The Sasquatch in Minnesota E-Book

Mike Quast

• Herausgeber: Hangar 1 Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: Bigfoot Chronicles
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 378

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This book tells the story of my own investigations in my home state of Minnesota. Every report that I am personally aware of at this time for Minnesota and the Dakotas is included here. Many are of a more-or-less conventional nature (man sees sasquatch, sasquatch runs away) while others are downright bizarre, but all are true to the best of my knowledge, and I believe they prove the existence of the beast I saw along that forest highway all those years ago.

Leseprobe

The Sasquatch in Minnesota

Revised Edition

Mike Quast

Hangar 1 Publishing

Contents

INTRODUCTION - 10 YEARS SEEKING SASQUATCH

I. AN OVERVIEW OF THE SASQUATCH IN MINNESOTA

1. INDIAN LEGENDS - MYTH OR REALITY?

2. SUPERIOR - THE DEEP WOODS

3. SWAMP CREATURES

4. THE HAIRY MAN OF VERGAS TRAILS

5. HERE, THERE & EVERYWHERE - THE NORTH

6. MILLE LACS LAKE

7. THE SOUTHWEST - A SOLITARY SNOWMAN

8. THE SOUTHEAST - BLUFF COUNTRY

9. CARLOS AVERY - WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

10. HOAXES

II. THE ADVENTURE OF CLEARWATER COUNTY

11. PUZZLING TRACKS

12. THE VISITOR RETURNS

13. TROUBLE WITH THE PIGS

14. OTHER STORIES

15. NERVOUS ENCOUNTERS

16. MORE TRACK FINDS

17. NATURE'S TOOTHPICKS

18. RECOLLECTIONS

III. THE MINNESOTA ICEMAN

19. WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW

20. THE TRUTH

IV. THE DAKOTAS

21. NORTH DAKOTA - NOT MUCH GOING ON

22. SOUTH DAKOTA INCIDENTALS

23. THE LITTLE EAGLE EPISODE

24. APPENDIX A: CROOKSTON - BIGFOOT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

25. APPENDIX B

MINNESOTA SASQUATCH BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AFTERWORD

To report Bigfoot encounters in Minnesota or for further information the author may be contacted at [email protected].

Cover design by Doug Hajicek.

Copyright 2021

INTRODUCTION - 10 YEARS SEEKING SASQUATCH

Why am I writing this book?

I could just as easily ask- What is it that makes a perfectly sane human being dedicate a large part of his life to pursuing something so elusive that most people do not even believe it exists?

What causes someone to spend enormous amounts of time and money (which could probably be better spent) in an endeavor that is both physically and mentally demanding and exposes him to great ridicule, all the while having only the very tiniest chance of success?

I have been doing it for a decade now, and I still don't know.

In 1990, I published "The Sasquatch in Minnesota," following it in 1991 with "Creatures of the North: The New Minnesota Sasquatch Encounters." In one way, these were just two more additions to the large collection of books dealing with the subject of giant, hairy manlike/apelike creatures that reportedly exist in our wilderness areas. But in another, more personal way, they told an important piece of my life story.

On a warm, sunny summer day in 1976, I was with my family on a leisurely drive through the area of Strawberry Lake, located near the Indian community of White Earth in western Minnesota. I was just eight years old and was enjoying the view as we drove through the forested countryside, hoping to catch sight of a deer or other animal.

Suddenly I did see something. Standing between 75 and 100 yards ahead of the car, on the left side of the road, was a dark black object about 6 1/2 or seven feet tall. At first, I thought it was a burned, blackened tree trunk, but that notion quickly went out the window when it stepped away from the road and walked on two legs into the woods, disappearing from view. No one else in the car had seen it, so I alone was left to wonder- what was it?

A man? Not likely, owing to its color and large size.

A bear? Even less likely, since although bears can stand and even take a few clumsy steps on their hind legs, they always drop down to all fours to go anywhere.

There was really only one other option I could think of. I believed then, as I do now, that I'd seen a sasquatch, or "Bigfoot," one of those legendary giant man-apes said to roam the wild places of North America. From that moment on, I have been determined to learn more about these creatures, and the more one learns, the more curious one becomes.

It was in 1987 that I began to seriously investigate this phenomenon, and I learned quickly that for some reason, it is a subject that stirs great emotion in people. The sasquatch is regarded by many as a big joke, a silly piece of folklore that somehow became popular, not as a real animal at all. Therefore, are those of us who have actually seen one in the flesh included in the joke? If so, we are not laughing.

