The location of similarly described hairy wild people.

   The existence of Zana has become the center of quite a controversy, especially in Russia where Dr. Porshnev had insisted that she had been a surviving Neanderthal. Porshnev had been head of the Soviet Snowman Commission of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and its members, all scientists, tended to agree with him. This put quite a bit of weight behind the whole idea that there were still “living Neanderthals.”

     Since the 1950s, the controversy has continued to escalate until finally Zana’s son’s (Kvit) grave was opened and his remains examined. DNA results proved that Zana had been 100% Sub-Saharan in origin and thus 100% different than the local people of Dagestan and Georgia where she had been found. Despite being 100% sub-Saharan, she had also been different from all Africans. There were some astounding assertions. The geneticist who headed the DNA research, Barry Sykes, was summarized thusly: “And Sykes has raised the bold theoretical possibility that Zana could be a remnant of an earlier human migration out of Africa, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. If correct, Zana could be evidence of a hitherto unknown human ‘tribe,’ dating from a distant time when the human species was still evolving and whose ancestors were forced into remote regions, like the Caucasus Mountains, by later waves of modern humans coming out of Africa.”

     As some see it, that’s about as close to saying Neanderthal as you can get. However, Neanderthals were Eurasian and not African. Yet just as there are several enormous variations in so-called Modern Man, so why not in Neanderthalers? The Press has antiseptically reflected the idea of ‘African Neanderthals’ when they reported that Khvit’s skull features indicated “ancient origins.” Sykes study of Kvit’s skull, for instance, discovered Neanderthal traits from his mother. It shows low vault, an elevated brow ridge, widened eye sockets, and what appears to be an extra bone at the back of the skull.

     Zana seems to have been something quite fantastic, even something unique in all of history. Why then, pray tell, is Sykes’ discovery not being promoted as the discovery of the century?

       Sadly, rather inane theorizing dominated the popular press, such as Zana was the product of slave transportation. It is a pathetic theory that presupposes Africans cannot migrate on their own. However, the details tell us Zana was unlike any human, African or otherwise. She wasn’t slave material, and she cannot be traced to any known tribe.

     Rather she seems a link in the migration of the same people called Chuchuna found thousands of miles east in Siberia and Yakut and, remarkably, very similar to the Saskahaua wild men in British Columbia, further east in the New World.

     Long before Zana became famous in the West (through the Russian studies in the 1950s) Indian Brave Charley Victor had described his encounter with a Sasquatch klootchman (woman) to J.W. Burns. In 1929, Charley had told Burns (MacLean’s Magazine, April 1929) : “The hairy creature, for that is what it was, walked toward me without the slightest fear. The wild person was a woman. Her face was almost negro black and her long straight hair fell to her waist. In height she would be about six feet, but her chest and shoulders were well above the average in breadth.”

     This is quite a good description of Zana. Yet it first appears in print decades before we hear of her story.

       Why would such a people migrate out of Africa so long ago? Zana, just as the Mulen and Chuchuna, and the strange tribe in the Saskahaua, are said to be intolerant of warmth. Such a people, perhaps in prehistory, would naturally have to migrate out of Africa to cooler climes.

   If the uncannily similar descriptions of the Salish Indians (Indians of the Saskahaua), the people of Yakut and Siberia, are accurate then it seems as if such a people have moved through the entire region of Eurasia and even crossed the Bering Strait into America.

     “You’ll never be able to, you might say, civilize him like the White Man done to us. He’s somebody that belongs in the area that he chooses to live in. And if someone did bring him down it never adapt to your way or even mine. . .because his way of life is entirely different from ours, mine and yours. And I always felt so bad when I hear of Sasquatch hunters that say they’re going to photograph this man. . . or most of them refer to him as an animal; and from the stories and things that I was taught by my people that he is not an animal, he is not a savage, he is a gentle being that just goes about his own way collecting his own food, clothing and lives where he chooses.” 

     In 1976, these words of Mrs. Joe Washington, a native of the Saskahaua, seemed quaint and antiquated. They were the last reflection we had of the old Indian attitude about Sasquatch being a tribe of people, just as J.W. Burns had first preserved for us in print in the 1920s-1940s. She appeared on the late great In Search of  . . . and for a White Man’s world consumed with a giant Old World bipedal ape known as Bigfoot, Mrs. Washington’s words were greeted as terribly obsolete.

         Between J.W. Burns’ time and 1976 something had happened to cause us to forget the old stories. It was the Yeti or “Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas.” In 1951, Yeti became world news with the discovery of the Shipton Print on the Menlung La of the Himalayas. The track of prints was so strange that mountain climber Eric Shipton photographed the clearest print. he later recalled in Menlung La:  “. . .As we went down the glacier, however, the snow became less deep and the footprints more regularly shaped. At length we came to places, particularly near crevasses, where the snow covering the glacier ice was less than an inch thick. Here we found specimens of the footprints so sharply defined that they could hardly have been clearer had they been carefully made in wax.” The photo shows a footprint that looks like that of an ape man. It became a world sensation, and for some reason as a society we fell in love with the idea of a living missing link. An Ape Man, a subhuman, a hominid-- call it what you will-- the whole idea was tantalizing.

