The Skoocums

The oldest stories about some strange, hairy giant in the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States have a repeating theme to them: that the “mammoth,” matlox, skookums, Sasquatch, or “wild man” was huge and had a strange foot with 4 toes, nails (no claws), and a long narrow heel. It is a gross, degenerate, flesh-eater whose “cries alone can bring anyone to the ground,” as Juan Mozino recorded in his 1790 Noticias de Nuktas. It was both bear-like and wolf like, with the head like a man and short stiff hair over its body. 

Bluff Creek didn’t wipe this out. Bigfooters were desperate for stories. The truth got into the mosaic of Bigfoot, but it was watered down to fit the ideas of a primitive human, some 5 toed human footed “berry eating buddy” of ours.

But all the earlier accounts speak of something more ferocious and violent.

In 1847 that wonderful artist Paul Kane noted in his journal (published in 1859): that he could tempt no Indian guide to take him to Mount St. Helens because it was the home of the skoocums, a man eating “different species.”

Mountain man David Thompson in 1811 while crossing the Rockies near Jasper (close to where Roe would have his sighting in 1955) noted in his journal that they came upon the tracks of what the Indians called the “Mammoth.” The heel was narrow and did not mark well, and the print only had 4 toes. The Indians insisted that a 14 inch print indicated a young mammoth.

In 1902 in Bannick County, Idaho, ice-skating children were attacked by a giant hairy “human monster.” They escaped; and the posse of townsmen that went after it found its prints by the river where he had watched the children first. The Wilksboro Gazette reported that the “human monster” had a foot that was 22 inches long, with four toes.

This leave no doubt that the skoocums of Mount St. Helens were Sasquatches since Fred Beck and the Portland detectives who later investigated the site of the Ape Canyon attack in 1924 declared the prints had only four toes. Beck had insisted that these “things” never went down on their “fours.” They always walked on their hind legs. They were narrow in the hips, had “bull necks,” long arms and were “black turned brown by the sun—” a dark cinnamon. One was smart enough to break through the chinking in the log cabin’s wall and grab an ax handle. The “human monster” at Bannick County also brandished a “club, and showed fight.”

This footprint would turn up in 1973 in Manitoba, a 21 inch print found by the Canadian conservation officer, Uchtmann; an 18 inch print at Lake Berriere in British Columbia in 1980; and again in Manitoba in 1988 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. All are four toed, and in outline match the Ruby Creek Print. It is possible then that the Ruby Creek Print actually only had 4 toes. It survives only in a tracing, the oldest preservation of the foot of the “Sasquatch-men.”

Mica Mountain. The Sasquatch is a mountain dweller, for the most part. 

Mount St. Helens, as Kane would have seen it. He was sketching from 30 miles away, and could get no Indian to go near it. There was a “cannibal species” there, another example that the Indians believed Sasquatches were humans of some kind. White man knew enough to call them “gorillas.” Long before Fred Beck and the other miners had their pitched battle near Mount St. Helens, the “legendary gorillas” were well known. When a skier disappeared on the mountain in 1950, two men, including the resort doctor, ventured: “The apes got him.” Yet there is nothing particularly “ape” about Sasquatch or the skoocums except long arms and that they are hairy. Their nature strikes one more as wolf or bear. Their howls and predatory instincts are also wolf-like, and in some ways so is their foot— the real foot, that is.   

Fred Beck made it clear that the creatures had only 4 toes.

The Manitoba 1973 Print. It clearly matches the Ruby Creek Print in shape and especially heel. The toe area, unclear in the only picture surviving, has only 4 toes. Uchtmann wrote the Museum of Man in Manitoba informing them of his discovery while going about his inspections near The Pas. There were 3 clear prints. 

One of the prints found by the RCMP in Manitoba by Lake Winnipeg in 1988. It has 4 toes and a narrow heel. The prints were dug out by the police. Two toes are obscure. Sasquatch has finger-like toes, not human-like toes. The toes go almost evenly across from large to small, not like a human beings’.

On the Trail of the Sasquatch

Exposing the truth about Bigfoot