Most of the general public is still completely unaware of the scope of this phenomenon and of the number of investigators in the United States and Canada who pursue it. And what is my role?

Through what feels to me to have been a minimal effort on my part, I have somehow become the chief investigator for the state of Minnesota.

Of course, this is just a fancy way of saying that I'm about the only person who's really gotten out there and done the work on a large scale.

So, I ask again - why am I writing this third book?

Two reasons, one of which is the very work I've been doing for the past decade. I've made a lot of observations and formed many opinions in that time, and in this my ten-year anniversary, it seemed fitting to share some of them. The other reason is the state of Minnesota, my home. Look up this state in other books on "Bigfoot", and you will probably find less than a dozen reports listed for all of recorded history. This was discouraging at first, but as I did not have the resources to go to the more popular Pacific Northwest or some other "hot spot" for any length of time to conduct research, and since after all, I had seen a sasquatch myself in Minnesota, it was here that I established myself. And as I soon discovered, the other books are quite incomplete.

A good number of reports have come to my attention since the publication of my last book. My Minnesota file now contains over 130 of them, a fact I am quite proud of. Some of these have been published in newspapers but never widely circulated, while others were completely unknown until I came across them. A small percentage are my own personal experiences (my 1976 sighting, various footprint discoveries, etc.), but most are not, and I take credit for assembling them into the collection you'll see here.

But isn't this kind of book dreadfully monotonous? We've seen it over and over - books that simply tell story after story, sighting after sighting, footprint after footprint. It was a new idea once, but we've gotten very used to it. So why do it one more time? Because I am very serious about getting this information out there, establishing Minnesota as what I feel it is- one of the best-suited states east of the Rockies to shelter these giant creatures (and I do like to fancy myself a fairly decent writer, so hopefully my telling of the tale will keep you entertained).

MINNESOTA- The Gopher State. Land of 10,000 Lakes. It is a state with many vastly different features. It contains the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul (a major metropolitan area by anyone's standards). It is an industry leader in agriculture, shipping, yard iron ore production. Yet, it also has thousands of square miles of unspoiled wilderness throughout its wide expanse. An analysis of the land reveals the following statistics:

Crops: 44%

Forest: 34%

Pasture: 11%

Water: 6%

Wetlands: 3%

Mines: 0.1%

This leaves only 1.9% for cities.

With all of its lakes, actually numbering close to 15,000, Minnesota has more shoreline than Hawaii, California, and Florida combined, and these lakes are filled with many kinds of fish from the huge muskie to the tiny shiner minnow. In the woods, one may find such animals as white-tailed deer, moose, black bear, timber wolf, lynx, and bobcat. Even the elusive mountain lion still prowls here, though it's hard to convince the "experts" of that. Bird watchers love it here as well, enjoying glimpses of the rare bald eagle and listening to the crazy call of the loon, our state bird.

The Norway Pine is Minnesota's state tree, but overall, the forests here are mostly mixed growth, with both deciduous and coniferous trees. A perfect habitat for the sasquatch.

A spokesman for the state DNR (Department of Natural Resources) stated to me in a letter that "...most bigfoot-type observations occur in the Pacific Northwest. If such a creature really exists, it is not unreasonable to expect that one could stray into Minnesota." However, such authorities have put forth very little effort to study the situation. In fact, hardly anyone has. But there are a few people besides myself who have worked at it to some degree in Minnesota.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a Mr. Donald Peterson of Litchfield was active in investigations, allied with an Iowa sasquatch tracker named Cliff Labreque.

Also, at that time, two teenagers, Ted Steiner and David Warner were publishing a small newsletter called "Minnesota Bigfoot News" and operated a "Bigfoot Center" in the basement of Warner's home in Edina.

A Richard Johnson of St. Paul searched for the creatures in northern Minnesota in 1978-79 and claimed a sighting (details in chapter three).

Although I've attempted to contact these people, I have been unsuccessful. I have been in touch, however, with Mark A. Hall and Tim Olson.

Hall is a Fortean researcher (interested in all manner of strange phenomena) in Bloomington, a suburb of the Twin Cities. A colleague of popular writer Loren Coleman, he has an extensive library and has written a number of books and articles of his own. Mark is probably best known as the foremost authority on thunderbirds, giant birds of prey that are said to inhabit North America, but his interest in manlike beasts also runs very deep. He has been outspoken in his belief in what he calls the "true giants," creatures that may exceed 15 feet in height, not a popular belief by any means but one he treats with true scholarly wisdom. However, he is employed by the federal government, and most of his time is spent making a living (a problem for all of us in this field- there is no money whatsoever in sasquatch chasing); thus, he rarely gets out into the field. He is a virtual human storehouse of information, however, and has helped me a lot.

