WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:03.000
<v Speaker 1>Now one of your pudding. I got a string going

2
00:00:03.040 --> 00:00:06.120
<v Speaker 1>on here, something just cause my dog. Something killed your dog,

3
00:00:06.919 --> 00:00:08.960
<v Speaker 1>my dog. We're flying through the or over the tree.

4
00:00:09.039 --> 00:00:13.640
<v Speaker 1>I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm

5
00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:16.120
<v Speaker 1>really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over

6
00:00:16.199 --> 00:00:17.800
<v Speaker 1>the fence and he was dead. And once you hit

7
00:00:17.839 --> 00:00:19.679
<v Speaker 1>the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I

8
00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:38.320
<v Speaker 1>saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what

9
00:00:38.359 --> 00:00:42.960
<v Speaker 1>are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling

10
00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:51.960
<v Speaker 1>around out here? Did you see what it was? Was?

11
00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.200
<v Speaker 1>It was standing enough. I'm out here looking through the

12
00:00:54.240 --> 00:00:56.079
<v Speaker 1>window now and I don't see anything. I don't want

13
00:00:56.079 --> 00:01:04.000
<v Speaker 1>to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better hello, get the

14
00:01:04.079 --> 00:01:06.480
<v Speaker 1>Boddy out here when I'm out there. I thought of

15
00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:09.480
<v Speaker 1>a bench about Tech forty nine. I don't know easy

16
00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:11.480
<v Speaker 1>out there. Yeah, I'm walking right head.

17
00:01:12.599 --> 00:01:15.959
<v Speaker 2>With everything that's been happening lately around the Patterson Gimlin film,

18
00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:20.560
<v Speaker 2>all the controversy, all the noise, all the camps drawing

19
00:01:20.599 --> 00:01:23.040
<v Speaker 2>their lines in the sand, I wanted to take a

20
00:01:23.079 --> 00:01:26.879
<v Speaker 2>step back, way back. I wanted to go dig into

21
00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:29.840
<v Speaker 2>the historical record and find the encounter stories that came

22
00:01:29.959 --> 00:01:34.120
<v Speaker 2>long before October of nineteen sixty seven, long before Roger

23
00:01:34.159 --> 00:01:38.280
<v Speaker 2>Patterson and Bob Gimlin rode horses into Bluff Creek, long

24
00:01:38.319 --> 00:01:42.680
<v Speaker 2>before anyone ever used the word Bigfoot, before the headlines

25
00:01:42.719 --> 00:01:45.719
<v Speaker 2>and the hoax accusations and the endless arguments that have

26
00:01:45.799 --> 00:01:50.079
<v Speaker 2>consumed this community for decades. Because those stories are out there,

27
00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:54.079
<v Speaker 2>They've always been out there, and they matter. But before

28
00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:56.319
<v Speaker 2>I do that, I need to say something up front.

29
00:01:56.799 --> 00:01:58.799
<v Speaker 2>I need to say it plainly, and I need to

30
00:01:58.799 --> 00:02:01.719
<v Speaker 2>say it now because there has been real confusion about

31
00:02:01.719 --> 00:02:04.879
<v Speaker 2>where I stand on the PGF, and I understand why.

32
00:02:05.560 --> 00:02:07.480
<v Speaker 2>I've covered a lot of the debate on this show.

33
00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:10.360
<v Speaker 2>I've had guests on who fall on different sides of it.

34
00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:14.400
<v Speaker 2>I've talked about the analysis, the criticisms, the defenders, the

35
00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:17.240
<v Speaker 2>people who think that film is the single most important

36
00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:19.680
<v Speaker 2>piece of evidence in the history of this subject, and

37
00:02:19.759 --> 00:02:21.919
<v Speaker 2>the people who think it's a man in a modified

38
00:02:21.919 --> 00:02:25.560
<v Speaker 2>guerrilla suit. And because of all that coverage, some people

39
00:02:25.599 --> 00:02:27.879
<v Speaker 2>have assumed I've already made up my mind one way

40
00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:31.120
<v Speaker 2>or the other. I have not. Let me say that

41
00:02:31.159 --> 00:02:33.919
<v Speaker 2>as clearly as I know how. I have not made

42
00:02:33.919 --> 00:02:37.240
<v Speaker 2>a determination on the authenticity of the Patterson Gimlin film,

43
00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:41.520
<v Speaker 2>and I'm not going to, not yet, not until I've

44
00:02:41.560 --> 00:02:45.639
<v Speaker 2>personally seen the new Capturing Bigfoot documentary. That film has

45
00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:49.080
<v Speaker 2>been years in the making. Mark Evans directed it. It

46
00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:52.319
<v Speaker 2>premiered at south By Southwest in March of twenty twenty six,

47
00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:55.360
<v Speaker 2>and from everything I've heard from people, I trust it

48
00:02:55.439 --> 00:02:59.879
<v Speaker 2>presents new material, new analysis, new interviews, and new perspectives

49
00:02:59.919 --> 00:03:02.800
<v Speaker 2>that deserve to be seen and weighed before anybody draws

50
00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:08.560
<v Speaker 2>final conclusions. That includes me, especially me, And honestly, I'd

51
00:03:08.599 --> 00:03:11.080
<v Speaker 2>encourage every single one of you listening right now to

52
00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:14.520
<v Speaker 2>do the exact same thing. Watch it, sit with it,

53
00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:18.599
<v Speaker 2>let it marinate, think about it, then decide for yourself.

54
00:03:19.199 --> 00:03:22.199
<v Speaker 2>That's how this should work. Not based on second hand takes,

55
00:03:22.719 --> 00:03:25.960
<v Speaker 2>not based on social media clips, not based on somebody

56
00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:28.599
<v Speaker 2>else's summary of what the film says or doesn't say.

57
00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:32.080
<v Speaker 2>Go see it for yourself. Then we'll have that conversation,

58
00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:35.280
<v Speaker 2>and I promise you I'll be ready for it. There's

59
00:03:35.319 --> 00:03:37.919
<v Speaker 2>something else I need to address, because it's been gnawing

60
00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:40.319
<v Speaker 2>at me, and if I don't say it here, I

61
00:03:40.360 --> 00:03:43.080
<v Speaker 2>don't know when I will, just because I'm waiting to

62
00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:45.960
<v Speaker 2>see that documentary, just because I want to look at

63
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.280
<v Speaker 2>the new clip that's alleged to be a dry run

64
00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:51.639
<v Speaker 2>dress rehearsal for the Patterson Gimlin film before I plant

65
00:03:51.639 --> 00:03:55.199
<v Speaker 2>my flag, just because I'm doing the responsible thing and

66
00:03:55.280 --> 00:03:59.000
<v Speaker 2>reserving judgment until I've reviewed all the available evidence. Some

67
00:03:59.039 --> 00:04:02.080
<v Speaker 2>people have accused me of implying that Sasquatch isn't real.

68
00:04:02.879 --> 00:04:05.639
<v Speaker 2>That by questioning the film, or even leaving the door

69
00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:08.960
<v Speaker 2>open to questioning the film, I'm somehow saying the creature

70
00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:13.280
<v Speaker 2>itself doesn't exist, that if the PGF falls, the whole

71
00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:15.560
<v Speaker 2>thing falls with it. And I have to tell you

72
00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:19.639
<v Speaker 2>that logic doesn't hold it. Never has. I've said this

73
00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:21.959
<v Speaker 2>many times over the years, and I'm going to say

74
00:04:21.959 --> 00:04:24.480
<v Speaker 2>it again right here as clearly as I possibly can.

75
00:04:25.319 --> 00:04:28.600
<v Speaker 2>The Patterson Gimlin film can be fake and Sasquatch can

76
00:04:28.639 --> 00:04:31.680
<v Speaker 2>still be real. Those two things can be true at

77
00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:35.160
<v Speaker 2>the exact same time. One piece of evidence, no matter

78
00:04:35.199 --> 00:04:38.680
<v Speaker 2>how famous, no matter how iconic, no matter how deeply

79
00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:41.600
<v Speaker 2>embedded it is, and the culture of this research, does

80
00:04:41.639 --> 00:04:44.600
<v Speaker 2>not define whether or not a living, breathing species walks

81
00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:48.199
<v Speaker 2>through the forests of North America. The PGF is a

82
00:04:48.199 --> 00:04:51.319
<v Speaker 2>piece of film. It is not the species. If it

83
00:04:51.319 --> 00:04:55.240
<v Speaker 2>turns out to be legitimate, that's extraordinary. If it turns

84
00:04:55.279 --> 00:04:57.959
<v Speaker 2>out to be a hoax, that changes nothing about what's

85
00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:01.519
<v Speaker 2>out there in those woods one thing. And I say

86
00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:05.000
<v Speaker 2>that not as someone speculating from the sidelines. I say

87
00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:08.680
<v Speaker 2>it as someone who knows. I know Sasquatch exists because

88
00:05:08.680 --> 00:05:11.240
<v Speaker 2>I've seen them. I didn't read about it in a book.

89
00:05:11.519 --> 00:05:14.040
<v Speaker 2>I didn't hear about it on a podcast. I didn't

90
00:05:14.079 --> 00:05:16.879
<v Speaker 2>watch a grainy video on the internet and convince myself

91
00:05:16.920 --> 00:05:19.879
<v Speaker 2>of something I stood ten feet away from one in

92
00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:23.920
<v Speaker 2>the summer of twenty twenty four in Washington State. That

93
00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:27.600
<v Speaker 2>experience didn't come from the Patterson Gimlin film. It didn't

94
00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:30.720
<v Speaker 2>come from anyone else's evidence. It came from being in

95
00:05:30.759 --> 00:05:34.079
<v Speaker 2>the field, doing the work, putting in the time, and

96
00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:36.720
<v Speaker 2>having something step out of the tree line and into

97
00:05:36.759 --> 00:05:40.120
<v Speaker 2>my life in the most powerful way possible. So let

98
00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:44.439
<v Speaker 2>me be absolutely clear. My willingness to wait, to be patient,

99
00:05:44.920 --> 00:05:47.600
<v Speaker 2>to let new evidence be presented and examined before I

100
00:05:47.639 --> 00:05:49.639
<v Speaker 2>make a call on a sixty year old piece of

101
00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:52.279
<v Speaker 2>film does not mean I doubt what I've seen with

102
00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:55.600
<v Speaker 2>my own eyes. It means I take this subject seriously

103
00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:58.279
<v Speaker 2>enough to do it right, and that's exactly what I'm

104
00:05:58.319 --> 00:06:01.600
<v Speaker 2>going to do. I hope that up any misconceptions about

105
00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:04.279
<v Speaker 2>where I stand on the PGF and whether I believe

106
00:06:04.319 --> 00:06:07.399
<v Speaker 2>that Sasquatch are real. Now that's out of the way,

107
00:06:07.759 --> 00:06:11.759
<v Speaker 2>I want to go back, way back before the film,

108
00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:15.560
<v Speaker 2>before the fame, before the word bigfoot ever entered the

109
00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:19.519
<v Speaker 2>American vocabulary. Let's talk about the encounters that were happening

110
00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:22.120
<v Speaker 2>long before any of that, because if you want to

111
00:06:22.199 --> 00:06:25.279
<v Speaker 2>understand what this subject really is, you don't start in

112
00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:29.759
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty seven, you start centuries before that. Today we're

113
00:06:29.800 --> 00:06:31.759
<v Speaker 2>going back to a time when there was no film

114
00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:35.240
<v Speaker 2>to argue about, no debate about suit zippers or arm

115
00:06:35.319 --> 00:06:38.120
<v Speaker 2>length ratios or whether the muscle movement under the fur

116
00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:41.920
<v Speaker 2>is consistent with a biological creature. There were just people,

117
00:06:42.639 --> 00:06:45.800
<v Speaker 2>ordinary people, most of them living on the raw edge

118
00:06:45.800 --> 00:06:49.000
<v Speaker 2>of the American frontier, people who went into the woods

119
00:06:49.040 --> 00:06:51.879
<v Speaker 2>because that's where the food was, where the furs were,

120
00:06:52.279 --> 00:06:55.120
<v Speaker 2>where the living was. And some of those people came

121
00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:57.560
<v Speaker 2>back with stories about things they'd seen out there that

122
00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:01.639
<v Speaker 2>they couldn't explain. Things that walk like men but weren't men.

123
00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:06.000
<v Speaker 2>Things that were too big, too fast, too covered in hair,

124
00:07:06.439 --> 00:07:09.480
<v Speaker 2>and too utterly strange to fit into any category they

125
00:07:09.480 --> 00:07:13.480
<v Speaker 2>had a name for. Those stories fascinate me. Some of

126
00:07:13.480 --> 00:07:16.279
<v Speaker 2>them are credible, some of them are shaky at best.

127
00:07:16.839 --> 00:07:20.000
<v Speaker 2>Some of them are probably fiction dressed up as frontier truth.

128
00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:22.639
<v Speaker 2>But all of them tell us something real about what

129
00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:26.360
<v Speaker 2>people were encountering, or believe they were encountering, in the

130
00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:30.240
<v Speaker 2>deep wilderness of nineteenth century America. And when you line

131
00:07:30.279 --> 00:07:32.720
<v Speaker 2>them up side by side, when you see the same

132
00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:35.839
<v Speaker 2>details repeated by people who had no way of coordinating

133
00:07:35.839 --> 00:07:38.839
<v Speaker 2>their accounts, you start to realize that something was happening

134
00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:42.319
<v Speaker 2>out there, something that didn't stop when the newspapers moved

135
00:07:42.360 --> 00:07:45.480
<v Speaker 2>on to other stories. We're going to start in Arkansas.

136
00:07:45.879 --> 00:07:48.240
<v Speaker 2>We're going to work our way through the Civil War years,

137
00:07:48.600 --> 00:07:50.399
<v Speaker 2>and we're going to end with a question that I

138
00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:54.480
<v Speaker 2>think matters more than any single sighting report, a question

139
00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:56.519
<v Speaker 2>about what we're really looking at when we look at

140
00:07:56.519 --> 00:07:59.560
<v Speaker 2>these old accounts. The first story I want to tell

141
00:07:59.560 --> 00:08:03.040
<v Speaker 2>you about what happened in eighteen sixty five. The Civil

142
00:08:03.079 --> 00:08:05.839
<v Speaker 2>War had just ended, or depending on where you were

143
00:08:05.879 --> 00:08:08.279
<v Speaker 2>and how fast the news traveled, it was in the

144
00:08:08.319 --> 00:08:11.839
<v Speaker 2>final stages of ending, and in the remote corners of

145
00:08:11.879 --> 00:08:15.120
<v Speaker 2>western Arkansas. The war had barely registered as much more

146
00:08:15.160 --> 00:08:18.399
<v Speaker 2>than a distant rumble. People out there were still living

147
00:08:18.439 --> 00:08:23.120
<v Speaker 2>the way they'd always lived, hunting, trapping, getting by on

148
00:08:23.199 --> 00:08:26.240
<v Speaker 2>whatever the land would give them. The big battles had

149
00:08:26.279 --> 00:08:29.759
<v Speaker 2>been fought somewhere else. The politics had played out somewhere else.