     But it wasn’t a “subhuman” in the sense of a caveman. It was something quite different. It was a missing link in the sense of an advanced ape.

     Several British expeditions tried to uncover the truth. The most publicized was the 1954 Daily Mail Expedition. Though they uncovered   solid descriptions of a large cone headed ape being the Yeti, the world was too much in love with the idea of an evolutionary missing link. 

     By 1958, some Canadian Whites in British Columbia were making the same deduction about “Sasquatch.” They now thought that the Indians had truly been referring to something like Yeti when they had said “Sasquatch.” Whites had long forgotten about Burns’ stories.

     But the most significant thing Whites forgot about was that the Indians said there were “two tribes” of hairy Sasquatch Men. Some of this is understandable. The Sasquatch were becoming so rare that the Indians themselves conflated descriptions. Both tribes were hairy and similar enough to be considered roughly the same thing. But they were also different enough for the Indians to draw distinctions. From the descriptions, one clearly was not human. It was violent and had a strange, long footprint, narrow in proportion to its length. It was an animal, a human looking animal. “Except that he was covered with hair and twice the bulk of the average man,” explained Brave Peter Williams of his encounter, “there was nothing to distinguish him from the rest of us.”

     The concept of “two tribes,” similar but different, was also reflected in Indian tribal dance masks. The human “caveman” looking bukwas is not the only representation of the “wild man of the woods.” Others represent what appears to be a snarling ape-like creature. One example in the Provincial Museum of British Columbia has frequently been used to show that the Indians of the Pacific Northwest knew ape physiology. One mask would seem rather thin indeed as proof of some apeman if it weren’t for so many other masks that clearly show the features of a snarling ape.

     One in particular is the Tsimishian Mask.

     The idea that one of the “Sasquatch tribes” is not human can be found in something more solid than Indian artwork. There is one, and perhaps only one, time in which hunters came closest to preserving a physical example of such a strange, long footprint. It is the incident which would make so many believe in the giant ape Sasquatch.

     On October 21, 1941, a phenomenal incident occurred to the Chapman family at Ruby Creek, British Columbia, on the Fraser River. The “Ruby Creek Incident,” as it later became known, is one of the most significant but, paradoxically, glossed over cases in the search for the Sasquatch. Thanks to the work of a Washington State sheriff a valuable clue has been preserved. (See Recasting Bigfoot for details). We have the preservation of the footprint that must belong to this “Sasquatch.” 

     Hearing of the Chapmans’ encounter, Washington State deputy sheriff Joe Dunn hooked up with one of the locals at Ruby Creek, Esse Tyfting. Together they went and investigated the now-abandoned farm. The physical clues reflected what Jeannie Chapman had said. She had said a huge Sasquatch had come out of the forest and approached the farm. Together Tyfting and Dunn found strange footprints coming out of the forest line. The footprints had circled the farm house. A barrel of salted salmon had been broken into. From there the Sasquatch went to the river, where, as John Green, a Sasquatch pioneer, later deduced, he washed the salt off his mouth. Then he walked away from the farm and stepped over a Canadian Pacific Railroad fence, which is 43 inches tall. One footprint was on one side of the fence, the other on the other side. This gives us an ape-like primate with an inseam of at least 45 inches.

     Fortunately, Joe Dunn traced the footprint. And even more so for us today it was fortuitous that John Green, one of the first to take Sasquatch seriously, went to Dunn’s son (by 1958 Joe Dunn had died) and was allowed to trace the tracing. This tracing is phenomenal. It is, in fact, Exhibit A of evidence.

       This is the foot:

       The original tracing offered by John Green is on the left. My reconstruction on the right. It is not a human foot. At best it can be said to be humanoid. It’s no ape foot. Not even close. What is it? Is this the long, narrow foot that Brave Peter Williams told us about in 1929? It belonged to that fierce Sasquatch that chased him and ransacked his cabin.

     Despite Jeannie Chapman saying that the Sasquatch she saw at Ruby Creek was hairy with a man’s face, the foot tells us it could not be entirely human looking. From the height of field posts as it approached, she estimated it was about 7 and a half fee tall. However, it had an unusually small head for its body size.

     This must be the second “tribe” of which the Indians spoke. It was so human-like they considered it some kind of man.

     How many know this? We believe there is a giant Gigantopithecus ape roaming over all of North America and we say it is the same as the Canadian Sasquatch. In turn, we say both Bigfoot and Sasquatch are the Eurasian Yeti. We have forgotten about humans. We conflate many stories. We have as a result the Legend of Bigfoot. But what then is Bigfoot?

     We have met the new Sasqautch here, but we really don’t know what it is. It seems to be more than one thing. It is a strange looking wild human and it is a large anthropoid with a very un-ape-like and inhuman foot. Sasquatch is “two tribes.”

   To continue our quest, we best meet the Yeti.