Tim Olson is younger and more active on the physical end of things. He has been my partner on and off for several years since Mark Hall first introduced us (they were neighbors), but though he is a Minnesota native, he now lives in northern California, where the name "Bigfoot" first arose. He has been allied at various times with such well-known investigators as Rich Grumley of the now-defunct California Bigfoot Organization and Warren Thompson and Arch Buckley of the Bay Area Group.

When I met Tim, I had recently begun publishing a monthly newsletter, The Sasquatch Report. He soon became my associate editor.

Since then, the project has gone in various directions, but all in all, I'd say we've done a pretty good job. I have a lot of respect for Tim; he has to live with a medical condition that denies him many things most people take for granted, but he has a very strong religious faith, and it's gotten him through a lot of hard times.

And since late 1990, there has been Ed Trimble. "Old Ed" has been extremely valuable to me as an investigator since his own first discovery of strange tracks on his property, and many of the reports in this book were first uncovered by him. Much more on him later.

It is through the work of people like these, as well as myself that the true picture of the sasquatch's role as a member of Minnesota's fauna has emerged. And as I said, in a decade of investigating that role as well as being involved in the sasquatch field on a wider scale, I've formed my own unique set of views about the whole thing. I'd like to share some of those with you now and tell you a bit more of my story.

THE SASQUATCH REPORT AND PETER BYRNE

My newsletter, The Sasquatch Report (SR), is one of several such publications within the field right now. However, as far as I know, only the Bigfoot Co-Op out of Whittier, California, surpasses it in its longevity. What's more, it is monthly, whereas the Co-Op is bimonthly and has sometimes disappeared for months at a time, the SR no matter what else can be said about it, it does seem to have staying power. And here is how it came about:

In October of 1989, I traveled by Greyhound to Hood River, Oregon, to meet with famed "Bigfoot" hunter Peter Byrne. I had been corresponding with him for some time, choosing him mainly because of an information packet he'd sent me when I was a child. That had been back in the 1970s when his Bigfoot Information Center was operating, and he'd been publishing the monthly newsletter, Bigfoot News. There were other investigators I could have contacted, but having him fresh in my memory made me choose him.

I stayed with Peter, his wife Celia, and their five-year-old daughter Rara overnight, finding their home along the Hood River to be comfortable and gracious. (Incidentally, I found it impressive that a man could have his first child at the age of 58.)

Rara was a little bundle of energy. Celia ("Dede" to her friends) seemed even more into conservation than her famous husband and had been live-trapping mice in the house to release them outside.

Peter said he had retired from the Bigfoot business in 1979 because he had simply "had enough." After a lifetime of thrilling adventures- big game hunting in Nepal, yeti expeditions in the high Himalayas, white water rafting excursions, then on the conservation movement and the founding of a tiger preserve, along with the Bigfoot quest- he seemed content now to take it easy in his picturesque mountain surroundings. Beautiful Mount Hood loomed on the horizon from the end of his driveway.

During the day, we visited Fermin Osborne, a retired logger who had had a famous creature sighting along with two other men in 1974.

"I looked over and saw this big old monster," he said matter-of-factly as he told the story.

Then at night, Peter and I sat by his fireplace listening to opera, sipping hot rum, and talking about the sasquatch. The surroundings, plus his suave Irish accent, seemed to lend a distinct air of class to the whole business.

Before I had to catch the bus home the next morning, Peter showed me one of the few remaining complete sets of Bigfoot News, 57 issues dated Oct. '74-June '79. I had talked about how I had been thinking of starting a newsletter, and in a surprising act of generosity, he gave me the complete set, said I could use anything from it that I wished, and suggested I even use the Bigfoot News title and logo.

It was a few months before I got everything organized. In spreading the word about my intentions, I learned that Don Keating of Newcomerstown, Ohio already had a newsletter called Bigfoot News and wasn't about to let me use that name, so I changed it to The Sasquatch Report, which began in April 1990 and endures to this day without a single month missed and never late by more than a few days.

I did use one major thing from Peter's publication- its four-page format. This made it easy to print on one single 11" x 17" sheet of paper. Only a few times has an extra page been inserted.

Things change, of course. That's part of what defines life. Events involving Peter Byrne since then are now a matter of record, fully documented elsewhere, and I won't rehash things too much.

