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In the 1950s Yeti was the ultimate big deal. The Shipton Photo brought him out of the world of British music comedy halls and into scientific speculation. That picture of a bizarre apeman-like foot inspired the world of anthropology to numerous debates on “subhumans” and “missing links.” But it also inspired the British paper Daily Mail to sponsor a huge expedition up into the Himalayas. Although they never captured a Yeti, they did follow similar prints.
The greatest contribution was made by its team leaders, Ralph Izzard and Charles Stonor when they confirmed that the popular image of the Yeti as some subhuman was the furthest thing from the truth. They set in place a clear image of the beast from Sherpa descriptions. The Yeti was the size of a 14 year old boy; that’s about 5 feet tall. It wasn’t completely bipedal; it will go down on all fours when chasing cattle. The most significant thing Stonor and Izzard gave us was the description of its head. It had a very pointed cone-head. Running from brow to back was a bristly crest. An unusually feature, to be sure; something only seen in some monkeys.
Izzard’s articles, sent from Nepal, were syndicated into 24 countries. Yeti delighted the world. This also inspired an interesting report. The Daily Mail reporter alone picked up on a story coming from the backwoods of Kitimat, British Columbia. The newswire, dateline Vancouver, contained the first mention of the Sasquatch. Unfortunately, it was in the vein of the popular theorizing on the Yeti. In part the newswire read:
At the same time as the Daily Mail Yeti expedition is entering upon its hunt for the abominable snowman in the Himalayas, similar big game is alleged to have been sighted in the high snow-covered mountains of the Fraser Valley Canyon behind Kitimat on the northern British Columbia coast.
It is at this spot that an aluminum company is completing a smelting plant which is to be run by 2000 horsepower hydroelectric plant.
Kitimat was originally an Indian village, whose inhabitants allege that older members of the tribe have long known of creature’s eight-foot high, shaped like a man, but covered with shaggy hair and smelling abominably, known as Sasquatches.
Officials of the aluminum company tell me that younger members of the tribe of Haisla Indians are reluctant to discuss the topic, but their elders maintain that these sub-human creatures are of a race that has been driven to take refuge in the high mountains ever since the Spanish invaded Central America 300 years ago.
The Indian name for these transatlantic Yeti is Karakawas.
This information has been given me on the day of my departure for Kitimat but the aluminum company’s staff holdout little prospect of my sighting these mysterious beings.
There is much that is not Indian in this reporter’s article. Sasquatches were only about 6 to 6 and a half feet tall according to Indians and they weren’t subhumans. It was White Man who fancied them taller. J.W. Burns had faithfully brought his fellow Whites the stories of his beloved Chehalis Indians, first in 1929 when he introduced us to “Sasquatch” for the first time as a name applying to two tribes of hairy mountain Indians that lived deep in the unexplored region of British Columbia. In 1940, however, his article for the British men’s magazine Wide World was quite different. The Sasquatch had grown to 8 fee tall (!). . .even in some of the same stories Burns had written about before where they were only 6 feet tall. The exaggeration was probably due to the actual writer of the story, C.V. Tench.
In any case, Sasquatch was growing. In the 1950s he was now 8 feet tall. The Yeti was undergoing a similar metamorphosis in the hands of a vocal anthropologist named Vladimir Tschernesky. Instead of the 5 foot tall terror of the Sherpas, he was becoming Gigantopithecus, a prehistoric giant ape believed by many at the time to be an evolutionary missing link.
Amidst all this something refreshing happened. In 1955 a hunter named William Roe was scouting about Mica Mountain in the Canadian Rockies on his day off. There he encountered some strange animal. He didn’t know what it was, but it remained indelible in his memory.
A couple of years before British Columbia’s Centenary in 1958 there was much talk about what symbols should be used. Naturally, the Sasquatch, so famous in Indian legend as a giant hairy Indian, was one of them. There was so much talk about Sasquatch, that the newspapers uncovered Roe’s sighting an published his account. Soon, an early Sasquatch investigator, John Green, asked for an affidavit.
Roe’s encounter is the most authentic there is. He describes something no one had expected. He neither describes the Yeti or White Man’s impression of the Indian “myth” of giants 8 or 9 foot tall mountain ogres. The affidavit is dated August 26, 1957. It follows verbatim:
Exhibit A
Ever since I was a small boy back in the forests of Michigan, I have studied the lives and habits of wild animals. Later, when I supported my family in northern Alberta by hunting and trapping, I spent many hours just observing the wild things. They fascinated me. But the most incredible experience I ever had with a wild creature occurred near a little place called Tete Jaune Cache, B.C., about 80 miles west of Jasper, Alberta.