150
00:08:30.519 --> 00:08:33.759
<v Speaker 2>Out in Severe County, Arkansas. People had their own concerns,

151
00:08:34.279 --> 00:08:37.039
<v Speaker 2>and most of those concerns had teeth or claws or

152
00:08:37.080 --> 00:08:40.279
<v Speaker 2>weather patterns. There was a town out there called Paraclifta,

153
00:08:40.759 --> 00:08:42.879
<v Speaker 2>and I'd bet everything I have that most of you

154
00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:45.919
<v Speaker 2>listening to this have never heard of it. That's because

155
00:08:45.960 --> 00:08:49.679
<v Speaker 2>it's almost completely gone now. One old house still stands

156
00:08:49.679 --> 00:08:53.200
<v Speaker 2>on the property, the Gilliam Norwood House, sitting there on

157
00:08:53.240 --> 00:08:55.559
<v Speaker 2>the west side of what used to be the town square.

158
00:08:56.399 --> 00:08:59.639
<v Speaker 2>Everything else has been reclaimed by the land. The courthouse

159
00:08:59.679 --> 00:09:03.679
<v Speaker 2>is gone, the hotel's gone, the seminary where they trained

160
00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:07.720
<v Speaker 2>young Southern women is gone. But in its day, Paraclifta

161
00:09:07.799 --> 00:09:10.799
<v Speaker 2>was the county seat of Severe County. It had a

162
00:09:10.799 --> 00:09:15.080
<v Speaker 2>real courthouse, a post office established in eighteen thirty, a

163
00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:19.159
<v Speaker 2>large hotel called the National House that advertised well furnished

164
00:09:19.200 --> 00:09:22.600
<v Speaker 2>rooms and fine cuisine and an up to date livery stable.

165
00:09:23.279 --> 00:09:27.000
<v Speaker 2>Between eighteen fifty seven and eighteen sixty one, four separate

166
00:09:27.039 --> 00:09:30.679
<v Speaker 2>newspapers were founded there. That's remarkable for a town in

167
00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:35.360
<v Speaker 2>the far reaches of western Arkansas. This wasn't some nameless crossroads.

168
00:09:35.799 --> 00:09:39.360
<v Speaker 2>This was a community. Severe County itself was formed in

169
00:09:39.440 --> 00:09:43.360
<v Speaker 2>eighteen twenty eight, a full eight years before Arkansas even

170
00:09:43.399 --> 00:09:47.080
<v Speaker 2>became a state. The county was named for Ambrose Severe,

171
00:09:47.480 --> 00:09:49.639
<v Speaker 2>and it sat right on the eastern border of the

172
00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:54.200
<v Speaker 2>Choctaw Nation. The town's own name, Paraclifta, came from a

173
00:09:54.279 --> 00:09:57.919
<v Speaker 2>Choctaw chief, according to the old stories, a man who'd

174
00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:00.879
<v Speaker 2>rescued a group of settlers being held prison by Indians

175
00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.360
<v Speaker 2>who accused them of horse theft. The land around it

176
00:10:04.399 --> 00:10:07.480
<v Speaker 2>is thick timber river bottoms fed by the Little River,

177
00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:12.080
<v Speaker 2>and hills that roll eastward into the Washetaw Mountains. Cotton

178
00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:14.519
<v Speaker 2>crops went out by mule or ox cart down to

179
00:10:14.559 --> 00:10:17.039
<v Speaker 2>the Little River, where they were shipped to New Orleans,

180
00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:20.559
<v Speaker 2>and the return trip brought supplies, and, as one old

181
00:10:20.600 --> 00:10:24.720
<v Speaker 2>account noted, a little whiskey. The town was already dying

182
00:10:24.759 --> 00:10:27.320
<v Speaker 2>by the time of the encounter. I'm about to describe

183
00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:31.720
<v Speaker 2>Between eighteen forty four and eighteen seventy three, land was

184
00:10:31.759 --> 00:10:35.440
<v Speaker 2>carved away from Severe County to create Polk, Howard, and

185
00:10:35.519 --> 00:10:39.200
<v Speaker 2>Little River Counties, which pushed paraclift A closer and closer

186
00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:42.799
<v Speaker 2>to the county line. In the fall of eighteen sixty three,

187
00:10:43.120 --> 00:10:45.600
<v Speaker 2>a company of old men and boys had been recruited

188
00:10:45.600 --> 00:10:49.960
<v Speaker 2>from Paraclifta for the Arkansas Battalion of State Troops. One

189
00:10:49.960 --> 00:10:53.000
<v Speaker 2>of its officers, Robert C. Gilliam, was killed at the

190
00:10:53.039 --> 00:10:56.039
<v Speaker 2>action at Mark's Mill in April of eighteen sixty four.

191
00:10:56.799 --> 00:10:59.240
<v Speaker 2>His letters to his wife and children still survive in

192
00:10:59.279 --> 00:11:04.399
<v Speaker 2>the Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives. By eighteen sixty seven, Locksburg

193
00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:07.879
<v Speaker 2>had been named the new county seat. By eighteen seventy two,

194
00:11:07.919 --> 00:11:11.240
<v Speaker 2>when the new brick courthouse was finished, nearly every family

195
00:11:11.279 --> 00:11:14.919
<v Speaker 2>had packed up and moved. Para Clifta would essentially cease

196
00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:18.480
<v Speaker 2>to exist as a living town. But before it vanished,

197
00:11:18.679 --> 00:11:22.159
<v Speaker 2>something happened in the surrounding countryside that was strange enough

198
00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:25.240
<v Speaker 2>and frightening enough to get written up and published hundreds

199
00:11:25.279 --> 00:11:28.279
<v Speaker 2>of miles away in the Weekly Standard out of Raleigh,

200
00:11:28.320 --> 00:11:31.399
<v Speaker 2>North Carolina. A group of men were passing through the

201
00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:36.279
<v Speaker 2>area around Para Clifta trappers woodsmen, the kind of hard

202
00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:39.000
<v Speaker 2>living frontier people who moved through that country because they

203
00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:41.639
<v Speaker 2>knew it, because the woods and the rivers and the

204
00:11:41.639 --> 00:11:44.919
<v Speaker 2>game trails were their livelihood. And they told a story

205
00:11:44.960 --> 00:11:48.120
<v Speaker 2>about an encounter with what the newspaper identified as the

206
00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:51.519
<v Speaker 2>wild Man. Now, I need you to understand something about

207
00:11:51.559 --> 00:11:55.399
<v Speaker 2>that phrase. By eighteen sixty five, the wild Man of

208
00:11:55.480 --> 00:11:59.799
<v Speaker 2>Arkansas was already a known quantity, not a well understood quantity.

209
00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:04.240
<v Speaker 2>Nobody understood it, but people knew about it. Newspapers had

210
00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:06.840
<v Speaker 2>been printing accounts of sightings for at least twenty years.

211
00:12:06.879 --> 00:12:10.759
<v Speaker 2>By that point. The creature or whatever it was, had

212
00:12:10.759 --> 00:12:14.240
<v Speaker 2>a reputation, it had a history, and this group of

213
00:12:14.279 --> 00:12:16.639
<v Speaker 2>men claimed they'd come face to face with it or

214
00:12:16.679 --> 00:12:20.440
<v Speaker 2>something like it, in the heavy timber near Paraclifta. The

215
00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:24.039
<v Speaker 2>surviving details of their account are sparse. What made it

216
00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:27.159
<v Speaker 2>through to the newspaper is the broad outline, not the

217
00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:30.919
<v Speaker 2>granular specifics that you or I would want. They were

218
00:12:30.960 --> 00:12:33.840
<v Speaker 2>moving through the back country when they encountered something large,

219
00:12:33.919 --> 00:12:37.759
<v Speaker 2>covered in hair and moving with alarming speed. There was

220
00:12:37.799 --> 00:12:41.759
<v Speaker 2>a chase, there was aggression. The thing they encountered didn't

221
00:12:41.759 --> 00:12:46.759
<v Speaker 2>simply turn and flee. It engaged with them, it confronted them,

222
00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:51.279
<v Speaker 2>and the experience was unsettling enough or terrifying enough or

223
00:12:51.320 --> 00:12:54.480
<v Speaker 2>both that they told the story when they reached civilization,

224
00:12:55.039 --> 00:12:57.320
<v Speaker 2>and an editor in Raleigh thought it was worth putting

225
00:12:57.360 --> 00:13:00.519
<v Speaker 2>in the paper. Is this the most airtight account in

226
00:13:00.559 --> 00:13:05.960
<v Speaker 2>the historical record? No, it's not. The original Weekly Standard

227
00:13:06.039 --> 00:13:09.799
<v Speaker 2>article from eighteen sixty five is extremely difficult to access today.

228
00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:13.399
<v Speaker 2>The details we have are second hand at best, and

229
00:13:13.519 --> 00:13:15.720
<v Speaker 2>any story that makes the journey from the mouths of

230
00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:19.320
<v Speaker 2>Arkansas Frontier trappers to the pages of a North Carolina

231
00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:22.600
<v Speaker 2>newspaper is going to lose some precision along the way.

232
00:13:23.480 --> 00:13:26.919
<v Speaker 2>Every hand it passes through files off another edge. But

233
00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:30.360
<v Speaker 2>here's what makes it matter to me. It fits. It

234
00:13:30.399 --> 00:13:33.080
<v Speaker 2>fits the pattern of what had been reported in Arkansas

235
00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:36.720
<v Speaker 2>for decades. It places a wild man encounter in a

236
00:13:36.759 --> 00:13:40.919
<v Speaker 2>specific location, at a specific time in history, among a

237
00:13:40.960 --> 00:13:43.279
<v Speaker 2>specific group of people who had a reason to be

238
00:13:43.399 --> 00:13:46.000
<v Speaker 2>in that part of the country. And it was published

239
00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:49.240
<v Speaker 2>in a newspaper, which means someone at the Weekly Standard

240
00:13:49.279 --> 00:13:53.039
<v Speaker 2>considered it credible enough to print. That's not proof, but

241
00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:55.960
<v Speaker 2>it's a data point, and when you've got enough data points,

242
00:13:56.159 --> 00:14:00.720
<v Speaker 2>they start drawing a picture. To really understand the paraclift story, though,

243
00:14:00.919 --> 00:14:03.279
<v Speaker 2>you've got to go back further. You've got to go

244
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:06.000
<v Speaker 2>back to the spring of eighteen fifty one, to the

245
00:14:06.039 --> 00:14:08.879
<v Speaker 2>event that put the Arkansas wild Man on the national

246
00:14:08.919 --> 00:14:12.240
<v Speaker 2>map and in some ways launched the first bigfoot hunt

247
00:14:12.279 --> 00:14:16.480
<v Speaker 2>in American history. Here's what was reported. A man named

248
00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:19.200
<v Speaker 2>Hamilton was out hunting with a companion in Green County,

249
00:14:19.480 --> 00:14:22.559
<v Speaker 2>which sits in the northeastern corner of Arkansas, up near

250
00:14:22.600 --> 00:14:26.919
<v Speaker 2>the Missouri border. This is flat country, river bottom country,

251
00:14:27.559 --> 00:14:30.799
<v Speaker 2>thick hardwood timber along the waterways, and swamp ground that

252
00:14:30.840 --> 00:14:34.120
<v Speaker 2>stretched for miles in every direction during the wet months.

253
00:14:34.559 --> 00:14:37.120
<v Speaker 2>Not a place where you went for pleasure. You went

254
00:14:37.159 --> 00:14:39.960
<v Speaker 2>there because that's where the game was, or because you

255
00:14:40.039 --> 00:14:42.279
<v Speaker 2>lived there and didn't have the means or the desire

256
00:14:42.360 --> 00:14:45.679
<v Speaker 2>to be anywhere else. Hamilton and his friend were doing

257
00:14:45.720 --> 00:14:48.279
<v Speaker 2>what men in that part of the world did. They

258
00:14:48.279 --> 00:14:51.759
<v Speaker 2>were hunting, and then the cattle came through a herd

259
00:14:51.799 --> 00:14:54.919
<v Speaker 2>of them, running in what the newspaper described as a

260
00:14:54.960 --> 00:14:59.480
<v Speaker 2>state of a parent alarm. Not just walking briskly, running

261
00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:04.279
<v Speaker 2>panicked and stay tuned for more sasquatch Ott to see.

262
00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:11.200
<v Speaker 2>We'll be right back after these messages, being pursued by

263
00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:14.840
<v Speaker 2>some dreaded enemy. Something behind them had put the fear

264
00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:17.399
<v Speaker 2>of God into those animals, and they were trying to

265
00:15:17.399 --> 00:15:19.519
<v Speaker 2>get away from it as fast as their legs could

266
00:15:19.519 --> 00:15:24.320
<v Speaker 2>carry them. Hamilton and his companion stopped. They watched. They

267
00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:27.679
<v Speaker 2>waited to see what was driving the herd in that country.

268
00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:30.559
<v Speaker 2>It could have been any number of things. A bear

269
00:15:30.600 --> 00:15:33.840
<v Speaker 2>coming out of the bottoms, a panther dropping off a ridge,

270
00:15:34.360 --> 00:15:38.039
<v Speaker 2>wild dogs, maybe even another group of hunters pushing stock.

271
00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:42.559
<v Speaker 2>There were rational explanations available, they expected one of them.

272
00:15:43.320 --> 00:15:46.080
<v Speaker 2>What came out of the brush wasn't rational. It walked

273
00:15:46.120 --> 00:15:50.440
<v Speaker 2>on two legs. That was the first thing upright, human

274
00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:54.919
<v Speaker 2>in its basic shape, but enormous. The Memphis Inquirer, which

275
00:15:54.919 --> 00:15:57.639
<v Speaker 2>picked up the account and ran it, described the creature

276
00:15:57.639 --> 00:16:00.759
<v Speaker 2>as being of gigantic stature, with a body covered in

277
00:16:00.799 --> 00:16:03.360
<v Speaker 2>hair and a head topped with long locks that hung

278
00:16:03.399 --> 00:16:05.960
<v Speaker 2>down over the neck and shoulders, like some kind of

279
00:16:06.039 --> 00:16:10.879
<v Speaker 2>wild mane. It bore, the paper said, the unmistakable likeness

280
00:16:10.919 --> 00:16:14.440
<v Speaker 2>of humanity. It looked human enough to be recognized as

281
00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:18.360
<v Speaker 2>something related to mankind. But it was wrong. It was

282
00:16:18.399 --> 00:16:23.000
<v Speaker 2>too big, too hairy, too fast, too much of everything.