Peter's retirement did not last forever. Shortly after my visit, he was off to Nepal again to work on an elephant study project, resulting in the book and t.v. special "Tula Hatti, the Last Great Elephant." And not long after that, his 1970s benefactor, Boston's Academy of Applied Science (best known for their Loch Ness Monster research), decided to fund him for a new 5-year sasquatch hunt. And thus was born the Bigfoot Research Project. It was a big operation, with computers and motion sensors and all manner of other high-tech gear. Peter's critics asserted that it was primarily a giant publicity gimmick, as they had said of his earlier efforts. At this point, I honestly don't know the truth about Peter Byrne, nor do I really care as it does not affect my own work in Minnesota in any way. The Bigfoot Research Project did provide funding for my newsletter for a time, as they did for others around the country, but that too is open to interpretation as to motive by Peter's critics.

But my publishing endeavors suddenly put me in the midst of a scandal that became known as the "Great Footprint Caper." To make a long story short, it involved a photo of a sasquatch track circulated by Peter and an assertion that it was that of the creature in the famous 1967 Patterson film from Bluff Creek, California, found seven years prior to the filming. Others, however, including investigator John Green in British Columbia (who had considerable experience with tracks from Bluff Creek), were quick to point out that it was most definitely not the same, and that in fact, Peter had published the exact same photo years before with a completely different story as to date, location, and track dimensions.

Byrne and Green debated angrily back and forth in the pages of The Sasquatch Report for four months until I finally gave up on the whole issue and said, "Enough." After all, how could this possibly serve to help find a live sasquatch now, a quarter-century after the fact, no matter where the track came from?

It seems to have been this issue and other disagreements between him and Green that estranged me from Peter Byrne, who was very angry that I wouldn't take his side exclusively. Of course, I didn't take anyone else's either, but so be it. People are funny.

MORE SASQUATCH SCANDAL

We sasquatch investigators are a curious lot. We are not scientists unless you consider cryptozoology (the study of "hidden" animals) to be an amateur science. Rather, we are pretty much all private working citizens who pursue our quarry in our spare time on shoestring budgets. We like to make little corners of our homes into offices, put maps on the wall with multiple-colored pins sticking in them, and try to appear as official as possible. Many of us also like to form organizations or "information centers" and have business cards and stationery printed. (I myself once tried to form a group, the short-lived Minnesota Bigfoot/Sasquatch Organization.)

As stated before, a fair number of publications resulted from all this as well.

It's all very impressive, to be sure, and maybe someday it'll all be worth it.

I would like to call all of these people a real functioning "network" of investigators. I really would. Unfortunately, that is just not the case. In this field, everyone is well-meaning, and almost everyone believes the sasquatch is real, but somehow no one agrees on anything else. Just believing is not enough. You must believe for the right reasons, and your motives must be like everyone else's. If not, no matter how nice a guy you might be, you automatically make enemies. As I said, this subject is highly emotional.

I have ended up in more than my fair share of arguments with some of these people in the past decade. Without naming names, the state of Ohio seems to be a hotbed of disagreement in sasquatch-related matters of all sorts. Newcomers to the field, especially, are often looked down upon, especially if they happen to come up with impressive evidence with a minimum of effort (which is only due to extreme luck in most cases). And if you happen to operate a newsletter and make it an open forum for people to speak their minds, watch out.

I have tried to make The Sasquatch Report impartial. Most issues do contain an editorial, but all contain a disclaimer that reads, "Opinions expressed by others in this newsletter are not necessarily shared or supported by the editors." But that's not enough, it seems. Over and over, people submitting their views to SR have insisted that I support them and that I refuse to print viewpoints opposing them. Usually, the cases in question are ones that I have very little or no personal opinion on anyway.

I like to use the following analogy: If some fascist dictator gives a speech and angrily insults the United States, does our media condone his views simply by reporting what he said? Of course not!

But the fact that he said it is news, like it or not. Why people refuse to let me and SR approach the sasquatch field from this standpoint is completely beyond me.

It has always been my contention that the only way the sasquatch is going to be proven real is by long, hard hours spent out in the wilderness physically searching for it, not through anything that takes place on the printed page or in a lecture hall. Spreading the word is important, surely, but in the end, it will only serve as support for more physical activity. Arguing for years over whether or not the Blue Mountains "dermal ridge tracks" are real or fake, or whether this film or that film shows a real sasquatch or a man in a costume, is completely pointless. (Films, especially, are pointless to debate unless they are of good enough quality to serve as final proof. If they're not, it doesn't matter if they're real or fake!)