I had been working on the highway near this place, Tete Jaune Cache, for about two years. In October, 1955, I decided to climb 5 miles up Mica Mountain to an old deserted mine, just for something to do. I came in sight of the mine about three o’clock in the afternoon after an easy climb. I had just come out of a patch of low brush into a clearing, when I saw what I thought was a grizzly bear in the brush on the other side. I had shot a grizzly near that spot the year before. This one was only about 75 yards away, but I didn’t want to shoot it, for I had no way of getting it out. So I sat down on a small rock and watched, my rifle in my hands.
I could just see part of the animal’s head and the top of one shoulder. A moment later it raised up and stepped out into the opening. Then I saw that it wasn’t a bear.
This, to the best of my recollection, is what the creature looked like and how it acted as it came across the clearing directly towards me. My first impression was of a huge man about 6 feet tall, about 3 feet wide, and probably weighing somewhere near 300 pounds. It was covered from head to foot with dark brown, silver-tipped hair. But as it came closer I saw by its breasts that it was female.
And yet, its torso was not curved like a female’s. Its broad frame was straight from shoulder to hip. Its arms were much thicker than a man’s arms, and longer, reaching almost to its knees. Its feet were broader proportionately than a man’s, about 5 inches wide in front and tapering to much thinner heels. When it walked it placed the heel of its foot down first, and I could see the gray brown skin or hide on the soles of its feet.
It came to the edge of the brush I was hiding in, within 20 feet of me, and squatted down on its haunches. Reaching out its hands it pulled the branches of bushes toward it and stripped the leaves with its teeth. Its lips curled flexibly around the leaves as it ate. I was close enough to see that its teeth were white and even.
The shape of the creature’s head somewhat resembled a Negro’s. The head was higher at the back than at the front. The nose was broad and flat. The lips and chin protruded further than its nose. But the hair that covered it, leaving bare only the parts of the face around the mouth, nose and ears, made it resemble an animal as much as a human. None of its hair, even on the back of its head, was longer than an inch, and that on its face much shorter. Its ears were shaped like a human’s ears. But it eyes were small and black like a bear’s. And its neck also was unhuman, thicker and shorter than any man’s I had ever seen.
As I watched this creature I wondered if some movie company was making a film in this place and that what I saw was an actor made up to look partly human and partly animal. But as I observed it more I decided it would be impossible to fake such a specimen. Anyway, I learned later that there was no such company near that area. Nor, in fact, did anyone live up Mica Mountain, according to the people who lived in Tete Jaune Cache.
Finally, the wild thing must have got my scent, for it looked directly at me through an opening in the brush. A look of amazement crossed its face. It looked so comical at that moment I had to grin. Still in a crouched position, it backed up three or four short steps, and straightened up to its full height and started to walk rapidly back the way it had come. For a moment it watched me over its shoulder as it went, not exactly afraid, but as though it wanted no contact with anything strange. The thought came to me that if I shot it I would possibly have a specimen of great interest to scientists the world over. I had heard stories about the Sasquatch, the giant hairy Indians that live in the legend of the Indians of British Columbia, and also, many claim are still, in fact, alive today. Maybe this was the Sasquatch, I told myself.
I levelled my rifle. The creature was still walking rapidly away, again turning its head to look in my direction. I lowered the rifle. Although I have called the creature ‘it,’ I felt now that it was a human being, and I knew I would never forgive myself if I killed it.
Just as it came to the other patch of brush it threw back its head and made a peculiar noise that seemed to be half laugh and half language, and which I could only describe as a kind of a whinny. Then it walked from the small brush into a stand of lodge-pole pines.
I stepped out into the opening and looked across a small ridge just beyond the pine to see if I could see it again. It came out on the ridge a couple of hundred yards away from me, tipped its head back again, and again emitted the only sound I had heard it make, but what this half-laugh, half-language was meant to convey I do not know. It disappeared then, and I never saw it again.
I wanted to find out if it lived on vegetation entirely or ate meat as well, so I went down and looked for signs. I found it in five different places, and although I examined it thoroughly, I could find no hair or shells or bugs or insects. So I believe it was strictly a vegetarian.
I found one place where it had slept for a couple of nights under a tree. Now, the nights were cool up the mountain, at this time of year especially, and yet it had not used a fire. I found no signs that it possessed even the simplest of tools. Nor did I find any signs that it had a single companion while in this place.
Whether this creature was a Sasquatch I do not know. It will always remain a mystery to me unless another one is found.
I hereby declare the above statement to be in every part true, to the best of my powers of observation and recollection.
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