283
00:16:23.879 --> 00:16:25.879
<v Speaker 2>And here's the detail that gets me every time I

284
00:16:25.919 --> 00:16:30.279
<v Speaker 2>read this account. The thing stopped when it noticed Hamilton

285
00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:34.159
<v Speaker 2>and his companion. It didn't immediately bolt. It stood there

286
00:16:34.200 --> 00:16:37.519
<v Speaker 2>and looked at them deliberately. That was the word the

287
00:16:37.519 --> 00:16:42.720
<v Speaker 2>newspaper used, deliberately, like it was taking their measure, deciding

288
00:16:42.759 --> 00:16:45.759
<v Speaker 2>what they were, deciding whether they were a threat or

289
00:16:45.799 --> 00:16:49.919
<v Speaker 2>simply something to be curious about. Then it turned and ran,

290
00:16:50.639 --> 00:16:54.080
<v Speaker 2>not a jog, not a lope. It ran with what

291
00:16:54.120 --> 00:16:57.200
<v Speaker 2>the paper called great speed, and it was clearing twelve

292
00:16:57.240 --> 00:17:01.039
<v Speaker 2>to fourteen feet with every bound about that for a second,

293
00:17:01.559 --> 00:17:04.960
<v Speaker 2>twelve to fourteen feet per stride. That's a stride length

294
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:08.240
<v Speaker 2>that doesn't belong to anything human. The footprints that left

295
00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:12.160
<v Speaker 2>behind measured thirteen inches. The stride length is the detail

296
00:17:12.200 --> 00:17:15.960
<v Speaker 2>that separates this from a fairal human story. A man,

297
00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:19.720
<v Speaker 2>even a very large and very fit man, doesn't cover

298
00:17:19.799 --> 00:17:23.640
<v Speaker 2>fourteen feet per stride while running through rough uneven country.

299
00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:28.079
<v Speaker 2>That's beyond what the human body can produce. If Hamilton

300
00:17:28.160 --> 00:17:31.079
<v Speaker 2>was telling the truth, and if the newspaper was accurately

301
00:17:31.119 --> 00:17:34.160
<v Speaker 2>reporting what he told them, then whatever he watched run

302
00:17:34.200 --> 00:17:37.039
<v Speaker 2>away from him that day in Green County was physically

303
00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:40.359
<v Speaker 2>capable of things that a person simply can't do. That

304
00:17:40.480 --> 00:17:44.519
<v Speaker 2>story hit the Memphis Inquirer first, probably around May ninth

305
00:17:44.559 --> 00:17:48.240
<v Speaker 2>of eighteen fifty one. Then it went everywhere. The New

306
00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:51.559
<v Speaker 2>Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette ran it on May twenty ninth,

307
00:17:52.319 --> 00:17:55.400
<v Speaker 2>The Vermont Watchman and State Journal picked it up. The

308
00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:59.119
<v Speaker 2>Boston Daily be published it. Papers in Ohio carried it.

309
00:17:59.759 --> 00:18:03.079
<v Speaker 2>The New Orleans Times Picayune ran a version on May fifteenth,

310
00:18:03.400 --> 00:18:05.039
<v Speaker 2>and it may been the first to go to press,

311
00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:09.119
<v Speaker 2>with it being the closest geographically to Arkansas. And the

312
00:18:09.160 --> 00:18:13.200
<v Speaker 2>story didn't stop at the American border. The Wellington Independent

313
00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:16.200
<v Speaker 2>in New Zealand published the account on December twenty seventh

314
00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:19.279
<v Speaker 2>of eighteen fifty one, more than half a year later,

315
00:18:19.559 --> 00:18:22.359
<v Speaker 2>and literally on the other side of the planet. This

316
00:18:22.519 --> 00:18:24.920
<v Speaker 2>wasn't a local oddity buried on the back page of

317
00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:30.720
<v Speaker 2>a county newspaper. It went national. It went international. Editors

318
00:18:30.759 --> 00:18:33.200
<v Speaker 2>from New England to the South Pacific read this story

319
00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:36.519
<v Speaker 2>and decided it was worth their reader's attention. That tells

320
00:18:36.519 --> 00:18:38.839
<v Speaker 2>you something about the level of detail and the apparent

321
00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:42.440
<v Speaker 2>credibility of what Hamilton reported. Two of the people who

322
00:18:42.519 --> 00:18:45.640
<v Speaker 2>paid the closest attention were Colonel David C. Cross and

323
00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:50.119
<v Speaker 2>a physician named doctor Sullivan, both prominent men from Memphis.

324
00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:53.160
<v Speaker 2>They announced they were organizing an expedition to enter the

325
00:18:53.279 --> 00:18:57.640
<v Speaker 2>Arkansas backcountry and capture the wild man alive. The New

326
00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:00.839
<v Speaker 2>Hampshire Patriot reported on May twenty ninth that the expedition

327
00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:04.240
<v Speaker 2>was being assembled and was preparing to leave Memphis. A

328
00:19:04.359 --> 00:19:10.279
<v Speaker 2>genuine organized search party, armed men, provisions, a clear objective

329
00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:13.759
<v Speaker 2>ride into the swamps and bottoms of eastern Arkansas and

330
00:19:13.799 --> 00:19:18.319
<v Speaker 2>bring this thing back. And then nothing. No follow up

331
00:19:18.319 --> 00:19:23.160
<v Speaker 2>in any paper, no published results, no triumphant return, no

332
00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:27.920
<v Speaker 2>embarrassed admission of failure. Nothing, as far as anyone's been

333
00:19:27.960 --> 00:19:31.559
<v Speaker 2>able to determine. The Cross Sullivan expedition left Memphis and

334
00:19:31.640 --> 00:19:34.880
<v Speaker 2>was never heard from again in print. Maybe they found

335
00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:37.880
<v Speaker 2>nothing and said nothing. Maybe they wrote a report that

336
00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:40.920
<v Speaker 2>got lost. Maybe the account sitting in a box in

337
00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:44.559
<v Speaker 2>some archive in Tennessee or Arkansas, waiting for someone to

338
00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:47.079
<v Speaker 2>look through it. But what we've got right now is

339
00:19:47.119 --> 00:19:50.400
<v Speaker 2>the departure and a blank page where the conclusion should be.

340
00:19:51.240 --> 00:19:53.640
<v Speaker 2>It may have been the first organized bigfoot hunt in

341
00:19:53.680 --> 00:19:56.920
<v Speaker 2>American history and its ending is a mystery in its

342
00:19:56.920 --> 00:20:00.920
<v Speaker 2>own right. But the Memphis Inquirer account included one more

343
00:20:00.920 --> 00:20:04.440
<v Speaker 2>detail that I think is critically important. It noted that

344
00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:07.440
<v Speaker 2>the creature had been reported in Saint Francis, Green and

345
00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:11.960
<v Speaker 2>points At counties for seventeen years. That pushes the earliest

346
00:20:11.960 --> 00:20:16.240
<v Speaker 2>sightings back to approximately eighteen thirty four. Hamilton wasn't the

347
00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:19.200
<v Speaker 2>first person to see this thing. He wasn't even close.

348
00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:22.160
<v Speaker 2>He was just the one whose account reached the right

349
00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:25.400
<v Speaker 2>newspaper at the right moment and caught fire. And there

350
00:20:25.480 --> 00:20:28.680
<v Speaker 2>was this a planner in the area, a man of

351
00:20:28.799 --> 00:20:31.599
<v Speaker 2>enough standing that his word would have carried weight, had

352
00:20:31.640 --> 00:20:35.640
<v Speaker 2>recently seen the same creature, but he'd kept quiet. He

353
00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:38.839
<v Speaker 2>was afraid nobody would believe him. It was only after

354
00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:42.200
<v Speaker 2>Hamilton's report was published, after someone else had gone first

355
00:20:42.200 --> 00:20:45.160
<v Speaker 2>and taken the risk of sounding crazy, that this planner

356
00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:48.400
<v Speaker 2>came forward. Think about how many other people might have

357
00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:53.279
<v Speaker 2>done the same thing, seen something stayed silent, waited for

358
00:20:53.319 --> 00:20:56.839
<v Speaker 2>permission to speak. And here's something else that I find telling.

359
00:20:57.759 --> 00:21:01.480
<v Speaker 2>After Hamilton's account went national, the Arkansas wild Man didn't

360
00:21:01.480 --> 00:21:04.599
<v Speaker 2>just become a serious subject of discussion. It became a

361
00:21:04.599 --> 00:21:08.839
<v Speaker 2>fixture in American newspaper culture. Editors used the wild Man

362
00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:12.079
<v Speaker 2>as a running joke. References popped up in papers for

363
00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:16.240
<v Speaker 2>years afterward, usually tongue in cheek. Someone would write that

364
00:21:16.279 --> 00:21:19.519
<v Speaker 2>the wild Man had been spotted dodging the draft, or

365
00:21:19.519 --> 00:21:21.920
<v Speaker 2>that he'd been seen at a polling station being told

366
00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:24.519
<v Speaker 2>how to vote, or that he'd been cleaned up and

367
00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:28.440
<v Speaker 2>made editor of some New York paper. These humorous references

368
00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:32.160
<v Speaker 2>continued well past eighteen fifty one, which tells you the

369
00:21:32.200 --> 00:21:35.599
<v Speaker 2>story had saturated the public consciousness deeply enough to become

370
00:21:35.640 --> 00:21:40.200
<v Speaker 2>a cultural shorthand. But underneath the jokes, the actual sighting

371
00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:44.440
<v Speaker 2>reports kept coming, and the people filing those reports weren't laughing.

372
00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:48.960
<v Speaker 2>The humor and the editorial columns existed alongside genuine fear

373
00:21:49.319 --> 00:21:52.400
<v Speaker 2>in the counties where the creature was being seen. That

374
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:55.279
<v Speaker 2>tension between the people who found it amusing from a

375
00:21:55.319 --> 00:21:58.039
<v Speaker 2>safe distance and the people who were encountering it in

376
00:21:58.079 --> 00:22:01.519
<v Speaker 2>the flesh is something you still in this field today.

377
00:22:02.359 --> 00:22:05.319
<v Speaker 2>Nothing's changed. The people who make the jokes are never

378
00:22:05.400 --> 00:22:09.400
<v Speaker 2>the people who've had the experience. The Memphis Inquirer account

379
00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:12.160
<v Speaker 2>also included a detail that researchers have been chewing on

380
00:22:12.279 --> 00:22:15.359
<v Speaker 2>for a long time. It noted that the wild man

381
00:22:15.400 --> 00:22:18.839
<v Speaker 2>had been known traditionally in Saint Francis, Green and points

382
00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:23.240
<v Speaker 2>At counties. Traditionally, that word implies something older than a

383
00:22:23.240 --> 00:22:27.480
<v Speaker 2>few years of scattered reports. It implies an established body

384
00:22:27.519 --> 00:22:30.400
<v Speaker 2>of local knowledge, the kind of thing that gets passed

385
00:22:30.400 --> 00:22:33.759
<v Speaker 2>down at general stores and church gatherings and family dinners.

386
00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:37.079
<v Speaker 2>People in those counties knew about this creature the way

387
00:22:37.119 --> 00:22:39.640
<v Speaker 2>they knew about the weather or the flooding patterns of

388
00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:43.039
<v Speaker 2>the rivers. It was part of the landscape, part of

389
00:22:43.079 --> 00:22:45.519
<v Speaker 2>what you dealt with if you lived out there. And

390
00:22:45.599 --> 00:22:48.880
<v Speaker 2>that seventeen year window the paper sided going back to

391
00:22:48.960 --> 00:22:53.720
<v Speaker 2>around eighteen thirty four. Some researchers believe even that's conservative.

392
00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:57.279
<v Speaker 2>The Memphis Inquirer was reporting what it could confirm through

393
00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:00.440
<v Speaker 2>its own sources. But oral tradition in that part of

394
00:23:00.519 --> 00:23:04.200
<v Speaker 2>Arkansas may well have extended much further back. The question

395
00:23:04.359 --> 00:23:08.160
<v Speaker 2>is how much further, And we're unlikely to ever answer that,

396
00:23:08.599 --> 00:23:11.839
<v Speaker 2>because oral tradition doesn't leave a paper trail. You can't

397
00:23:11.839 --> 00:23:14.799
<v Speaker 2>make sense of any of this without understanding the land itself.

398
00:23:15.799 --> 00:23:18.799
<v Speaker 2>Eastern Arkansas in the eighteen forties and fifties wasn't what

399
00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:22.400
<v Speaker 2>it looks like today. There were no levees controlling the rivers,

400
00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:26.440
<v Speaker 2>no army corps of engineers, drainage systems converting swamp into

401
00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:30.559
<v Speaker 2>crop land. The Mississippi bottom Lands were a vast, tangled,

402
00:23:30.559 --> 00:23:35.440
<v Speaker 2>flooded wilderness of slow moving water, cyprus stands, oxbow lakes,

403
00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:38.920
<v Speaker 2>dense hardwood forest, and cane breaks so thick you could

404
00:23:38.960 --> 00:23:42.480
<v Speaker 2>walk into one and lose the sky. Travel was punishing.

