Simple Challenge For Bigfoot Supporters

[Huntster]

It sorta starts around post #90 in this thread.

Actually, it starts at post #107, which I linked to above with my original question.

Your reply was post #108:

The Bigfoot myth is self perpetuating. But fabricated sightings are not necessarily going to be evenly distributed. The hoaxer wants the sighting to be believable and so they will design it to be such. You make your claim for an area that has other historical claims. A claim for a "new" area runs the risk of skepticism. You yourself might be skeptical of a sighting on Kodiak Island because nobody else has made a claim for that location.

Bigfootery itself sort of defines what is believable and what is not when it comes to Bigfoot and its range. The hoaxers use that information to customize their tale for maximum believability to the believers. It helps to say that your Bigfoot stunk to high heaven, but that's not necessary to be taken as legit.

There is a kind of natural selection going on with the myth. Bigfootery defines what BF is like and the hoaxers adapt to it, like wolves pacing a herd of caribou. It's a "dance" that forms the nature of Bigfootery and hoaxery. The hoaxers force the believers to adapt the imagined animal to their "design" (the mid-tarsal break and wacky longitudinal dermal ridges) - and the believers force the hoaxers to focus on certain key elements that they become fond of.

(Was it so damned hard to link and quote your own post? Or was is just that you wanted to appear to have addressed the question without showing your actual answer? Or something else? Surely you know how to link, quote, etc., right?)

You seemed to be satisfied that nobody can provide a definitive answer better than anyone else.

Actually, I derive great satisfaction that you skeptics can't answer the question with any support for your positions.

Your motivation (then and now) for posing the PWI/Kodiak question appears to be an attempt to cut the feet out from under the idea that Bigfoot is a traditional myth.

It is a fair question for those who want to claim that sasquatchery among Natives (as well as current communities on those two islands) is mere myth or manufacture.

It looks like you are expecting oral tradition (or folk-support of oral tradition) to be evenly dispersed everywhere.

As well as current reports of sasquatchery should be fairly evenly dispersed everywhere.

Glickman addressed this, but of course since I've linked to that explanation a number of times, you're aware of that too, right?

It's like you are trying to show that oral tradition is not a valid explanation (for Bigfoot) if it is absent from a location.

Your answer above does not answer the question (whether considering native folklore, current reports, or both):

Both islands are large (#2 and #3 largest under the U.S. flag), both islands have significant salmon runs, have a similar population, and that population is predominately native.

POW Island is densely forested, has a very high density of sasquatch reports, as well as native lore about them, has no brown bears at all, and has one of the highest black bear densities in North America.

Kodiak Island is not densely forested, has one of the highest brown bear densities on Earth, has no black bears at all, has no sasquatch reports, and no native sasquatch lore.

I still await a "skeptic" to explain why all those things are true.

 

[Huntster]

....I didn't just get off the bus.....

You don't seem to have the wisdom to get out from under the bus, despite being repeatedly run over.

It's ridiculous.

Painfully so.

 

[Huntster]

Different location, different tribe, different beliefs?

Maybe.

But why do the rest of the Gulf of Alaska natives {Tsimshian, Haida, Chugach, etc) share the tradition and also have current sightings, and Aleuts & Alutiiq do not, despite a long tradition of trade, warfare, intermingling, etc?

Why are leprechauns associated with Ireland, but not France?

Got any current leprechaun sightings, footprints, etc?

 

[LTC8K6]

Why is kushtaka cave full of black bear bones?

 

[LAL]

The reason why hallucinations are "wildcards" is because it is used to describe what may have happened to a person. There is no way to prove it, and skeptics should tread lightly when thinking about declaring that someone was hallucinating. It is used to describe others, not yourself. Nobody would say (about themself) that they were hallucinating and saw a Bigfoot. You won't hear, "I believe Bigfoot exists because I hallucinated one."

People who actually hallucinate tend to believe what they see is real, often even after diagnosis and treatment.

