The names “Bigfoot” and “Sasquatch” didn’t enter the American vocabulary until the middle of the 20th Century. Before then, the creatures were typically called wild men, hairy giants, hairy monsters and gorillas. Those are some of the names used in old newspaper reports about beings who displayed characteristic Bigfoot behavior.

The following is an excerpt from a 19th Century newspaper article about an “Old Hunter” who saw “a gorilla or wild man.” We found the story interesting because it’s the first report we’ve seen about Bigfoot playing with fire. The story was first published in the “Petaluma Weekly Argus” in Petaluma, CA on November 5, 1870.

“. . . The creature, whatever it was, stood fully five feet high, and disproportionally broad and square at the shoulders, with arms of great length. The legs were very short and the body long. The head was small compared to the rest of the creature, and appeared to be set upon his shoulders without a neck. The whole was covered in dark brown hair, quite long on some parts, that on the head standing in a shock and growing down close to the eyes, like a Digger Indian’s.

“As I looked, he threw his head back and whistled again, and then stooped and grasped a stick from the fire. This he swung around and round, until the fire on the end had gone out, when he repeated the maneuver.

“I was dumb, almost, and could only look.  Fifteen minutes I sat and watched him, as he whistled and scattered my fire about. I could easily have put a bullet through his head, but why should I kill him?

“Having amused himself, apparently, all he desired, with my fire, he started to go and having gone a short distance, he returned and was joined by another – a female, unmistakably – when they both turned and walked past me, within twenty yards of where I sat, and disappeared in the brush.

“I could not have had a better opportunity to observe them, as they were unconscious of my presence. Their only object in visiting my camp seemed to be to amuse themselves with swinging lighted sticks around.”

We found this article in Timothy Renner’s book “Bigfoot – West Coast Wild Men” which is a compilation of Bigfoot newspaper reports from 1886 to 1921.

The above article portrays the Bigfoot as very simple creatures that are easily amused. However, there also are reports of Bigfoot who are very intelligent, knowledgeable and wise.  

CLICK HERE to learn about Joan Ocean’s experiences with a very evolved clan of Bigfoot.  She is a world-renown dolphin expert who the Bigfoot call “water woman.”