I suppose it was inevitable, though, that big egos and basic human nature would cause this sad state of affairs. Yet somehow, things do occasionally get accomplished in this field. While the various cliques argue back and forth, investigations are launched. Discoveries are made. And some day, one of us is going to prove to the world once and for all that the sasquatch really exists and vindicate us all, friends and enemies alike.

And so, this book tells the story of my own investigations in my home state of Minnesota. I do not claim to be absolutely correct about everything you will read here, for I am only human and therefore imperfect and fallible, but I hope the weight of the evidence here will make at least somewhat of an impression.

This book is essentially an updated combination of my first two, with many updates, corrections, and much new information. I have also included a section this time on the neighboring states of North and South Dakota, where the sasquatch has also roamed.

A note about witnesses: In cases where the witnesses' names have not been previously published, only initials will be used unless permission has been given to use the full name.

And a note on the word "Bigfoot." It is actually a local northern California name for the creatures that simply caught on in the rest of the country through media coverage in the late 1950s, and I have always thought it sounded much too cartoon-like for a real animal; thus, I prefer to use the term "sasquatch."

Every report that I am personally aware of at this time for Minnesota and the Dakotas is included here. Many are of a more-or-less conventional nature (man sees sasquatch, sasquatch runs away) while others are downright bizarre, but all are true to the best of my knowledge, and I believe they prove the existence of the beast I saw along that forest highway all those years ago.

Author's view of Strawberry Lake sasquatch, summer 1976.

Map showing the distribution of known Minnesota sasquatch reports from 1898 to the present. Some dots represent more than one report in a single location. Stars indicate large concentrations of reports. Open circles indicate hoaxes. The arrow points to the scene of the author's own 1976 sighting.

Part I

AN OVERVIEW OF THE SASQUATCH IN MINNESOTA

1

INDIAN LEGENDS - MYTH OR REALITY?

As it does in many other areas, the beginning of Minnesota's sasquatch saga rests with the Indians. Although they are a minority today and sometimes suffer because of it, the Indians are very much a part of the state's history. The two main tribes are the Chippewa, or Ojibwa, and the Dakota Sioux. Many of them have now become modernized and are forgetting the old ways, but a few still retain their ancient beliefs and traditions and live by codes that white men will forever be at a loss to understand.

White men first arrived in Minnesota around 1660, mainly fur trappers and explorers. They found that the Indians had a wide range of beliefs in various legendary forest creatures, including those which would later be termed "sasquatch." (This word, by the way, is not exactly of straight Indian origin as is commonly believed but was coined by J.W. Burns, a teacher in British Columbia, who created it by combining several similar-sounding Indian names for the creatures; it means, roughly, "wild man of the woods.")

Ojibwa tribes had legends about a being they called memegwicio, or "man of the wilderness." This was said to be about the size of a 12-year-old child by some accounts, being completely covered with hair and having a flat nose. After seeing pictures in white mens' books, some tribes said the creatures greatly resembled monkeys but were also part man.

An old legend states that Anishinabe, the Ojibwes' name for the first man, in his travels met Memegwicio, who was angered and said he knew that man would ruin the wilderness.

An intriguing story is found in the book "Haunted Heartland" by Beth Scott and Michael Norman. It is a collection of true ghost stories, but one in particular just may relate to a more physical creature that appeared to the Mandan Indians around Roseau in northwestern Minnesota.

The Windego (or Windigo, Wendigo, Wittiko, and other variations) appears frequently in the legends of northern tribes in both the United States and Canada. Some stories describe it as a hideous cannibal giant that preys upon men. Others say it is a spirit that appears as an omen of impending death, as in this one.

Sam Mickinock and his family were Mandans living near Roseau.

One day in 1898, Sam's elderly mother-in-law became ill. After three days, she got out of bed and asked to be helped into the yard. There she sat in a chair in the warm sun in the company of her granddaughter Anna and three white women who lived nearby.

Suddenly, as the story goes, the sky darkened, and the air grew cold. Anna stood and pointed out across a field. "Grandma die soon," she said. "See Windego."

All present saw a tall, white figure walking along a wooded ridge some distance away. The old woman died the following morning.

The following year Sam Mickinock and his wife were on a hunting trip across the border in Canada. While there, Mrs. Mickinock suddenly felt ill, and the couple returned to Roseau. Three days later, a neighbor, Jake Nelson, whose mother and sister had been present at the first sighting of the Windego, was alone in the Mickinocks' yard when he saw, almost in the same spot as before, another strange white figure. It appeared to stand 15 feet tall and was striding along the edge of a swamp. It then started to run, stumbling several times, and was lost from sight after about a quarter-mile. Mrs. Mickinock died the next morning.