405
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:47.160
<v Speaker 2>Roads barely existed outside the settlements, and during the spring floods,

406
00:23:47.559 --> 00:23:52.519
<v Speaker 2>enormous stretches of lowland simply disappeared under brown water. Everything

407
00:23:52.519 --> 00:23:54.640
<v Speaker 2>that lived in those areas had to move to higher

408
00:23:54.680 --> 00:23:58.039
<v Speaker 2>ground or swim. Running through the middle of all that

409
00:23:58.079 --> 00:24:02.599
<v Speaker 2>flat land was a geological eye called Crowley's Ridge. It's

410
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:06.039
<v Speaker 2>a narrow band of elevated terrain two hundred and fifty

411
00:24:06.079 --> 00:24:09.319
<v Speaker 2>to five hundred fifty feet above the surrounding bottoms, stretching

412
00:24:09.319 --> 00:24:12.640
<v Speaker 2>about one hundred and fifty miles from southeastern Missouri down

413
00:24:12.680 --> 00:24:16.640
<v Speaker 2>into eastern Arkansas. The ridge was covered in dense oak

414
00:24:16.680 --> 00:24:20.359
<v Speaker 2>and hickory forest. Settlers used it as a travel corridor

415
00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:23.119
<v Speaker 2>because the swamp land on either side was impassable for

416
00:24:23.200 --> 00:24:26.960
<v Speaker 2>much of the year. Saint Francis, Green and pointsett counties

417
00:24:27.160 --> 00:24:30.400
<v Speaker 2>where the wild man was reported most frequently sit right

418
00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:33.960
<v Speaker 2>along Crowley's Ridge or in the bottomlands flanking it. This

419
00:24:34.119 --> 00:24:38.480
<v Speaker 2>was true frontier, widely scattered settlements, very few people per

420
00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:41.920
<v Speaker 2>square mile, thousands of acres of forest and swamp and

421
00:24:42.039 --> 00:24:44.880
<v Speaker 2>river bottom that no one had explored or mapped in

422
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:48.839
<v Speaker 2>any meaningful way. If you'd wanted to design a landscape

423
00:24:48.839 --> 00:24:52.160
<v Speaker 2>for a large, intelligent animal to remain hidden from human

424
00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:55.359
<v Speaker 2>beings for decades, you couldn't do better than the eastern

425
00:24:55.480 --> 00:24:59.279
<v Speaker 2>Arkansas bottoms in the nineteenth century, miles of cover in

426
00:24:59.359 --> 00:25:04.039
<v Speaker 2>every direction and almost nobody looking. The first newspaper account

427
00:25:04.079 --> 00:25:06.960
<v Speaker 2>that can be definitively traced came in February and March

428
00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:10.960
<v Speaker 2>of eighteen forty six from the Crowley's Ridge area. The

429
00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:14.519
<v Speaker 2>Baltimore Sun published it on March thirteenth. The track the

430
00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:18.720
<v Speaker 2>creature left behind, the paper said, measured twenty two inches long,

431
00:25:19.480 --> 00:25:22.400
<v Speaker 2>the toes were as long as a common man's fingers,

432
00:25:22.680 --> 00:25:25.440
<v Speaker 2>and in height and general build the creature was said

433
00:25:25.480 --> 00:25:27.839
<v Speaker 2>to be double the usual size of a human being

434
00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:33.480
<v Speaker 2>twenty two inch footprints, toes like fingers, twice the Normal

435
00:25:33.519 --> 00:25:36.680
<v Speaker 2>Height of a Man, published in the Baltimore Sun in

436
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:39.920
<v Speaker 2>eighteen forty six, a full one hundred and twelve years

437
00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:44.319
<v Speaker 2>before the word Bigfoot would enter the American vocabulary. Now,

438
00:25:44.359 --> 00:25:46.759
<v Speaker 2>people at the time weren't arguing about whether this was

439
00:25:46.839 --> 00:25:51.200
<v Speaker 2>an undiscovered primate. They didn't have that framework. What they

440
00:25:51.279 --> 00:25:54.519
<v Speaker 2>had was a much simpler explanation, and it tells you

441
00:25:54.559 --> 00:25:58.200
<v Speaker 2>a lot about how nineteenth century Americans processed things they

442
00:25:58.200 --> 00:26:00.440
<v Speaker 2>couldn't fit into the world as they unders stood it.

443
00:26:01.279 --> 00:26:03.720
<v Speaker 2>The most popular theory was that the wild Man was

444
00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:07.599
<v Speaker 2>a survivor of the New Madrid earthquakes. That theory wasn't

445
00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:10.920
<v Speaker 2>as outlandish as it sounds today, because the New Madrid

446
00:26:10.960 --> 00:26:14.680
<v Speaker 2>earthquakes were among the most catastrophic geological events in North

447
00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:17.680
<v Speaker 2>American history, and they happened right in the middle of

448
00:26:17.720 --> 00:26:21.559
<v Speaker 2>the territory where the wild Man was being reported. The

449
00:26:21.599 --> 00:26:26.319
<v Speaker 2>New Madrid seismic zone, centered in northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri,

450
00:26:26.759 --> 00:26:29.880
<v Speaker 2>unleashed a series of earthquakes in eighteen eleven and eighteen

451
00:26:29.960 --> 00:26:34.400
<v Speaker 2>twelve that were almost beyond comprehension. The ground split open

452
00:26:34.440 --> 00:26:38.599
<v Speaker 2>across hundreds of square miles. Entire forests sank into newly

453
00:26:38.640 --> 00:26:42.599
<v Speaker 2>formed swamps, sand blue skyward, and geysers from cracks in

454
00:26:42.640 --> 00:26:46.200
<v Speaker 2>the earth. The Mississippi River for a period of hours

455
00:26:46.319 --> 00:26:50.640
<v Speaker 2>ran backward. Islands in the river vanished. New lakes appeared

456
00:26:50.680 --> 00:26:54.319
<v Speaker 2>overnight where dry land had been that morning. Real Foot

457
00:26:54.359 --> 00:26:57.839
<v Speaker 2>Lake in Tennessee was created by the quakes. The landscape

458
00:26:57.839 --> 00:27:01.799
<v Speaker 2>of eastern Arkansas was physically, per permanently reshaped, And all

459
00:27:01.839 --> 00:27:04.880
<v Speaker 2>of that happened in exactly the same region where thirty

460
00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:08.319
<v Speaker 2>years later people would start reporting a gigantic, hair covered

461
00:27:08.319 --> 00:27:11.440
<v Speaker 2>creature in the woods. So the thinking went like this,

462
00:27:12.200 --> 00:27:15.759
<v Speaker 2>a child had been separated from its family during the earthquakes,

463
00:27:16.039 --> 00:27:20.240
<v Speaker 2>lost in the catastrophe, orphaned in the chaos, and over

464
00:27:20.279 --> 00:27:24.799
<v Speaker 2>the decades that child had grown into something feral, something enormous,

465
00:27:25.440 --> 00:27:29.200
<v Speaker 2>something that was technically human but had never lived as one,

466
00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:33.119
<v Speaker 2>had never spoken, had never worn clothing, had never been

467
00:27:33.119 --> 00:27:36.480
<v Speaker 2>inside a building. It was a comforting theory in a way,

468
00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:40.000
<v Speaker 2>because it meant the thing in the woods wasn't truly unknowable.

469
00:27:40.599 --> 00:27:43.759
<v Speaker 2>It was just a person who'd gone wrong, a tragedy,

470
00:27:44.200 --> 00:27:47.039
<v Speaker 2>not a mystery. But even at the time, the theory

471
00:27:47.079 --> 00:27:51.279
<v Speaker 2>had problems. The earthquakes were in eighteen eleven. The first

472
00:27:51.359 --> 00:27:54.880
<v Speaker 2>sightings appeared around eighteen thirty four. That's a gap of

473
00:27:54.920 --> 00:27:57.799
<v Speaker 2>about twenty two years, and it would mean the creature

474
00:27:57.799 --> 00:28:00.759
<v Speaker 2>had survived alone in the swamps from infant see or

475
00:28:00.880 --> 00:28:05.000
<v Speaker 2>very early childhood to adulthood without any human assistance at all.

476
00:28:05.880 --> 00:28:09.720
<v Speaker 2>Possible in theory, maybe, but the physical descriptions never really

477
00:28:09.759 --> 00:28:12.759
<v Speaker 2>matched a feral human being, no matter how long they'd

478
00:28:12.799 --> 00:28:16.319
<v Speaker 2>been in the wild. A person raised without human contact

479
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:20.359
<v Speaker 2>might be strong, might be fast, might be covered in matted,

480
00:28:20.519 --> 00:28:24.200
<v Speaker 2>unkempt hair, but they wouldn't leave twenty two inch tracks,

481
00:28:24.720 --> 00:28:27.880
<v Speaker 2>They wouldn't clear fourteen feet per stride. They wouldn't be

482
00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:31.200
<v Speaker 2>described as double the size of a normal man. The

483
00:28:31.279 --> 00:28:34.920
<v Speaker 2>earthquake theory was the best explanation people had available to them.

484
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:39.000
<v Speaker 2>It just wasn't a particularly good one. Here's where the

485
00:28:39.039 --> 00:28:42.119
<v Speaker 2>story turns violent. And this is the part that changes

486
00:28:42.200 --> 00:28:44.960
<v Speaker 2>everything for me. Because it's one thing to read about

487
00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:48.759
<v Speaker 2>a creature that runs away when it sees people. That's interesting,

488
00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:52.440
<v Speaker 2>that's curious. You can file that under mystery and move

489
00:28:52.480 --> 00:28:55.240
<v Speaker 2>on with your day. But when the accounts shift to

490
00:28:55.279 --> 00:28:58.960
<v Speaker 2>physical contact, to actual violence, to a human being getting

491
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:03.000
<v Speaker 2>torn apart by something, he couldn't overcome the conversation changes.

492
00:29:03.599 --> 00:29:07.240
<v Speaker 2>You're no longer talking about sightings, You're talking about encounters,

493
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:10.960
<v Speaker 2>and encounters leave evidence on the bodies of the people involved.

494
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:14.680
<v Speaker 2>In eighteen fifty six, the nature of the wild man

495
00:29:14.759 --> 00:29:18.839
<v Speaker 2>reports shifted sharply. People weren't just spotting the creature at

496
00:29:18.839 --> 00:29:21.680
<v Speaker 2>a distance and watching it vanish into the timber anymore.

497
00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:26.960
<v Speaker 2>Confrontations were happening, and they were brutal. The Pittsfield Sun

498
00:29:27.039 --> 00:29:30.279
<v Speaker 2>reported in January of eighteen fifty six that a wild

499
00:29:30.359 --> 00:29:33.119
<v Speaker 2>man standing seven feet tall had been seen roaming the

500
00:29:33.160 --> 00:29:37.799
<v Speaker 2>Great Mississippi Bottom in Arkansas. Numerous travelers and hunters claimed

501
00:29:37.799 --> 00:29:40.640
<v Speaker 2>they'd seen him, but the paper noted that nobody had

502
00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:43.240
<v Speaker 2>been able to get close enough to provide much detail.

503
00:29:43.920 --> 00:29:48.599
<v Speaker 2>He appeared, he was glimpsed, he was gone, same pattern

504
00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:52.200
<v Speaker 2>as always, but the reports were coming more frequently now,

505
00:29:52.480 --> 00:29:56.599
<v Speaker 2>and they were spreading across a wider territory. Whatever this was,

506
00:29:57.039 --> 00:29:59.759
<v Speaker 2>it was moving, or there was more than one of them,

507
00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:04.440
<v Speaker 2>or both. And stay tuned for more sasquatch ott to see.

508
00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:11.200
<v Speaker 2>We'll be right back after these messages. And then came

509
00:30:11.240 --> 00:30:13.279
<v Speaker 2>the encounter that makes the hair stand up on the

510
00:30:13.319 --> 00:30:15.880
<v Speaker 2>back of my neck every time I read it. Not

511
00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:19.200
<v Speaker 2>because of the theatrical details, though there are plenty of those,

512
00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:23.200
<v Speaker 2>but because underneath the embellishment there's a core of physical

513
00:30:23.240 --> 00:30:26.960
<v Speaker 2>reality that's very hard to invent. Later that year, a

514
00:30:27.039 --> 00:30:30.960
<v Speaker 2>much more detailed account appeared. The Wisconsin Patriot published it

515
00:30:31.039 --> 00:30:34.599
<v Speaker 2>on May tenth, eighteen fifty six, describing events on the

516
00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:38.640
<v Speaker 2>Upper Red River near the Louisiana border. The creature had

517
00:30:38.680 --> 00:30:42.440
<v Speaker 2>also been reported in northern Louisiana itself, which tells you

518
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:45.720
<v Speaker 2>something about the range this thing was covering. A group

519
00:30:45.759 --> 00:30:48.240
<v Speaker 2>of men on horseback had organized a hunting party to

520
00:30:48.279 --> 00:30:51.559
<v Speaker 2>pursue it. They'd located the creature near a frozen lake.

521
00:30:51.960 --> 00:30:54.680
<v Speaker 2>And here's a detail that strikes me as oddly specific

522
00:30:55.039 --> 00:30:56.920
<v Speaker 2>and not the kind of thing someone would make up

523
00:30:56.920 --> 00:31:01.839
<v Speaker 2>for dramatic effect. The creature was breaking ice on the lake. Why,

524
00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:07.119
<v Speaker 2>we don't know, Drinking, maybe fishing, if you want to speculate.

525
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:10.720
<v Speaker 2>But the details there, and it has a mundane, observed

526
00:31:10.799 --> 00:31:14.119
<v Speaker 2>quality to it that reads like something someone actually saw.

527
00:31:14.960 --> 00:31:18.599
<v Speaker 2>The creature was described as athletic, about six feet four

528
00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:23.079
<v Speaker 2>inches tall, well muscled, covered in hair of a brownish cast.

529
00:31:23.960 --> 00:31:26.359
<v Speaker 2>The paper also made a note that I find interesting

530
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:29.839
<v Speaker 2>in hindsight. It said the creature was clearly an adept

531
00:31:29.880 --> 00:31:33.480
<v Speaker 2>at what it called the Southwestern system of fighting, meaning

532
00:31:33.519 --> 00:31:37.640
<v Speaker 2>biting and gouging. That's a very specific reference to frontier

533
00:31:37.680 --> 00:31:41.079
<v Speaker 2>fighting culture, and it suggests the newspaper was trying to

534
00:31:41.119 --> 00:31:44.559
<v Speaker 2>frame this creature's behavior in terms its readers would understand.

535
00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:47.519
<v Speaker 2>This thing fought the way the roughest men on the

536
00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:52.599
<v Speaker 2>frontier fought. It wasn't random violence. It was targeted, effective,

537
00:31:52.839 --> 00:31:56.880
<v Speaker 2>and devastating. One writer got ahead of his companions. This

538
00:31:56.920 --> 00:32:00.000
<v Speaker 2>always seems to happen in these old accounts. There's always

539
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:02.160
<v Speaker 2>there's one man who decides he doesn't need the group.

540
00:32:02.839 --> 00:32:05.480
<v Speaker 2>This man rode straight up to the creature and attempted

541
00:32:05.519 --> 00:32:07.839
<v Speaker 2>to take it on his own. I don't know how

542
00:32:07.839 --> 00:32:10.799
<v Speaker 2>to describe what happened next without it sounding like something

543
00:32:10.880 --> 00:32:14.119
<v Speaker 2>from a nightmare. But it was published in a newspaper

544
00:32:14.519 --> 00:32:17.119
<v Speaker 2>sourced to people who were apparently telling a story. They

545
00:32:17.119 --> 00:32:20.519
<v Speaker 2>believed the creature saw the horse and rider and came

546
00:32:20.599 --> 00:32:25.559
<v Speaker 2>directly at them, no hesitation, no bluff, charge, no retreat.

