Table Of Contentj o s h u a b l u b u h s
(cid:57)(cid:96)(cid:94)(cid:93)(cid:102)(cid:102)(cid:107)
the life and times of a legend
The University of Chicago Press chicago and london
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2009 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Paperback edition 2010
Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 3 4 5 6
isbn-13: 978-0-226-07979-0 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-07980-6 (paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-07979-1 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-07980-5 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Buhs, Joshua Blu.
Bigfoot : the life and times of a legend / Joshua Blu Buhs.
p. cm.
Includes biographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-07979-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-07979-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Sasquatch. I. Title.
QL89.2S2B84 2009
001.944—dc22
2008035609
Bigfoot illustration on page 280 by Lauren Nassef.
a The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require-
ments of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
To Kim, as always, and Morgan, too
What monsters men have needed to believe in they have
created for themselves in words and pictures when they
could not discover them in nature.
leslie fiedler
Preface ix
Dramatis Personae xi
Contents
1 * wildmen Ł 1
Wildmen through History 3
What-Is-It 6
The Abominable Snowman 10
The Life and Times of Bigfoot 17
2 * yeti: 1951–1959 Ł 22
Sensation 26
The Yeti, Science, and Zadig’s Method 30
Britain Hunts the Yeti 34
America Hunts the Yeti 40
What the Evidence Told 46
3 * sasquatch: 1929–1958 Ł 51
The Great Sasquatch Hunt 54
The Kidnapping of Albert Ostman 58
“O ccam’s Razor Cuts on the Side of the Sasquatch” 62
Slick Eyes the Sasquatch 64
4 * big foot: 1958 Ł 66
The Folkloric Origins of Bigfoot 68
Big Foot Makes the Papers 72
The Confirmed and Converted Confront Bigfoot 75
Humbug! 80
“M aybe Bigfoot is Lost Relative of Old ‘Sasquatch’ ” 85
5 * absmery: 1959–1961 Ł 88
The (Weird, Wacky) Wonderful World
of Ivan T. Sanderson 90
ABSMery 94
The Pacific Northwest Expedition 98
Enter Peter Byrne 104
The Wipe: Or True’s Trouble with Truth,
and Ivan Sanderson’s 106
6 * melting the snowman: 1961–1967 Ł 111
Melting the Snowman 112
Sanderson’s Failed Debunking of the Debunking 118
The Quiet Years 122
Big Foot Daze 125
7 * the return of bigfoot: 1967–1980 Ł 131
Bigfoot Filmed! 133
Making Sense of the Movie 137
The Return of Bigfoot 142
Bozo, the Minnesota Iceman 146
Bigfoot on Tour 153
The Secret of Sasquatch 159
8 * a contest for dignity: 1969–1977 Ł 169
The Bigfoot Community 171
Cripplefoot 178
The Center That Wasn’t 184
Hoaxing, the Unconquerable Problem 192
The Laugher Curtain 196
9 * cryptozoology: 1978–1990 Ł 204
Grover Krantz, Sasquatch Scientist 206
Anthropology of the Unknown 210
Cryptozoology 212
Science Police 218
“D efinitive Proof” 223
Arrested by the Science Police 226
10 * the death of bigfoot? 1980–2002 Ł 230
The Green Man 232
The Death of Bigfoot 238
“T he Most Abominable Hoaxer” 242
Bigfoot Is Dead! Long Live Bigfoot! 245
Not The End, but An End 251
Curse of the Sasquatch 253
Bibliography 255 Index 269
Preface
I remember reading about Bigfoot when I was young. As a child of the 1970s, I
hardly could have avoided the beast. Sasquatch didn’t make much of an impres-
sion on me, though. At least, I don’t think so. I was more interested in other para-
normal things that were often discussed with Bigfoot—the Loch Ness monster,
spontaneous human combustion, alien life forms. Like many kids, I forgot about
the creature when I entered adolescence; sure, I still knew of Bigfoot, recognized
the name, but I just didn’t give the creature any thought. Late in 2002, though, the
beast came back to me.
I was finishing my first book, The Fire Ant Wars, which was about the way that
Americans had thought about the imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) and how
differing ideas about the insect had led to different public policies for dealing
with it. That book was frustrating to write. The problem was the ant. Solenopsis
invicta was an agent in the story; it didn’t have as much power as the humans
who confronted it, but neither could it just be ignored. And so I had to struggle
to make sense of ant biology at the same time that I had to figure out the various
human motivations. I succeeded, I think, and taking account of the ant made the
book better, but still, writing it was hard. I started to wonder if there was an eas-
ier way. I was still interested in human ideas about nature, how they come into
being, the effect that they have, but I was being driven less by theoretical consid-
erations than laziness. I wanted a subject that left me free to consider the intel-
lectual history without also having to think about the ways that nature changed.
Bigfoot seemed to fit the bill. Here was a creature, I imagined then, that embod-
ied various ideas about the natural world . . . but didn’t exist. So I didn’t have to
worry about its agency, its ability to shape the story.
A lot has happened since I started to noodle around with this book. My wife
and I moved halfway around the world, from California to Japan, then back
again—bringing with us our first child. These have been some of the happiest