Are those reports immediately discarded because medication was involved?

Who said medication was involved? I said it might be indicated. Of course some "medication" might be responsible and the soup should be checked for psychedelic mushrooms. The boyfriend might have been holding. The intent of slipping her something wouldn't have been to cause her to see a pig-headed sort of thing that vanished before her eyes, of course.

I think reports of sasquatches driving spaceships can be safely discounted, yes.

Agreed. But are you basing your belief in Bigfoot upon a "difficulty of the imagination"?

Again, I don't consider it a belief. Would yo like to explain the question?

How many examples can you come up with where people's careers have been destroyed because they made a Bigfoot claim?

Freeman's with the Forest Service for starters.

Is there not such a thing as an undetected hoax? Isn't there a problem when you say something isn't hoaxed, but somebody else says it is hoaxed? Then what?

May the best evidence win.

Are you kidding? A special law for Bigfoot hoaxers? Would you like Bob Gimlin to be the first one charged under this new law? Heironimus goes on trial too because he confessed to the crime of hoaxing.

Have you ever seen an interview or presentation with Gimlin? There's no way he'd be convicted of anything. This man has stood by his story for nearly four decades. Heirionimus still hasn't got his figured out.

You tell me. I think it's because most people are too smart to care about it. If I walk out in my backyard tonight and start howling at the moon, should my neighbor report me to the police for hoaxing a coyote?

No, but an intervention might be in order. If it's after 11PM, there's probably a noise ordinance that would apply.

 

[Huntster]

I didn't bait the fool into anything.

What did you expect from a fool, Huntster?

I didn't "expect" anything.

I "hoped" for reasonable discourse.

I "got" what I always "get" from you.

 

[Hairy Man]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushtaka


Since it dose say ' loosely ' translated ..

If you tighten it up, does it come out as " Bigfoot " ?



Of course Wiki is open to correction ..

If someone has different information than presented there, they can submit a proposal ...

Why would someone of your obvious intelligence rely on wikipedia for any information?

The best place to look for information about the Tlingit is in published ethnographic studies (which are of course, accepted outside the bigfoot community as being accurate representations of a culture).

Here is a great list: (I apologize for the small text...it didn't transfer well from word).

[FONT=&quot]Emmons, George Thornton. The Whale House of the Chilkat. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]New York[/FONT][FONT=&quot], [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
American[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Museum[/FONT][FONT=&quot] of Natural History, 1916. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]

Henshaw, Henry W. and John R. Swanton. Tlingit. U. S. Bureau of American
Ethnology, Bulletin 30, pt. 2 (1910).
[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]
Oberg, Kalervo. The social economy of the Tlingit Indians. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Chicago[/FONT][FONT=&quot], [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
University[/FONT][FONT=&quot] of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Chicago[/FONT][FONT=&quot], 1937.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

Swanton, John Reed. Social condition, beliefs, and linguistic relationship of the
Tlingit Indians. U. S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report, 26 (1904-1905).
[/FONT]

 

[Huntster]

....I'll be sure to let my Tlingit friends know that their own heritage is a lie.

They're quite accustomed to folks like Mr. LTC.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Here is another story from a person who claims to be a Tlingit ..

http://www.geocities.com/area51/vault/6990/namer.html

They are mythical creatures that have the appearance of a land otter, but are usually around the size of a man. Like changelings......

I guess she must be a liar ...

Google turns up about 505 hits... Skimming through the first few, I didn't see anything about ' Bigfoot ' ...

 

[LTC8K6]

I "got" what I always "get" from you.

You're welcome.

Got any evidence that a kushtaka is a bigfoot?

 

[Huntster]

Why is kushtaka cave full of black bear bones?

Perhaps for the same reason POW caves are all full of black bear bones:

The island has the highest black bear densities in North America.