547
00:32:26.359 --> 00:32:28.880
<v Speaker 2>It rushed the man, dragged him out of the saddle,

548
00:32:28.920 --> 00:32:31.839
<v Speaker 2>and attacked him with a savagery that the paper described

549
00:32:31.880 --> 00:32:35.519
<v Speaker 2>in precise and sickening detail. It clawed out one of

550
00:32:35.559 --> 00:32:38.799
<v Speaker 2>his eyes. It damaged the other so severely that the

551
00:32:38.799 --> 00:32:42.559
<v Speaker 2>man's companions didn't believe he'd ever see again. It bit

552
00:32:42.680 --> 00:32:45.400
<v Speaker 2>large pieces of flesh from his shoulder and from other

553
00:32:45.440 --> 00:32:49.200
<v Speaker 2>parts of his body. It left him shattered, blind and

554
00:32:49.279 --> 00:32:52.519
<v Speaker 2>barely alive on the ground. And then it took his horse.

555
00:32:53.319 --> 00:32:55.799
<v Speaker 2>According to the account, the creature stripped the saddle and

556
00:32:55.839 --> 00:32:59.279
<v Speaker 2>bridle from the horse, climbed onto the animal's bare back,

557
00:32:59.319 --> 00:33:02.599
<v Speaker 2>and rode away at a full gallop. The hunting party

558
00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:05.519
<v Speaker 2>gave chase. They were joined by a group of Choctaw

559
00:33:05.559 --> 00:33:08.559
<v Speaker 2>Indians who happened to be in the area. Together they

560
00:33:08.599 --> 00:33:12.000
<v Speaker 2>pursued the creature deep into the Washataw Mountains, which were

561
00:33:12.039 --> 00:33:15.920
<v Speaker 2>buried in snow from a particularly harsh winter. The chase

562
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:18.920
<v Speaker 2>went far into the rough country. They never caught it.

563
00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:22.400
<v Speaker 2>I know how that reads a wild creature ripping a

564
00:33:22.440 --> 00:33:24.759
<v Speaker 2>man apart and then stealing his horse and riding it

565
00:33:24.839 --> 00:33:27.880
<v Speaker 2>bare back into the mountains. That sounds like the kind

566
00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:30.119
<v Speaker 2>of story that starts as a grain of truth and

567
00:33:30.200 --> 00:33:33.200
<v Speaker 2>grows six feet taller every time someone tells it. Around

568
00:33:33.240 --> 00:33:36.240
<v Speaker 2>a fire, and the horse riding detail is the part

569
00:33:36.279 --> 00:33:39.039
<v Speaker 2>that I think is most vulnerable to that kind of inflation.

570
00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:43.519
<v Speaker 2>That's probably embellishment, I'll give you that, but stripped the

571
00:33:43.519 --> 00:33:48.640
<v Speaker 2>theatrical elements away, and something remains underneath, something real. A

572
00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:52.160
<v Speaker 2>man was attacked. He lost both of his eyes. He

573
00:33:52.240 --> 00:33:54.880
<v Speaker 2>was bitten so badly that pieces of his flesh were missing.

574
00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:58.920
<v Speaker 2>He nearly died. That level of physical injury didn't come

575
00:33:58.920 --> 00:34:02.720
<v Speaker 2>from a tall tail. Something happened to him, something with

576
00:34:02.799 --> 00:34:06.000
<v Speaker 2>the strength and the ferocity to overwhelm a man on horseback,

577
00:34:06.759 --> 00:34:08.880
<v Speaker 2>whether it was a creature we don't have a name for,

578
00:34:09.480 --> 00:34:11.840
<v Speaker 2>or a feral human being who'd been surviving in the

579
00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:15.000
<v Speaker 2>wild long enough to become indistinguishable from an animal in

580
00:34:15.039 --> 00:34:19.760
<v Speaker 2>its behavior. Something tore that man apart. The embellishment might

581
00:34:19.800 --> 00:34:23.719
<v Speaker 2>be fiction, the wounds weren't. And there's one more thing

582
00:34:23.760 --> 00:34:27.159
<v Speaker 2>about that eighteen fifty six account that I think deserves attention,

583
00:34:27.719 --> 00:34:30.280
<v Speaker 2>because it speaks to something we don't talk about enough

584
00:34:30.280 --> 00:34:33.559
<v Speaker 2>in this field. The newspaper noted that the creature had

585
00:34:33.599 --> 00:34:37.400
<v Speaker 2>also been seen in northern Louisiana, not just in Arkansas.

586
00:34:38.159 --> 00:34:42.280
<v Speaker 2>That's important because it suggests range. It suggests movement across

587
00:34:42.320 --> 00:34:46.480
<v Speaker 2>state lines, across river systems, across different types of terrain.

588
00:34:47.400 --> 00:34:51.159
<v Speaker 2>The Arkansas wild Man wasn't stationary. It wasn't confined to

589
00:34:51.199 --> 00:34:54.599
<v Speaker 2>one county or one patch of swamp. If these accounts

590
00:34:54.639 --> 00:34:57.559
<v Speaker 2>are describing the same creature, or even the same type

591
00:34:57.559 --> 00:34:59.840
<v Speaker 2>of creature, then we're looking at something with a t

592
00:35:00.079 --> 00:35:03.760
<v Speaker 2>territory that covered hundreds of miles. That's consistent with what

593
00:35:03.800 --> 00:35:07.599
<v Speaker 2>we know about how large primates move. It's consistent with

594
00:35:07.679 --> 00:35:11.800
<v Speaker 2>modern bigfoot sighting patterns, where clusters of reports often trace

595
00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:16.000
<v Speaker 2>out corridors along waterways and mountain ridges. And it was

596
00:35:16.039 --> 00:35:20.079
<v Speaker 2>being documented in the eighteen fifties, decades before anyone had

597
00:35:20.079 --> 00:35:23.440
<v Speaker 2>the concept of a sighting corridor or a migration pattern.

598
00:35:24.239 --> 00:35:27.039
<v Speaker 2>The sightings in Arkansas continued to appear in the nation's

599
00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:29.760
<v Speaker 2>papers right up until the eve of the Civil War,

600
00:35:30.159 --> 00:35:34.159
<v Speaker 2>when understandably other news took over. By the time the

601
00:35:34.199 --> 00:35:37.599
<v Speaker 2>war ended, the Arkansas wild Man had almost been forgotten

602
00:35:37.639 --> 00:35:41.599
<v Speaker 2>by the national press, but the creature itself, whatever it was,

603
00:35:41.960 --> 00:35:46.559
<v Speaker 2>hadn't gone anywhere. The term even survived as slang for

604
00:35:46.679 --> 00:35:49.719
<v Speaker 2>years after the war. Calling someone an Arkansas wild man

605
00:35:49.800 --> 00:35:52.239
<v Speaker 2>was a way of saying they were uncivilized or rough

606
00:35:52.280 --> 00:35:55.360
<v Speaker 2>around the edges. The real thing had faded into a

607
00:35:55.400 --> 00:35:58.199
<v Speaker 2>figure of speech. But in the counties where it had

608
00:35:58.239 --> 00:36:01.639
<v Speaker 2>been seen, the memories didn't fade made that easily. And

609
00:36:01.679 --> 00:36:04.840
<v Speaker 2>then the war came and the newspapers had other things

610
00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:08.360
<v Speaker 2>on their minds. By eighteen sixty one, the wild Man

611
00:36:08.360 --> 00:36:10.800
<v Speaker 2>of Arkansas had been showing up in print for at

612
00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:14.559
<v Speaker 2>least fifteen years, probably longer if you count the oral

613
00:36:14.639 --> 00:36:18.039
<v Speaker 2>reports that never found a newspaper. But the country was

614
00:36:18.079 --> 00:36:21.880
<v Speaker 2>splitting apart at the seams. Six hundred thousand men would

615
00:36:21.880 --> 00:36:25.199
<v Speaker 2>be dead before it was over. The Arkansas wild Man,

616
00:36:25.559 --> 00:36:28.719
<v Speaker 2>whatever it was, wasn't going to compete with Shiloh and

617
00:36:28.760 --> 00:36:33.079
<v Speaker 2>Antietam and Gettysburg for column space. The sightings didn't stop,

618
00:36:33.400 --> 00:36:36.559
<v Speaker 2>the coverage did. And there's an important difference between those

619
00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:38.880
<v Speaker 2>two things. I want to take a moment here and

620
00:36:38.920 --> 00:36:42.199
<v Speaker 2>put all of this into a wider frame, because Arkansas

621
00:36:42.239 --> 00:36:45.280
<v Speaker 2>wasn't the only place people were reporting wild men in

622
00:36:45.320 --> 00:36:49.320
<v Speaker 2>the decades before the war. The concept of a wild man,

623
00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:54.239
<v Speaker 2>a hairy, often gigantic figure living beyond the boundaries of civilization,

624
00:36:54.840 --> 00:36:58.559
<v Speaker 2>runs deep in the American consciousness. It goes back further

625
00:36:58.639 --> 00:37:02.639
<v Speaker 2>than the colonies. European folklore from the thirteenth through the

626
00:37:02.639 --> 00:37:06.079
<v Speaker 2>fifteenth centuries is full of references to wild men thought

627
00:37:06.119 --> 00:37:10.280
<v Speaker 2>to inhabit the dark parts of forests and open countryside.

628
00:37:10.360 --> 00:37:12.960
<v Speaker 2>By the Middle Ages, the image had evolved into something

629
00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:15.280
<v Speaker 2>with a thick coat of hair and the habits of

630
00:37:15.320 --> 00:37:19.000
<v Speaker 2>a wild animal. The idea crossed the Atlantic with the

631
00:37:19.000 --> 00:37:22.280
<v Speaker 2>first settlers and found fertile ground in a continent where

632
00:37:22.280 --> 00:37:26.000
<v Speaker 2>the forest really was dark, really was vast, and really

633
00:37:26.039 --> 00:37:30.119
<v Speaker 2>did contain things that Europeans had never encountered before. And

634
00:37:30.159 --> 00:37:33.000
<v Speaker 2>the indigenous peoples who'd been here for thousands of years

635
00:37:33.239 --> 00:37:37.559
<v Speaker 2>before the Europeans arrived, they had their own traditions. The

636
00:37:37.599 --> 00:37:42.440
<v Speaker 2>Salish people of the Pacific northwest had sasquatch. The Algonquin

637
00:37:42.519 --> 00:37:46.239
<v Speaker 2>of the north central region spoke of wendigo. The Ojibwe

638
00:37:46.360 --> 00:37:49.880
<v Speaker 2>of the northern plains knew the rugaroo, a hairy figure

639
00:37:49.880 --> 00:37:53.280
<v Speaker 2>that appeared in times of danger. The Cherokee had their

640
00:37:53.320 --> 00:37:56.920
<v Speaker 2>own stories. Tribe after tribe across the breadth of the

641
00:37:56.960 --> 00:38:00.880
<v Speaker 2>continent had traditions of large, hairy manlike creature inhabiting the

642
00:38:00.920 --> 00:38:05.239
<v Speaker 2>deep woods. By the eighteen hundreds, American newspapers had begun

643
00:38:05.360 --> 00:38:09.400
<v Speaker 2>dedicating space to wild man sidings. One of the earliest

644
00:38:09.440 --> 00:38:12.559
<v Speaker 2>published accounts in the United States appeared in The Exeter

645
00:38:12.679 --> 00:38:16.679
<v Speaker 2>Watchmen on September twenty second of eighteen eighteen. But the

646
00:38:16.800 --> 00:38:20.039
<v Speaker 2>Arkansas accounts from the eighteen thirties through the eighteen fifties

647
00:38:20.039 --> 00:38:24.599
<v Speaker 2>were different. They were more specific, more detailed, more numerous,

648
00:38:24.599 --> 00:38:28.079
<v Speaker 2>and more consistent than anything that had come before. They

649
00:38:28.159 --> 00:38:33.280
<v Speaker 2>named witnesses, they quoted measurements, they described behavior, and they

650
00:38:33.320 --> 00:38:37.079
<v Speaker 2>appeared in enough different papers in enough different states over

651
00:38:37.239 --> 00:38:40.800
<v Speaker 2>enough years that they constituted something that looked less like

652
00:38:40.920 --> 00:38:45.440
<v Speaker 2>isolated anecdotes and more like a pattern of observation. That

653
00:38:45.480 --> 00:38:48.639
<v Speaker 2>pattern went quiet during the war years, but it didn't

654
00:38:48.639 --> 00:38:52.039
<v Speaker 2>go away. The people who'd been living alongside whatever was

655
00:38:52.079 --> 00:38:55.239
<v Speaker 2>out there in those bottoms and mountains didn't suddenly stop

656
00:38:55.320 --> 00:38:59.239
<v Speaker 2>encountering it just because the country was fighting itself. And

657
00:38:59.280 --> 00:39:02.639
<v Speaker 2>the soldiers who march through those same landscapes, men from

658
00:39:02.679 --> 00:39:06.519
<v Speaker 2>Pennsylvania and Ohio and Tennessee and Alabama who'd never been

659
00:39:06.519 --> 00:39:09.800
<v Speaker 2>in that kind of country before, sometimes found more in

660
00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:13.519
<v Speaker 2>the woods than they expected. During the war itself, there

661
00:39:13.559 --> 00:39:16.400
<v Speaker 2>are a handful of accounts that claim to describe encounters

662
00:39:16.400 --> 00:39:19.920
<v Speaker 2>between soldiers and wild men or creatures in the wilderness.

663
00:39:20.639 --> 00:39:23.440
<v Speaker 2>Some of those accounts are intriguing, and some of them,

664
00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:27.079
<v Speaker 2>I've got to tell you plainly, aren't very good. I'm

665
00:39:27.119 --> 00:39:29.360
<v Speaker 2>going to cover both kinds, and I'm going to tell

666
00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:33.159
<v Speaker 2>you exactly which I think is which. The strongest wartime

667
00:39:33.199 --> 00:39:36.280
<v Speaker 2>account comes from Bridgeport, Alabama, and I want to walk

668
00:39:36.320 --> 00:39:39.800
<v Speaker 2>through it carefully because it's both the most detailed Civil

669
00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:42.719
<v Speaker 2>War era wild man story on record and the one

670
00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:46.079
<v Speaker 2>that raises the most complicated and most human questions about

671
00:39:46.079 --> 00:39:49.239
<v Speaker 2>what we're really talking about when we use the word monster.