On the first day of spring in 1904, the Windego appeared again, this time to Jake's children Jesse and Edna. They nearly ran into it as they walked to school that morning, later describing it as a giant, white all over, with a bright star in the middle of its forehead. They ran from it in fear, and three days later, a young Indian brave died for no apparent reason in the nearby village of Ross.

The same children saw the creature yet again a month later, this time on their way home from school. Again there was a sudden death.

The Windego has often been associated with tales of the sasquatch. If the thing seen in these cases was not actually something supernatural (and it did not really do anything that should make one think that it was), then there is little it could have been but a white-haired sasquatch (and at 15 feet, an enormous one- one of Mark Hall's "true giants"). The "bright star" on its forehead described by the children could have been a lighter patch in some darker hair, or it could have been light reflecting in the creature's eyes. Since the cases are so old, there is no way to be sure.

It's possible, however, that the Windego may still be lurking around the Roseau area to this day if the story told by a young man named Brad is any indication. I met him in early 1995 through some mutual acquaintances, and in casual conversation, my interest in the sasquatch came up. Brad said he knew very well of the Windego legend around Roseau, that the Windego is still seen there today and that he and some friends had actually seen it themselves from inside a car on January 18, 1992, and captured it on videotape. This is potentially very important, of course, but as of this writing, I have not seen the tape in question and am not sure of Brad's whereabouts. Perhaps the future will reopen this case. However, it should be noted that Brad was sure the Windego was a spiritual being and not a physical animal.

In another modern Indian account, there are similar circumstances told by a young man named Neil, who I met just briefly in 1995. I'm sure little attention will be paid to this one since he was quite intoxicated when he told of it, but his emotional state tended to lend believability to the story. He was a member of the Ojibwa tribe from the White Earth Reservation (not far from where my own childhood sighting occurred) and was having a bit of a depressive episode, lamenting about the prejudices he and his people suffered in the white man's world. He then started describing his strong spiritual beliefs and experiences, telling of various mystical events he had witnessed at Indian gatherings on the reservation. In the midst of all this was the description of how he had once watched a sasquatch about eight feet tall for a period of one minute not long before. He did not dwell on it long, going on to other matters of importance to his present state of mind. It's hard to tell about stories like that, but the White Earth area is certainly good country for hiding the creatures.

(I should point out that I don't for one second mean to imply that most of these Indian stories are the result of too much alcohol. This particular person just happened to have a problem with it.)

The Indian story I have the most experience with comes from the southeast part of the state and is a truly amazing one. On July 23, 1988, the Red Wing Republican Eagle printed the following article:

GIANT FOOTPRINT SIGNALS A TIME TO SEEK STRENGTH

PRARIE ISLAND - The discovery of what appears to be an 18-inch long, humanlike footprint on Prarie Island Indian Reservation is more than a curiosity or topic of conversation among the tight-knit community.

To Indians living here who follow traditional beliefs, it is a signal to find renewed spiritual strength at a time of difficulty.

Wayne Running Wolf was sitting in his living room on the reservation at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday when his dogs began barking frantically. He said he noticed something out of the corner of his eye through a window as he got up to see what the commotion was about.

"I saw a shadow or a shape, but I don't know exactly what I saw," Running Wolf said Friday.

"Whether it was a shadow or a shape, I don't know," he added. "I'd be a liar if I claimed either one. I thought someone was messing with my car."

"Our dog in the house, he was barking at the same time," added Dwight Wells, a neighbor.

What Running Wolf did discover, and has no doubts about, were two huge footprints crossing his driveway and heading toward a nearby wooded area. One print became obscured in the soft sand, but the clearer one definitely appears humanlike, with five distinct toes on the end.

What outsiders might easily dismiss as a hoax is seen by several spiritual leaders here as a sign that Cee-ha-tonka, referred to simply as "the big man," has paid a call.

"We have our old legends about 'the big man,'" Running Wolf said. "If it exists, it exists. You accept it." Common misunderstanding of Indian culture and sense of spirituality may cause some to scoff, "but I know what I'm looking at," Running Wolf said, carefully covering the print under a wheelbarrow.

"That big man, he's been around for centuries," Wells added. Both men referred questions about the meaning of the big man to spiritual leaders.