 

[William Parcher]

Why would someone call that a bigfoot? It looks like a human to me (especially in Polynesian culture). I don't know how familiar you are with my work, but I don't ever claim an artifact/totem pole/rock art as being related to bigfoot unless the tribe itself claims it. Art should never be taken out of it's context, since it isn't ours in the first place.

Why do people look at some PNW totems and call them Bigfoot? It is common for Bigfooters to use native stories and certain totems (resembling what a Bigfoot might look like) as support for the existence of the creature. "Hey, the Indians saw it too."

Nobody is really claiming that the Menehune exists, then or now. But if someone wanted to say that they did once exist in Polynesia, they could point to this thing just as fast as they could point at a PNW Sasquatch totem.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Ooops

 

[Huntster]

....Got any evidence that a kushtaka is a bigfoot?

Not as much evidence as I have that you're......................not very.....................

No. I think it's time to drop yet another silly game with you.

Goodbye.

 

[Hairy Man]

Double oops!

 

[LTC8K6]

I have read numerous descriptions of kushtaka back from the time when we were discussing the Alley book. None of them sound remotely like a sasquatch to me.

Anthropolgist's review of the book and comments on kushtaka as bigfoot:

http://www.lorencoleman.com/raincoast_sasquatch.html

 

[Huntster]

Why do people look at some PNW totems and call them Bigfoot?

Why do the Native artisans who carve them point to them and call them kushtakas?

Why do folks who make a habit of pooh-poohing sasquatchery point to the native artisans who carved them and call them wrong?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Why would someone of your obvious intelligence rely on wikipedia for any information? .............

Why would someone of your obvious intelligence be ignorant of how Wiki works..

We could bring into question any number of books which you or I might choose to rely on for information...

For instance, none of the books I rely on for information have titles like " Meet the Sasquatch " ..

I might read them for entertainment though ..

 

[Hairy Man]

Why do people look at some PNW totems and call them Bigfoot? It is common for Bigfooters to use native stories and certain totems (resembling what a Bigfoot might look like) as support for the existence of the creature. "Hey, the Indians saw it too."

Nobody is really claiming that the Menehune exists, then or now. But if someone wanted to say that they did once exist in Polynesia, they could point to this thing just as fast as they could point at a PNW Sasquatch totem.

People shouldn't call designs on totem poles "bigfoot" unless the tribe themselves identified them as such (I'm assuming you are referring to Bukwas and Dzunukwa). To do so is wrong, but that never stopped anyone from doing it, of course. I battle often with people who want to call all footprint petroglyphs or pictographs "bigfoot prints" without any support of the tribe. It's frustrating.

 

[LTC8K6]

From the book review:

I mention Land Otters because some cryptozoologists looking for Native beliefs connected to Sasquatch sometimes seize on Land Otters. But Land Otters are not human-sized -- far from it -- and, although they are hairy, there the similarity ends. In his recent book, Raincoast Sasquatch, J. Robert Alley confuses Land Otters (kushtakaa) and Sasquatch quite grievously and his book, I am afraid, will cause even more confusion between these two traditions, for its readers and serious Bigfoot researchers.

For the Tsimshian and Tlingit and related peoples, Sasquatch are distinct from the belief in the supernatural powers of the familiar Land Otter (a.k.a. river otter) (kushtakaa in Tlingit, 'watsx in Tsimshian), which is believed to be capable of the previously mentioned supernatural kidnapping of humans. Some kidnapped humans are reported to become, as a result of their kidnap, Otter People themselves, but it is ambiguous in most narratives whether they then shrink to otter size or become human-sized otter-like people. The former seems more logical, though Alley exploits this ambiguity to make a stronger case for a Land Otter-Sasquatch equation.

Those with a literary bent can look at Raven Stole the Moon (NY: Pocket Books, 1999), a mystery-thriller novel by Garth Stein, who is Tlingit. Though it takes certain liberties in pursuing its storyline, the core Land Otter beliefs in the book are faithful to actual Tlingit traditions. Again, it doesn't look at all like Sasquatch.