672
00:39:50.159 --> 00:39:53.360
<v Speaker 2>Bridgeport sits on the Tennessee River, right at the Alabama

673
00:39:53.480 --> 00:39:57.159
<v Speaker 2>Tennessee line. During the war, it was a strategic choke

674
00:39:57.239 --> 00:40:01.840
<v Speaker 2>point railroad bridge across the river river crossing for troop movements.

675
00:40:02.360 --> 00:40:06.599
<v Speaker 2>Both armies wanted it. General Braxton Bragg's Confederate command was

676
00:40:06.639 --> 00:40:09.199
<v Speaker 2>in the area at one point during the war, and

677
00:40:09.239 --> 00:40:13.159
<v Speaker 2>that's where this story begins. According to a newspaper article

678
00:40:13.199 --> 00:40:16.639
<v Speaker 2>published in the Pittsburgh Dispatch on August second of eighteen ninety,

679
00:40:17.079 --> 00:40:19.920
<v Speaker 2>a Captain George Anderson told the following story about his

680
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.039
<v Speaker 2>time under Bragg's command near Bridgeport. Something was prowling the

681
00:40:24.079 --> 00:40:27.960
<v Speaker 2>perimeter of the Confederate camp. Over the course of four days,

682
00:40:28.239 --> 00:40:31.960
<v Speaker 2>five pickets from Anderson's company vanished, one at a time,

683
00:40:32.519 --> 00:40:35.960
<v Speaker 2>one per night, not killed, as far as anyone could tell,

684
00:40:36.519 --> 00:40:40.360
<v Speaker 2>not found dead, but gone. And at every post where

685
00:40:40.400 --> 00:40:45.039
<v Speaker 2>a man had disappeared, there were unmistakable signs of a struggle. Ground,

686
00:40:45.079 --> 00:40:49.320
<v Speaker 2>torn up, equipment, overturned. Whatever had taken them hadn't done

687
00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:53.000
<v Speaker 2>it gently. Anderson gathered ten men and went out looking.

688
00:40:53.679 --> 00:40:57.280
<v Speaker 2>What they found looked like a man about six feet tall,

689
00:40:57.920 --> 00:41:00.920
<v Speaker 2>around two hundred and fifty pounds of dense muscular weight,

690
00:41:01.519 --> 00:41:04.360
<v Speaker 2>and every inch of it covered in hair. When the

691
00:41:04.400 --> 00:41:08.639
<v Speaker 2>ten soldiers tried to restrain the creature, it fought them hard.

692
00:41:09.519 --> 00:41:12.159
<v Speaker 2>It took all ten men to bring it down. They

693
00:41:12.199 --> 00:41:14.719
<v Speaker 2>tried to talk to it, tried to get it to speak,

694
00:41:15.360 --> 00:41:19.239
<v Speaker 2>but every vocalization it produced was just noise, no words,

695
00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:25.559
<v Speaker 2>no language. Anyone recognized, raw animal sound. Anderson did something

696
00:41:25.559 --> 00:41:28.599
<v Speaker 2>that surprises me every time I read this account. He

697
00:41:28.719 --> 00:41:32.000
<v Speaker 2>let it go. Then he followed it. He wanted to

698
00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:34.239
<v Speaker 2>know where it went. He wanted to know if it

699
00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:37.519
<v Speaker 2>had anything to do with the five missing men. The

700
00:41:37.559 --> 00:41:39.800
<v Speaker 2>creature led them to a large cave up in the

701
00:41:39.880 --> 00:41:43.599
<v Speaker 2>hills above the river. When it realized it was being followed,

702
00:41:43.920 --> 00:41:47.159
<v Speaker 2>it panicked. It scrambled for the summit of the ridge,

703
00:41:47.480 --> 00:41:50.440
<v Speaker 2>and as it climbed, it began throwing rocks down at

704
00:41:50.440 --> 00:41:56.199
<v Speaker 2>Anderson's party, large rocks thrown with force and accuracy. These

705
00:41:56.239 --> 00:41:59.639
<v Speaker 2>soldiers were under fire, essentially from a creature defending its

706
00:41:59.679 --> 00:42:02.880
<v Speaker 2>ground with the only weapons it had. Then it reached

707
00:42:02.920 --> 00:42:06.199
<v Speaker 2>the top and rather than be captured again, it threw

708
00:42:06.239 --> 00:42:10.199
<v Speaker 2>itself off the cliff face one hundred foot drop. It

709
00:42:10.280 --> 00:42:13.760
<v Speaker 2>died on impact. Anderson's men went into the cave and

710
00:42:13.800 --> 00:42:18.800
<v Speaker 2>found their five missing pickets, all alive, all uninjured. They'd

711
00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:22.880
<v Speaker 2>been taken and held, but not harmed. Now I want

712
00:42:22.880 --> 00:42:25.480
<v Speaker 2>to pause on that detail because it complicates the story

713
00:42:25.480 --> 00:42:28.440
<v Speaker 2>in a way that I think is important. Whatever took

714
00:42:28.480 --> 00:42:32.440
<v Speaker 2>those five soldiers didn't kill them, didn't wound them, didn't

715
00:42:32.519 --> 00:42:35.280
<v Speaker 2>leave them for dead. It captured them and kept them

716
00:42:35.280 --> 00:42:39.199
<v Speaker 2>in a cave, and when they were found they were fine.

717
00:42:39.280 --> 00:42:41.960
<v Speaker 2>That doesn't sound like the behavior of a mindless predator.

718
00:42:42.599 --> 00:42:45.960
<v Speaker 2>That sounds like the behavior of something or someone who

719
00:42:45.960 --> 00:42:48.639
<v Speaker 2>had a reason for taking them and a capacity for

720
00:42:48.760 --> 00:42:52.960
<v Speaker 2>restraint that goes beyond pure animal instinct. If this was

721
00:42:53.000 --> 00:42:55.920
<v Speaker 2>Bill Patten, a man whose mind had been shattered but

722
00:42:55.960 --> 00:42:59.039
<v Speaker 2>whose body still remembered how to survive, then what do

723
00:42:59.119 --> 00:43:01.119
<v Speaker 2>we make of the fact that he held five men

724
00:43:01.159 --> 00:43:04.320
<v Speaker 2>captive without hurting them. Was there still enough of the

725
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.880
<v Speaker 2>man inside the animal to prevent him from doing real harm?

726
00:43:08.239 --> 00:43:11.400
<v Speaker 2>Was he lonely? Was he afraid in hoarding people the

727
00:43:11.400 --> 00:43:15.199
<v Speaker 2>way he might hoard food. I don't know, but the

728
00:43:15.239 --> 00:43:18.440
<v Speaker 2>detail haunts me. And then came the part that changes

729
00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:21.880
<v Speaker 2>the meaning of everything. Anderson later spoke with a local

730
00:43:21.920 --> 00:43:25.519
<v Speaker 2>resident who told him exactly what they'd found. The creature's

731
00:43:25.559 --> 00:43:28.840
<v Speaker 2>name was Bill Patten. He'd been a Unionist, a man

732
00:43:28.880 --> 00:43:31.719
<v Speaker 2>who opposed the Confederacy in a region where that opposition

733
00:43:31.840 --> 00:43:35.679
<v Speaker 2>was dangerous. Home Guard forces had captured him, intending to

734
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:38.400
<v Speaker 2>drag him to a recruiting station and force him into

735
00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:42.280
<v Speaker 2>Confederate service. During his escape attempt, he was struck in

736
00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:45.760
<v Speaker 2>the head with a cavalry saber. The wound didn't kill him,

737
00:43:45.920 --> 00:43:49.199
<v Speaker 2>but it destroyed something essential in him. It shattered his

738
00:43:49.280 --> 00:43:52.920
<v Speaker 2>ability to think, to speak, to function as a person.

739
00:43:53.719 --> 00:43:56.280
<v Speaker 2>And whatever was left to Bill Patten after that saber

740
00:43:56.320 --> 00:43:59.400
<v Speaker 2>blow fled into the mountains of northern Alabama, where he

741
00:43:59.440 --> 00:44:02.159
<v Speaker 2>survived for months or years as something that was no

742
00:44:02.239 --> 00:44:06.760
<v Speaker 2>longer recognizably human. Think about what that means. If the

743
00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:10.360
<v Speaker 2>identification's real, and I've got to stress that it's unconfirmed,

744
00:44:10.920 --> 00:44:13.320
<v Speaker 2>then what those ten soldiers fought to the ground near

745
00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:16.639
<v Speaker 2>Bridgeport was a man, a human being who'd been so

746
00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:19.400
<v Speaker 2>severely damaged by the violence of his own time and

747
00:44:19.440 --> 00:44:23.039
<v Speaker 2>his own neighbors, that he could no longer speak, couldn't

748
00:44:23.039 --> 00:44:26.480
<v Speaker 2>live among people, couldn't be reached by any human attempt

749
00:44:26.519 --> 00:44:30.559
<v Speaker 2>at communication. His body had gone wild, his hair had

750
00:44:30.599 --> 00:44:34.440
<v Speaker 2>grown thick and matted, his behavior had become primal and defensive.

751
00:44:35.159 --> 00:44:37.400
<v Speaker 2>He captured soldiers and held them in his cave, but

752
00:44:37.480 --> 00:44:41.400
<v Speaker 2>didn't hurt them, which suggests something still human operating underneath

753
00:44:41.440 --> 00:44:45.159
<v Speaker 2>the animal surface. And when he was cornered again, when

754
00:44:45.159 --> 00:44:47.559
<v Speaker 2>he knew what capture meant, because he remembered what had

755
00:44:47.559 --> 00:44:49.960
<v Speaker 2>happened the last time men put their hands on him,

756
00:44:50.519 --> 00:44:53.159
<v Speaker 2>he chose to die rather than go through it again.

757
00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:57.519
<v Speaker 2>That's not a monster story. That's a war story. And

758
00:44:57.559 --> 00:44:59.760
<v Speaker 2>it's one of the most devastating things I've ever in

759
00:44:59.800 --> 00:45:03.119
<v Speaker 2>ca in all of this research, not because it proves

760
00:45:03.159 --> 00:45:07.480
<v Speaker 2>anything about Sasquatch, because it proves something about us. And

761
00:45:07.559 --> 00:45:11.639
<v Speaker 2>the thing is the Bridgeport account, even if every details true,

762
00:45:12.039 --> 00:45:15.239
<v Speaker 2>fits into a much larger and very real phenomenon of

763
00:45:15.239 --> 00:45:19.719
<v Speaker 2>the war years. And stay tuned for more sasquatch Otyesee,

764
00:45:19.719 --> 00:45:27.000
<v Speaker 2>we'll be right back after these messages. The mountains of Appalachia,

765
00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:30.840
<v Speaker 2>from Virginia down through Tennessee and into Alabama were full

766
00:45:30.840 --> 00:45:33.480
<v Speaker 2>of men who'd fallen out of the human world during

767
00:45:33.480 --> 00:45:39.519
<v Speaker 2>the Civil War. Deserters, draft evaders, unionists in Confederate territory,

768
00:45:40.119 --> 00:45:44.440
<v Speaker 2>Confederates in Union territory, men who'd committed acts of violence

769
00:45:44.440 --> 00:45:47.320
<v Speaker 2>that made it impossible for them to go home, men

770
00:45:47.320 --> 00:45:50.800
<v Speaker 2>who'd simply broken under the weight of what they'd experienced.

771
00:45:51.239 --> 00:45:54.400
<v Speaker 2>The numbers are staggering when you look at them. Estimates

772
00:45:54.440 --> 00:45:57.280
<v Speaker 2>suggest that over one hundred thousand men deserted from the

773
00:45:57.320 --> 00:46:00.760
<v Speaker 2>Confederate army alone during the course of the war. The

774
00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:04.039
<v Speaker 2>Union numbers were even higher. Not all of these men

775
00:46:04.119 --> 00:46:07.559
<v Speaker 2>went home. Many of them went to ground. They hid

776
00:46:08.519 --> 00:46:11.239
<v Speaker 2>in the hollows of the Appalachians, in the coves of

777
00:46:11.280 --> 00:46:14.719
<v Speaker 2>the smokies, in the river bottoms of Alabama and Mississippi.

778
00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:19.400
<v Speaker 2>Some formed bands, some lived alone, and some of them,

779
00:46:19.719 --> 00:46:23.000
<v Speaker 2>over months and years of isolation, became something that the

780
00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:26.920
<v Speaker 2>people around them no longer recognized as fully human. I've

781
00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:30.760
<v Speaker 2>spent sixteen years in law enforcement. I've seen what isolation

782
00:46:30.880 --> 00:46:33.360
<v Speaker 2>and trauma do to people in the modern world with

783
00:46:33.480 --> 00:46:37.519
<v Speaker 2>modern resources and modern support systems available to them. Now

784
00:46:37.559 --> 00:46:40.239
<v Speaker 2>strip all of that away. Put a young man through

785
00:46:40.320 --> 00:46:42.719
<v Speaker 2>two or three years of the worst combat the nineteenth

786
00:46:42.800 --> 00:46:46.119
<v Speaker 2>century could produce, let him watch his friends die of

787
00:46:46.159 --> 00:46:50.079
<v Speaker 2>disease and wounds and exposure, let him participate in things

788
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:53.639
<v Speaker 2>that his mind can't process or forgive, and then turn

789
00:46:53.719 --> 00:46:56.360
<v Speaker 2>him loose in the mountains with no food, no shelter,

790
00:46:56.920 --> 00:46:59.519
<v Speaker 2>no one to talk to, no reason to believe that

791
00:46:59.559 --> 00:47:02.800
<v Speaker 2>going home is even an option. How long before that

792
00:47:02.880 --> 00:47:05.159
<v Speaker 2>man starts to look like something other than a man.

