Hide Article Text (OCR)
WASHINGTON (AP) Big foot has been around a lot longer than flying saucers, but the evidence is similarly in conclusive as to whether the creature leaving those huge footprints in the Pacific North west is real. Known there by the Indian name Sasquatch, he is a legen dary, shy, hairy, manlike beast who leaves footprints four to seven inches wide and from 12 to 17 inches long. Russ Kinne, writing in the current issue of Smithsonian magazine, traces the recorded history of Bigfoot back over 160 years, concluding there is no proof one way or another as to whether he is real. “Most scientifically trained people who think about it at all believe it is all nonsense but a few scientists believe in Sas quatch and so does Peter Byrne, an animal tracker of legendary skill, who is currently camped out in The Dalles, Ore., deter mined, once and for all, to prove Sasquatch’s existence or lack of it,’’ Kinne wrote. The evidence about Bigfoot consists of thousands of foot prints, many of them cast in plaster, hundreds of reported sightings including one in the unlikely locale of Illinois last summer, and some movie film about which scientists don’t agree. Kinne, a free-lance photogra pher and writer, says in the magazine article that the first white man’s record of Sasquatch dates from 1811, when an ex ploring party found in Canada 14-inch footprints that seemed to be too large for those of a bear. In 1884, a train engineer saw a gorilla-type animal lying near the roadbed near Yale, British Columbia. Kinne says that when the train approached the creature climbed a hill with the train crew following and was captured and held for several days. The creature was de scribed as more than four feet tall, covered with hair, and of extraordinary strength. The article notes that it could have been an ape, but says captive apes were then rare in Canada and the United States. The film that California rancher Roger Patterson shot in 1967 has been shown to nu merous scientific groups and carefully examined in detail. “The film shows an upright creature small for a Sas quatch, about seven feet tall which walks across the field of view, turns to look toward the camera, and continues on out of sight,”’ the article says. A studio specializing in ani mation concluded that the sub ject was an animal, not a man in a fur suit. Kinne wrotes that the film was examined frame-by-frame — by Dr. Donald W. Grieve, an anatomist specializing in the human gait at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London. Grieve wrote that his impres sions “oscillated between total acceptance of the Sasquatch to irrational rejection based on emotional response to the possi bility that the Sasquatch actual ly exists.”’ Kinne says Byrne is the best hope of getting an answer be cause — unlike those who hunt Sasquatch on weekends and want to kill it and cut off a por tion — he carries a tranquilizer gun to immobilize the creature long enough for scientists to ex amine and photograph it.
Newspaper Details
Bryan Eagle
Bryan, Texas, US
Mon, Jan 14, 1974
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Jennifer B.
CA 11 Feb 2026
Other Publications Near Bryan, Texas
Bryan Weekly Brazos Pilot
Bryan Morning Eagle
Bryan Sunday Eagle
Bryan Weekly Eagle
Bryan Daily Eagle