The big man appears "mostly near where there are Indian communities that are struggling or having problems," said Amos Owen, spiritual head of the community. "That's a message for us. But the people are afraid of it."

The Prarie Island community is in grief this week over the untimely, accidental death Thursday of 27-year-old Clayton Wells, Dwight's brother.

A sign is always left behind after the appearance: a footprint, a musky scent, a tuft of hair, or broken tree limbs too big for a normal-sized human to smash, he said.

"In our way of beliefs, they make appearances at troubled times," said Ralph Gray Wolf, an Alaskan spiritual leader visiting Prarie Island. He helps those troubled communities "to get more in tune with Mother Earth" and gain spiritual energy and inner strength. With the renewal comes the ability to face the difficulty.

Before appearing, the big man sends "signs or messages that there is a need

to change, a need to cleanse," Gray Wolf said. "Right afterward, is when he makes his appearances."

"The legend has a way of teaching you. It disciplines you in certain ways," said Ray Owen, Amos' son. "It's to make you become more aware of other things."

The sign of the big man is preceded by a sense of foreboding among the tribe, he said, adding he could sense that before this week.

"I was up in Minneapolis, and I just had to get back down here," he said. "I felt that pressure, that tension."

The trio said the big man has appeared in many Indian communities: Standing Rock, N.D., Pine Ridge, S.D., even Prarie Island five years ago, to name a few.

Legends of a "bigfoot" or "Sasquatch" among Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest, along with claims of footprints, photos, and other purported evidence, have been sensationalized in the same class as the Loch Ness Monster and UFOs.

But for some Prarie Island residents, it is a time of looking quietly inward and seeking spiritual guidance.

Scientists have tried to debunk the evidence of the big man's existence, Gray Wolf pointed out, "but they've never been able to disprove it."

In July of 1989, I took a brief tour of southeast Minnesota and stopped at Prairie Island (which is actually neither a prairie nor an island) to look into this. I managed to locate Wayne Running Wolf, and he expressed how he was very reluctant to talk about the incident and didn't even know how it had gotten into the paper. That someone had phoned it in anonymously, but he confirmed everything it said. He said the Big Man had much to do with his peoples' religion, and so they didn't like to talk about it to strangers who wouldn't understand. I asked if he knew of anyone else who had seen the creature, and he said, "Probably everybody on the island at one time or another."

He took me to the home of Amos Owen, the spiritual leader of this Sioux tribe. It was a mystical type of place, with a teepee in the yard next to the house to remind visitors of ancient days. But as it turned out, the man was preparing to go on a trip and didn't wish to see anyone at that time.

Before I left, Running Wolf added one point to the story. The 18-inch tracks, he said, had eagle feathers in them, ancient symbols of strength to Indian people.

I resolved to return someday soon for a more extended stay in the area to search for this so-called Big Man. That time came in May of 1990. I pitched a tent near the edge of the Vermillion River and explored the local woods, and what I found was what I considered a perfect (although confined) habitat for a sasquatch. High, rocky bluffs, overgrown with foliage, rise from the river's edge, and below the level of the bank, there is a long stretch of wet, spongy ground on which you can look back and see your footprints rising back up. If a creature was to come down from the woods to these swampy flats to catch the slow-moving dogfish (large, carp-like fish) that swim in the muddy shallows, its tracks would never be found. I saw several kinds of animals, but unfortunately no sasquatch.

I did, however, pay another visit to the Indians, which turned out to be the high point of the trip. There was a pow-wow going on in honor of Memorial Day where I found Dwight Wells, who had been mentioned in the 1988 newspaper article. However, he did not wish to discuss the incident, so I went to the home of Amos Owen to see if I could have better luck this time in getting to see the spiritual leader, but when I asked to see him, I learned that he had fallen ill and wasn't in any condition to talk to anyone.

Out in the yard, a number of people were gathered around a fire preparing for an evening sweat lodge ceremony. (The sweat lodge is basically a small dome-shaped sauna in which men share a ritual of spiritual bonding.) Among them was Wayne Running Wolf, who I spoke with again. I discovered that he is one of the tribal priests and also that by blood, he is an Iroquois from the east coast area and was accepted by the Sioux after moving to Minnesota. He is an interesting man, but even more so was the man he introduced me to, Ray Owen, acting spiritual leader while his father was ill. While sitting by the fire with him, I heard all he had to say about the Big Man.