793
00:47:05.960 --> 00:47:08.000
<v Speaker 2>How long before the locals who catch a glimpse of

794
00:47:08.039 --> 00:47:10.880
<v Speaker 2>him through the trees start telling stories about the wild

795
00:47:10.960 --> 00:47:14.280
<v Speaker 2>man who lives up on the ridge? Not long? Not

796
00:47:14.360 --> 00:47:17.400
<v Speaker 2>long at all. I'm not saying every wild man's story

797
00:47:17.400 --> 00:47:20.840
<v Speaker 2>from this era is a traumatized veteran. I'm saying the

798
00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:24.400
<v Speaker 2>war created exactly the conditions that would produce encounters with

799
00:47:24.440 --> 00:47:28.519
<v Speaker 2>people who'd stopped being people in any social or behavioral sense,

800
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:31.719
<v Speaker 2>and those encounters would have looked and felt a lot

801
00:47:31.800 --> 00:47:37.000
<v Speaker 2>like encountering something truly non human, especially at night, especially

802
00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:40.599
<v Speaker 2>at a distance, especially when you were already exhausted and

803
00:47:40.639 --> 00:47:44.320
<v Speaker 2>afraid and standing guard in territory you didn't know. There's

804
00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:47.800
<v Speaker 2>even a post war account from southwestern Virginia that illustrates

805
00:47:47.800 --> 00:47:52.199
<v Speaker 2>this perfectly. In Washington County, near the old Jonesborough Road

806
00:47:52.239 --> 00:47:56.320
<v Speaker 2>between Bristol and Abingdon, locals reported the appearance of a large,

807
00:47:56.360 --> 00:48:00.119
<v Speaker 2>hair covered creature in eighteen sixty eight or eighteen sixty nine,

808
00:48:00.360 --> 00:48:03.440
<v Speaker 2>right after the war ended. This one was different from

809
00:48:03.480 --> 00:48:06.960
<v Speaker 2>the usual descriptions. It was the standard size for a

810
00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:10.719
<v Speaker 2>bigfoot seven to nine feet, with twenty inch foot prints

811
00:48:10.760 --> 00:48:14.320
<v Speaker 2>and a distinctive smell, but instead of dark hair, it

812
00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:18.079
<v Speaker 2>was described as light gray or white. Some people called

813
00:48:18.119 --> 00:48:21.480
<v Speaker 2>it a ghost for that reason. Over the following years,

814
00:48:21.519 --> 00:48:25.760
<v Speaker 2>this creature killed livestock, stripped fruit from trees, and reportedly

815
00:48:25.880 --> 00:48:28.880
<v Speaker 2>dug up a recently buried body from a mountaintop grave.

816
00:48:29.840 --> 00:48:32.840
<v Speaker 2>Armed parties searched the mountain for days without finding it.

817
00:48:33.480 --> 00:48:37.360
<v Speaker 2>Then a violent storm came through, felling large trees across

818
00:48:37.400 --> 00:48:41.360
<v Speaker 2>the ridge. After the storm, the creature was never seen again,

819
00:48:42.119 --> 00:48:45.760
<v Speaker 2>and years later hunters found a massive human like skeleton

820
00:48:46.079 --> 00:48:48.519
<v Speaker 2>pinned beneath a chestnut tree that had been brought down

821
00:48:48.559 --> 00:48:52.719
<v Speaker 2>by that storm. Now, is that a Bigfoot story or

822
00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:56.119
<v Speaker 2>is that the story of a man, possibly a returning soldier,

823
00:48:56.679 --> 00:48:59.360
<v Speaker 2>possibly someone who'd been living wild in the mountain since

824
00:48:59.400 --> 00:49:02.039
<v Speaker 2>the war who finally ran out of luck when the

825
00:49:02.039 --> 00:49:05.800
<v Speaker 2>weather turned against him. I honestly don't know, and I

826
00:49:05.840 --> 00:49:09.480
<v Speaker 2>think that ambiguity is the point. In the years during

827
00:49:09.559 --> 00:49:12.920
<v Speaker 2>and immediately after the Civil War, the line between monster

828
00:49:13.039 --> 00:49:16.559
<v Speaker 2>and man got very, very blurry, and the people telling

829
00:49:16.599 --> 00:49:19.000
<v Speaker 2>these stories weren't always able to see which side of

830
00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:22.280
<v Speaker 2>that line they were on. But the source, we've got

831
00:49:22.320 --> 00:49:26.000
<v Speaker 2>to talk about the source. The entire Bridgeport account rests

832
00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:29.679
<v Speaker 2>on a single man, Captain George Anderson, telling his story

833
00:49:29.719 --> 00:49:33.320
<v Speaker 2>to a newspaper reporter in eighteen ninety, more than twenty

834
00:49:33.320 --> 00:49:37.880
<v Speaker 2>five years after the events he's describing. There's no contemporaneous record,

835
00:49:38.360 --> 00:49:43.320
<v Speaker 2>no military diary, no letter home, no corroborating witness quoted

836
00:49:43.320 --> 00:49:48.480
<v Speaker 2>in the article one man, one newspaper, One story told

837
00:49:48.760 --> 00:49:52.320
<v Speaker 2>a quarter century after the fact. That doesn't automatically make

838
00:49:52.360 --> 00:49:55.719
<v Speaker 2>it false. But it means we're trusting a single narrator

839
00:49:55.760 --> 00:49:58.840
<v Speaker 2>across a long stretch of time, and anyone who works

840
00:49:58.880 --> 00:50:01.760
<v Speaker 2>with historical accounts knows what that distance can do to

841
00:50:01.800 --> 00:50:05.400
<v Speaker 2>a story. The core may be solid, the edges may

842
00:50:05.400 --> 00:50:08.920
<v Speaker 2>have shifted. We simply don't know. Now we get to

843
00:50:08.920 --> 00:50:11.719
<v Speaker 2>the accounts I've got real problems with, and I owe

844
00:50:11.719 --> 00:50:14.719
<v Speaker 2>it to you to be direct about why. The first

845
00:50:14.760 --> 00:50:18.599
<v Speaker 2>is the Harper's Ferry story. It surfaces regularly in online

846
00:50:18.599 --> 00:50:22.760
<v Speaker 2>discussions of Civil War bigfoot encounters. The story goes like this.

847
00:50:23.880 --> 00:50:26.719
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen ninety nine, a collection of autographs and old

848
00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:30.039
<v Speaker 2>letters was appraised for an estate sale in Hertford, Connecticut.

849
00:50:30.679 --> 00:50:33.480
<v Speaker 2>Among the items were several letters by a private James

850
00:50:33.480 --> 00:50:38.079
<v Speaker 2>Moore of the sixty seventh Pennsylvania Infantry Company K. One

851
00:50:38.119 --> 00:50:41.880
<v Speaker 2>of those letters, reportedly dated February twenty sixth of eighteen

852
00:50:41.960 --> 00:50:45.840
<v Speaker 2>sixty three, describes an incident during guard duty at Harper's Ferry.

853
00:50:46.599 --> 00:50:49.880
<v Speaker 2>Moore writes about a cold, still night, a sudden commotion

854
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:52.880
<v Speaker 2>in the garrison, men shouting that a man beast was

855
00:50:52.920 --> 00:50:57.159
<v Speaker 2>on foot, rifle fire toward the river. Afterward, the witnesses

856
00:50:57.199 --> 00:51:00.480
<v Speaker 2>described something that had rated the food stores climbed. The

857
00:51:00.480 --> 00:51:03.840
<v Speaker 2>wall stood maybe eight feet tall and was covered in

858
00:51:03.880 --> 00:51:11.159
<v Speaker 2>thick dark hair. Named soldier, named regiment, specific date, specific location.

859
00:51:11.920 --> 00:51:16.480
<v Speaker 2>It sounds verifiable, but the letter isn't publicly accessible. The

860
00:51:16.599 --> 00:51:20.760
<v Speaker 2>estate sales never been independently confirmed, and the auction catalog

861
00:51:20.880 --> 00:51:24.400
<v Speaker 2>that reportedly contained the letter's transcript was destroyed in a

862
00:51:24.440 --> 00:51:28.239
<v Speaker 2>house fire. The one piece of supporting documentation that could

863
00:51:28.239 --> 00:51:31.599
<v Speaker 2>anchor this story is gone for a reason that conveniently

864
00:51:31.639 --> 00:51:35.639
<v Speaker 2>prevents anyone from checking it. That pattern should make you cautious.

865
00:51:36.119 --> 00:51:39.639
<v Speaker 2>It makes me cautious. I'm not saying the letter was fabricated.

866
00:51:40.039 --> 00:51:42.960
<v Speaker 2>I'm saying it can't be verified, and there's a meaningful

867
00:51:42.960 --> 00:51:47.480
<v Speaker 2>difference between a compelling claim and confirmed evidence. Until someone

868
00:51:47.519 --> 00:51:51.199
<v Speaker 2>produces that letter, this one stays in the unverified column.

869
00:51:52.079 --> 00:51:55.000
<v Speaker 2>The second week account is the Bryce's cross Road story,

870
00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:57.639
<v Speaker 2>and this is the one that frustrates me the most.

871
00:51:58.480 --> 00:52:01.719
<v Speaker 2>An unnamed confederate who the road with Nathan Bedford Forest,

872
00:52:02.039 --> 00:52:05.039
<v Speaker 2>was allegedly wounded at the Battle of Bryce's cross Roads

873
00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:09.079
<v Speaker 2>in June of eighteen sixty four. While lying on the field,

874
00:52:09.239 --> 00:52:12.079
<v Speaker 2>he was found by multiple Sasquatch who carried him to

875
00:52:12.119 --> 00:52:16.320
<v Speaker 2>their dwelling, nursed his wounds, and eventually released him. The

876
00:52:16.360 --> 00:52:19.760
<v Speaker 2>source is a YouTube video. The narrator claims a local

877
00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:23.400
<v Speaker 2>historian showed him an eighteen ninety five letter describing the encounter,

878
00:52:23.679 --> 00:52:28.199
<v Speaker 2>but wouldn't allow copies, photographs, or recordings. The entire story

879
00:52:28.280 --> 00:52:32.000
<v Speaker 2>was reconstructed from memory. No name for the soldier, no

880
00:52:32.159 --> 00:52:35.400
<v Speaker 2>name for the historian, no explanation for why the letter

881
00:52:35.440 --> 00:52:40.239
<v Speaker 2>couldn't be documented, no independent corroboration of any kind. I

882
00:52:40.320 --> 00:52:43.280
<v Speaker 2>included it because it circulates widely and people deserve to

883
00:52:43.320 --> 00:52:47.320
<v Speaker 2>hear an honest assessment. This doesn't meet any reasonable standard

884
00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:50.840
<v Speaker 2>of evidence. It's a story. It might contain a seed

885
00:52:50.880 --> 00:52:54.320
<v Speaker 2>of something real, but in its present form, it's not

886
00:52:54.440 --> 00:52:57.000
<v Speaker 2>something I can stand behind, and I'd be doing you

887
00:52:57.079 --> 00:52:59.360
<v Speaker 2>a disservice to present it as though it carries the

888
00:52:59.400 --> 00:53:03.840
<v Speaker 2>same weight as the documented Arkansas newspaper accounts. So where

889
00:53:03.880 --> 00:53:06.360
<v Speaker 2>does all of this leave us? It leaves us with

890
00:53:06.400 --> 00:53:09.000
<v Speaker 2>a question that I think is more important than any

891
00:53:09.039 --> 00:53:12.000
<v Speaker 2>individual account, and it's a question I want to sit with,

892
00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:16.599
<v Speaker 2>not rush past. What were these people actually seeing? I

893
00:53:16.639 --> 00:53:20.519
<v Speaker 2>can identify four reasonable possibilities, and I believe the honest

894
00:53:20.559 --> 00:53:25.079
<v Speaker 2>answer is that different accounts probably reflect different realities. The

895
00:53:25.119 --> 00:53:28.719
<v Speaker 2>first possibility is the straightforward one. Some of these people

896
00:53:28.760 --> 00:53:33.800
<v Speaker 2>were seeing what modern witnesses still report, a large, undocumented primate,

897
00:53:34.239 --> 00:53:39.639
<v Speaker 2>a biological creature a sasquatch. The Arkansas wild Man. Descriptions

898
00:53:39.880 --> 00:53:42.840
<v Speaker 2>viewed as a body of evidence stretching across twenty years

899
00:53:43.079 --> 00:53:49.559
<v Speaker 2>and multiple independent newspapers, are remarkably consistent. Gigantic size, hair

900
00:53:49.599 --> 00:53:53.760
<v Speaker 2>covered body, long hair on the head and shoulders, stride

901
00:53:53.800 --> 00:53:57.599
<v Speaker 2>links of twelve to fourteen feet, footprints of thirteen to

902
00:53:57.679 --> 00:54:03.719
<v Speaker 2>twenty two inches, livestock urbans, habitation in remote, heavily forested terrain,

903
00:54:04.480 --> 00:54:08.760
<v Speaker 2>aggression when cornered. Those details repeated by witnesses who couldn't

904
00:54:08.800 --> 00:54:12.719
<v Speaker 2>have coordinated their accounts, argue for something real being observed,

905
00:54:13.280 --> 00:54:19.039
<v Speaker 2>not imagined, not invented seen. The second possibility as feral humans.

906
00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:22.960
<v Speaker 2>The Bill Pattent identification at Bridgeport, if it's true, is

907
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:27.039
<v Speaker 2>the sharpest example a person who, through traumatic brain injury,

908
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:30.960
<v Speaker 2>had lost the ability to function in human society. Over

909
00:54:31.000 --> 00:54:34.840
<v Speaker 2>months in the wild, such a person would become nearly unrecognizable,

910
00:54:35.480 --> 00:54:40.239
<v Speaker 2>hair matted and long, body, filthy, behavior, nonverbal, and aggressive,

911
00:54:41.079 --> 00:54:43.599
<v Speaker 2>and the Civil War produced this kind of casualty in

912
00:54:43.719 --> 00:54:47.280
<v Speaker 2>vast numbers. Deserters from both armies hid in the mountains

913
00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:51.000
<v Speaker 2>for years. Some were never found. If a soldier on

914
00:54:51.000 --> 00:54:53.840
<v Speaker 2>picket duty in eighteen sixty two stumbled across one of

915
00:54:53.880 --> 00:54:56.679
<v Speaker 2>these men in the dark, wild eyed and snarling and

916
00:54:56.719 --> 00:55:00.519
<v Speaker 2>barely clothed, what would he think he'd found? I think

917
00:55:00.519 --> 00:55:03.800
<v Speaker 2>he'd think he'd found a monster. The third possibility is

918
00:55:03.840 --> 00:55:08.480
<v Speaker 2>closely related. Traumatized recklesses who hadn't entirely lost their minds,

919
00:55:08.679 --> 00:55:10.920
<v Speaker 2>but had made a deliberate choice to leave the human

920
00:55:10.960 --> 00:55:14.239
<v Speaker 2>world behind. Men who couldn't go home because of what

921
00:55:14.280 --> 00:55:17.280
<v Speaker 2>they'd done or what had been done to them, Men

922
00:55:17.320 --> 00:55:21.079
<v Speaker 2>who were wanted by military authorities, men who'd lost everything

923
00:55:21.119 --> 00:55:23.599
<v Speaker 2>that connected them to the civilization they were supposed to

924
00:55:23.639 --> 00:55:26.800
<v Speaker 2>return to. Some of them went into the deep woods

925
00:55:26.800 --> 00:55:29.880
<v Speaker 2>and stayed there. Locals would glimpse them at a distance,

926
00:55:30.360 --> 00:55:33.480
<v Speaker 2>a shape crouched at a creek, a figure moving through

927
00:55:33.480 --> 00:55:36.199
<v Speaker 2>the trees at last light, and not know what they

928
00:55:36.199 --> 00:55:41.320
<v Speaker 2>were seeing. The fourth possibility is mythology. The frontier was dangerous,

929
00:55:41.760 --> 00:55:44.760
<v Speaker 2>the war made it worse, and human beings have always

930
00:55:45.159 --> 00:55:49.079
<v Speaker 2>always told stories about creatures in the dark. Sometimes those

931
00:55:49.079 --> 00:55:53.480
<v Speaker 2>stories grow from genuine encounters. Sometimes they grow from fear itself.

