in the late 1800s to the early 1900s, however the legends go back beyond recorded history](Creative). The Bigfoot Field Research Organization is an organization that's sole purpose is to prove that the Bigfoot (or Sasquatch) exists. They have a feature that allows people to share their sightings, and they also have bigfoot expeditions which you can sign up for. The picture presented above depicts the most famous sighting so far which took place in 1967 and depicts a sasquatch looking creature walking through a clearing in California. Unfortunately, this sighting has been regarded as false, and most people believe it is just a person wearing a costume.

The legend of the sasquatch, or bigfoot, has a fascinating history and has troubled many people for hundreds of years. The legend is very popular in Northwest North America and there have been many sightings in this area. [Sightings began in North America all the way back in the 1800’s when North American settlers would report seeing the creature and finding footsteps](Pester). While the sasquatch is very popular in North America, there have been sightings of the sasquatch all over the globe. It is also interesting that different regions have different names for the creature. For example, most Americans refer to it as the bigfoot, while Canadians refer to it as the sasquatch, and the Chinese refer to it as the yeren. There have been expeditions and groups of people in both North America and China that have gone out and searched for the creature however no one has been able to find anything conclusive.

There have been many sightings of the sasquatch in Northwest America and Canada, as well as many other parts of the world. The sighting that is held as the most popular sighting is the “"Patterson-Gimlin film" is a minute-long video that appears to show a female Bigfoot — later nicknamed "Patty" — walking through a clearing in Northern California”(live science). Unfortunately most people believe that the video was just someone in a costume. A story that I find particularly interesting comes from a logger in Canada. He claims that the sasquatch abducted him and attempted to force him to be a breeding mate for a female sasquatch, however the logger escaped in time. Unfortunately the Canadian logger had no evidence to back up his story so most people do not believe him. There are many stories and sightings however most people are still skeptical due to the uniquely small amount of concrete evidence.

As cryptids such as the sasquatch get passed on from culture to culture and country to country the story or the creature gets changed a lot. These changes that people make to the story are called adaptations. One adaptation of the sasquatch is called the skunk ape. These creatures are supposedly some kind of cousin to the sasquatch and live further south.``Skunk apes are supposedly swamp-dwelling versions of Bigfoot that are rumored to roam the southeastern U.S.”(Radford).   A youtube account holder supposedly caught one on video in a Mississippi swamp however he made the same mistake as many others who claim to catch the sasquatch on video, which is to jerk the camera at the last second and run away. This video, like many others, has largely been declared as a hoax due to the videoers inability to capture a clear video. Unfortunately many videos that have been claimed to contain evidence proving a cryptids existence are not good quality due to the person videoing.

Adaptations can be made from stories being passed around again and again and people mix up the details or get confused about part of the story. This could be represented by the children's game called telephone. Or adaptations are caused by somebody intentionally changing the story. The skunk ape adaptation is so different from the original story  it sounds as if somebody had to make it up intentionally, but why would they do this? Well it’s possible they thought they were making it more interesting or that it would get more attention than the original story. I believe that the creator of the swamp ape adaptation created it because he wanted to be able to relate to the story more. It could also be that he did that because there was so little evidence for the Sasquatch that he could find more convincing evidence for the swamp ape. Unfortunately this does not happen because of the poor video footage. This is the only adaptation that I found about the sasquatch. This is probably because the story of sasquatch or bigfoot is so simple it’s hard to change it in a believable way. This is also one of the most popular cryptids in the world so everybody’s already heard the original story.

**Works Cited**

Creative, Efelle. “‘Legend of Bigfoot’        .” Washington State Military Department, https://mil.wa.gov/the-legend-of-bigfoot.

Pester, Patrick. “The Most Famous Bigfoot Sightings.” LiveScience, Purch, 27 Dec. 2022, https://www.livescience.com/most-famous-bigfoot-sightings.

Radford, Benjamin. “Bigfoot Cousins Claimed in Many Countries.” LiveScience, Purch, 12 Oct. 2010, https://www.livescience.com/8766-bigfoot-cousins-claimed-countries.html.