I did not record the conversation, for it was a rather nervous moment as the Indians decided whether or not they wanted to accept me in their presence, but later I wrote down as much of what was said as I could recall. Here, in no certain order, are several near-quotes from both Running Wolf and Ray Owen:

Ray (upon seeing a picture from the famous 1967 Roger Patterson sasquatch film from California): "That doesn't look like the ones I see. They're more human.

But then, they can look one way to one person and another way to another person, however they want to look to get their message across. Whenever they appear, there's a reason, a message. We had a guy here back when that story in the paper happened, boyfriend of one of the girls here, saying he didn't believe all our old superstitious nonsense and that the Big Man didn't exist. Then he was out in the woods just back over here (gestured), and the thing appeared right in front of him, stared right into his eyes. Then it turned to walk away and just vanished into the air. That's the way they can do it. They exist in another dimension from us, but they can appear in this one whenever they have a reason to. See, it's like there are many levels, many dimensions. When our time in this one is finished, we move on to the next, but the Big Man can go-between. The Big Man comes from God. He's our big brother, kind of looks out for us. Two years ago, we were going downhill, really self-destructive. We needed a sign to put us back on track, and that's why the Big Man appeared. If you really want to see one, you should kill everybody around here! (A joke, naturally)

"Every tribe, no matter where you go, knows the Big Man. Where I felt him the strongest was by Hoopa in California. See, sometimes you can feel him, you can sense when he's around. I was driving along when my car died, and when I got out to look at it, I could feel him real strong. There wasn't even anything wrong with the car, it started right up again. There was some reason why I was supposed to sense him at that time. They got a big sign there, 'Entry to Bigfoot Country.' I really laughed when I saw that.

"(More on the Patterson film:) There had to be a picture taken, some proof that he was real, so he let himself be photographed to show that the Indians were being straight about him. Now, he can have his pissed-off side too, and he can be violent. The Indians could have used the Big Man to defeat the white man in all their wars long ago, but they didn't. They should have, but it wasn't meant to be. Everything has a reason. We were meant to be absorbed by the white man, and the Big Man saw to it that there would be peace. So he let himself be photographed to show that the Indian didn't lie.

"(Upon hearing of my own 1976 sighting:) You were very blessed to see one.

Now, you tell me you saw one, and that's enough. Indians talk straight, we don't lie, and I'll take you at your word. (Shook my hand.) There had to be a reason why you saw it. You say only you saw it and no one else in the car? That was because he appeared only to you and was invisible to everybody else. One could walk through this yard right now, and if he didn't want to be seen, nobody would see him. Or maybe only one person would see him. You keep looking, you'll see another one. Maybe it'll only be for a second. He'll just go in and out (gestured), just like that, and then he'll be gone. You have to be in a wild, lonely place. Maybe up north, up in the boundary waters. They're not around here right now, probably up north."

Wayne: "It's like I said before, if it exists, it exists. You just accept it. Like the one I seen that time."

Myself: "Is that the only one you've seen?"

Wayne: "No."

Myself: "How many others?"

Wayne: "Well, I can't tell you that. There's stuff we're not allowed to talk about. I mean, I've walked with the Big Man. There's children here today that've played with him. Just about everybody around here has seen him at one time or another, but we don't talk about it to white men. Now, we mix with them pretty good.

We go into town to buy food, they come out here to look around, but you'll notice that there's a few white people here today, but mostly we're all Indians. We keep a lot of stuff to ourselves. We speak English most of the time, but that's because there's a mix of different tribes and languages here, like me being an Iroquois, and we have to understand each other."

Myself: "If the Big Man only appears when he wants to, why do you think there are so many white people who see them, like when they're driving along at night and happen to see one standing along the road?"

Wayne: "That's just it. They just happen to see one. They get lucky. Now, if that was an Indian driving along, maybe he'd stop and talk with him.

"(Upon hearing where I was exploring:) You were up in those hills?"

Myself: "Well, no, just along the bottom. It's pretty hard to get up there."

Wayne: "Yeah, well, I'd keep you off's those hills. That's sacred ground, we have ceremonies up there. There's things up there that no white man would ever understand. You keep looking around long enough in places like that and you might see something that you wish to God you had never, ever seen."

Additionally, when asked if the Big Man could be killed if someone got a shot at him, Ray said, "You could shoot him with a bazooka. You could drop a nuke on him. You can't kill a spirit."

When I left the area that evening, I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I stopped in Bloomington on the way home, and it took a long discussion with investigators Mark Hall and Tim Olson to bring me back down to Earth.

Sadly, a week or so after returning home, I learned that Amos Owen had died. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Cee-ha-tonka had shown up to pay his respects.