932
00:55:54.199 --> 00:55:57.159
<v Speaker 2>The sound in the night becomes a creature, the shadow

933
00:55:57.199 --> 00:56:00.599
<v Speaker 2>at the tree line becomes a figure. The general tear

934
00:56:00.719 --> 00:56:03.119
<v Speaker 2>of living on the edge of the known world takes

935
00:56:03.119 --> 00:56:06.679
<v Speaker 2>a shape and gets a name, the wild man. I

936
00:56:06.719 --> 00:56:09.639
<v Speaker 2>think the truth lives in the overlap. I believe some

937
00:56:09.679 --> 00:56:12.960
<v Speaker 2>of the Arkansas accounts represent real encounters with something that

938
00:56:13.159 --> 00:56:17.320
<v Speaker 2>wasn't a human being. The consistency of those descriptions their

939
00:56:17.400 --> 00:56:21.920
<v Speaker 2>specific anatomical and behavioral details is very difficult to explain

940
00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:25.440
<v Speaker 2>as folklore alone. But I also believe the Civil War

941
00:56:25.519 --> 00:56:29.320
<v Speaker 2>era generated conditions that could easily produce wild man sightings

942
00:56:29.519 --> 00:56:33.360
<v Speaker 2>from entirely human sources. And I think those different threads

943
00:56:33.400 --> 00:56:36.639
<v Speaker 2>got tangled together over time until the whole thing became

944
00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:44.280
<v Speaker 2>one undifferentiated category wild men, monsters, creatures, things in the woods.

945
00:56:45.159 --> 00:56:47.519
<v Speaker 2>The honest answer is that we can't always tell which

946
00:56:47.559 --> 00:56:50.159
<v Speaker 2>is which from a distance of one hundred and seventy years,

947
00:56:50.920 --> 00:56:53.920
<v Speaker 2>and the integrity of this field. The thing that separates

948
00:56:53.960 --> 00:56:57.119
<v Speaker 2>research from wishful thinking is our willingness to say that

949
00:56:57.199 --> 00:57:00.320
<v Speaker 2>out loud. There's something else I want to address before

950
00:57:00.320 --> 00:57:02.840
<v Speaker 2>we wrap up, because I think it connects to the

951
00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:06.960
<v Speaker 2>larger conversation happening in this community right now. When we

952
00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:10.719
<v Speaker 2>talk about the PGF, when we talk about modern siding reports,

953
00:57:11.000 --> 00:57:14.920
<v Speaker 2>when we debate thermal footage or audio recordings or footprint casts,

954
00:57:15.360 --> 00:57:19.000
<v Speaker 2>we're always talking about evidence, the quality of the evidence,

955
00:57:19.440 --> 00:57:22.719
<v Speaker 2>the chain of custody, whether a particular piece of data

956
00:57:22.800 --> 00:57:26.760
<v Speaker 2>meets some threshold of reliability. And that's the right conversation

957
00:57:26.880 --> 00:57:29.639
<v Speaker 2>to have. But I think sometimes we lose sight of

958
00:57:29.679 --> 00:57:32.800
<v Speaker 2>the fact that the evidentiary record for this phenomenon doesn't

959
00:57:32.800 --> 00:57:36.000
<v Speaker 2>begin in nineteen sixty seven. It doesn't begin in the

960
00:57:36.000 --> 00:57:39.800
<v Speaker 2>twentieth century at all. The Arkansas accounts give us something

961
00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:43.039
<v Speaker 2>that no piece of modern footage can provide. They give

962
00:57:43.119 --> 00:57:47.119
<v Speaker 2>us historical depth. They show us that the same basic phenomenon,

963
00:57:47.559 --> 00:57:51.679
<v Speaker 2>a large bipedal creature covered in hair, living in remote terrain,

964
00:57:52.119 --> 00:57:54.880
<v Speaker 2>was being reported by ordinary people long before there was

965
00:57:54.920 --> 00:57:58.960
<v Speaker 2>any cultural template to copy from. In eighteen fifty one,

966
00:57:59.079 --> 00:58:02.360
<v Speaker 2>there was no Bigfoot, there was no Sasquatch, there were

967
00:58:02.360 --> 00:58:05.800
<v Speaker 2>no movies about eight Men, there were no television specials.

968
00:58:06.280 --> 00:58:09.400
<v Speaker 2>There was no financial incentive to fake a siding. There

969
00:58:09.440 --> 00:58:11.639
<v Speaker 2>was no fame to be gained from claiming you'd seen

970
00:58:11.679 --> 00:58:14.440
<v Speaker 2>a wild man in the bottoms of Green County, Arkansas.

971
00:58:15.119 --> 00:58:19.679
<v Speaker 2>If anything the opposite was true, you risk ridicule. That

972
00:58:19.800 --> 00:58:22.519
<v Speaker 2>planner who stayed quiet because he was afraid nobody would

973
00:58:22.559 --> 00:58:25.960
<v Speaker 2>believe him. Is proof of that. So when someone tells

974
00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:28.719
<v Speaker 2>you this is all a modern myth, a product of

975
00:58:28.760 --> 00:58:32.880
<v Speaker 2>popular culture, a feedback loop where movies inspire sightings that

976
00:58:33.000 --> 00:58:37.360
<v Speaker 2>inspire more movies. Point them to the Memphis Inquirer. Point

977
00:58:37.360 --> 00:58:40.199
<v Speaker 2>them to the Baltimore Sun, point them to the New

978
00:58:40.239 --> 00:58:44.719
<v Speaker 2>Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette. Point them to eighteen forty six,

979
00:58:44.960 --> 00:58:47.960
<v Speaker 2>when nobody had ever heard of Bigfoot and people were

980
00:58:48.000 --> 00:58:52.159
<v Speaker 2>already describing the same creature were debating today. That doesn't

981
00:58:52.159 --> 00:58:55.880
<v Speaker 2>settle the question. Nothing settles the question short of definitive

982
00:58:55.880 --> 00:58:59.559
<v Speaker 2>physical evidence. But it changes the terms of the debate.

983
00:59:00.239 --> 00:59:04.199
<v Speaker 2>It makes the cultural contamination argument much harder to sustain,

984
00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:07.199
<v Speaker 2>because if this is a modern myth, you've got to

985
00:59:07.239 --> 00:59:10.000
<v Speaker 2>explain why people one hundred and eighty years ago we're

986
00:59:10.039 --> 00:59:14.039
<v Speaker 2>independently generating the same myth with the same physical details

987
00:59:14.360 --> 00:59:17.760
<v Speaker 2>in places where the cultural conditions to produce it didn't exist.

988
00:59:18.280 --> 00:59:20.360
<v Speaker 2>I don't think you can explain that a way easily,

989
00:59:20.920 --> 00:59:23.400
<v Speaker 2>and I don't think we should try. I also want

990
00:59:23.440 --> 00:59:25.559
<v Speaker 2>to say this, and I want to say it directly.

991
00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:28.760
<v Speaker 2>The way we handle the weak accounts matters just as

992
00:59:28.840 --> 00:59:31.679
<v Speaker 2>much as the way we handle the strong ones. I

993
00:59:31.719 --> 00:59:33.440
<v Speaker 2>know there are people in this community who will be

994
00:59:33.440 --> 00:59:36.719
<v Speaker 2>frustrated that I didn't present the Harper's Ferry letter or

995
00:59:36.760 --> 00:59:40.840
<v Speaker 2>the Bryce's Crossroads account as solid evidence. I know there

996
00:59:40.840 --> 00:59:43.760
<v Speaker 2>are people who believe those stories are genuine and feel

997
00:59:43.760 --> 00:59:48.280
<v Speaker 2>that questioning them undermines the field. I understand that perspective.

998
00:59:48.719 --> 00:59:52.800
<v Speaker 2>I don't share it. What undermines this field isn't skepticism.

999
00:59:53.280 --> 00:59:57.320
<v Speaker 2>What undermines it is credulity. Every time we circulate an

1000
00:59:57.400 --> 01:00:00.480
<v Speaker 2>unverifiable account as though it carries the same wait as

1001
01:00:00.519 --> 01:00:04.280
<v Speaker 2>a documented newspaper report, we hand ammunition to the people

1002
01:00:04.280 --> 01:00:07.519
<v Speaker 2>who want to dismiss all of this as nonsense. Every

1003
01:00:07.519 --> 01:00:10.199
<v Speaker 2>time we blur the line between what we can demonstrate

1004
01:00:10.280 --> 01:00:12.760
<v Speaker 2>and what we want to believe, we make the job

1005
01:00:12.840 --> 01:00:15.920
<v Speaker 2>harder for the next person who comes along with something real.

1006
01:00:16.679 --> 01:00:18.519
<v Speaker 2>I've been in this field long enough to know that

1007
01:00:18.559 --> 01:00:21.559
<v Speaker 2>the strongest evidence doesn't need to be protected from questions.

1008
01:00:22.159 --> 01:00:25.280
<v Speaker 2>It holds up under scrutiny. The weak stuff is what

1009
01:00:25.400 --> 01:00:30.079
<v Speaker 2>needs protection because it can't survive examination. And our job,

1010
01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:32.920
<v Speaker 2>if we're serious about this, is to let the weak

1011
01:00:33.000 --> 01:00:35.880
<v Speaker 2>stuff go and focus our energy on the material that

1012
01:00:35.920 --> 01:00:39.599
<v Speaker 2>can stand on its own. The Arkansas wild Man accounts

1013
01:00:39.599 --> 01:00:43.800
<v Speaker 2>can stand on their own. They're documented, they're independently sourced,

1014
01:00:44.159 --> 01:00:48.199
<v Speaker 2>they span decades, they contain physical details that match modern

1015
01:00:48.239 --> 01:00:53.519
<v Speaker 2>reports with uncanny precision. That's where our attention belongs. One

1016
01:00:53.519 --> 01:00:56.519
<v Speaker 2>more thing before we close. The people who saw the

1017
01:00:56.559 --> 01:00:59.679
<v Speaker 2>wild Man in Green County, Arkansas in eighteen fifty one

1018
01:01:00.119 --> 01:01:03.880
<v Speaker 2>didn't have trail cameras. They didn't have thermal imaging. They

1019
01:01:03.880 --> 01:01:07.480
<v Speaker 2>didn't have DNA labs. They didn't have podcasts or research

1020
01:01:07.599 --> 01:01:11.320
<v Speaker 2>organizations or databases with thousands of entries. They had their

1021
01:01:11.320 --> 01:01:14.760
<v Speaker 2>own two eyes and a newspaper editor who'd listen. And

1022
01:01:14.840 --> 01:01:17.320
<v Speaker 2>what they put into the record with nothing more than

1023
01:01:17.360 --> 01:01:21.079
<v Speaker 2>those tools is a body of testimony that aligns almost

1024
01:01:21.159 --> 01:01:25.320
<v Speaker 2>perfectly with what people are reporting today one hundred and

1025
01:01:25.400 --> 01:01:28.760
<v Speaker 2>seventy five years later, in the same kinds of places,

1026
01:01:29.280 --> 01:01:33.119
<v Speaker 2>under the same kinds of conditions, using descriptions that match

1027
01:01:33.239 --> 01:01:37.719
<v Speaker 2>detail for detail. That doesn't prove anything, but it means something,

1028
01:01:38.400 --> 01:01:41.519
<v Speaker 2>and what it means is that this phenomenon, whatever it is,

1029
01:01:41.920 --> 01:01:45.360
<v Speaker 2>didn't begin in nineteen sixty seven at Bluff Creek. It

1030
01:01:45.400 --> 01:01:48.119
<v Speaker 2>didn't begin in nineteen fifty eight when Jerry Crewe held

1031
01:01:48.199 --> 01:01:51.400
<v Speaker 2>up a plaster cast for the Humboldt Times. It was

1032
01:01:51.440 --> 01:01:54.280
<v Speaker 2>already old when the camera showed up. The people of

1033
01:01:54.320 --> 01:01:57.760
<v Speaker 2>eastern Arkansas knew about it before the Civil War, before

1034
01:01:57.800 --> 01:02:00.960
<v Speaker 2>the first shot at Fort Sumter, before where anyone alive

1035
01:02:01.000 --> 01:02:04.000
<v Speaker 2>today was born. And the fact that we're still looking

1036
01:02:04.039 --> 01:02:06.920
<v Speaker 2>for it, still finding people who say they've seen it,

1037
01:02:07.000 --> 01:02:09.719
<v Speaker 2>still arguing about what it is and whether it exists,

1038
01:02:10.320 --> 01:02:13.679
<v Speaker 2>tells me the story isn't finished, not by a long way.

1039
01:02:14.440 --> 01:02:17.639
<v Speaker 2>And whatever you conclude about any individual account, whether you

1040
01:02:17.679 --> 01:02:20.280
<v Speaker 2>think the Arkansas wild Man was a Sasquatch or a

1041
01:02:20.320 --> 01:02:24.840
<v Speaker 2>feral man or a newspaper editor's invention, remember this, the

1042
01:02:24.880 --> 01:02:28.360
<v Speaker 2>people who reported these things weren't seeking fame. Most of

1043
01:02:28.400 --> 01:02:30.880
<v Speaker 2>them didn't even want to be believed. They were just

1044
01:02:30.960 --> 01:02:34.840
<v Speaker 2>telling someone what they saw, and what they described, again

1045
01:02:34.920 --> 01:02:39.159
<v Speaker 2>and again across decades and state lines and oceans was

1046
01:02:39.239 --> 01:02:41.440
<v Speaker 2>something that didn't fit the world as they knew it.

1047
01:02:42.239 --> 01:02:46.599
<v Speaker 2>That's where every investigation begins, with someone saying, I saw

1048
01:02:46.639 --> 01:02:49.960
<v Speaker 2>something I can't explain the only question is whether we've

1049
01:02:50.000 --> 01:04:43.360
<v Speaker 2>got the honesty and the patience to listen. I don