Reposting from the BFF...
My goal as a skeptic and writer on the subject of Bigfoot is to deal with specific claims. Two of the specific claims I have written about over the years are concerning the PGF showing a real Bigfoot, and native myths and traditions featuring Bigfoot. I love the Bigfoot myth. I love it as a myth, not as a biological species. I would be ecstatic for that to be the case, but I see the evidence of a social construct no different than Reptoids, alien abduction, Dogman, etc. I think it is pseudoscience to teach people these things are real without proof. For Reptoids, Dogman, Bigfoot or any other fortean zooform that means type specimen. That's the way we've done it since Linnaeus, and anyone who wants us to lower the standards of science and imperical knowledge now so that we can accommodate belief in Bigfoot, I think are misinformed. When my son goes to biology class when he is older, until Bigfoot is on a slab somewhere, I do not want any teacher telling him about Bigfoot in our woods, other than in the context of discussing real science and pseudoscience.
There is a thread here that discusses people who can no longer enter the woods for fear of Bigfoot. To their credit, there are a number who claim to have witnessed or interacted with Bigfoot that have no such fear. For others, Bigfoot is this awesome demongodlike thing that will go berserk and tear you up and squish the leftovers under massive foot. This is tragic to me that anyone should feel fear for their lives when entering nature. I can't speak to the specifics of every person that feels that way, but I can say that people do experience very scary things that scares the crap out of them, but they did not actually occur, or they did occur, but not as the person thought.
The idea that Bigfoot lives now and has lived across North America for thousands of years, yet we do not have a type specimen, and indeed be a well studied species now as gorillas, chimps, and orangutans are is absurd to me. That is not to say that people who do believe such a thing are stupid. I once strongly believed in Bigfoot and I wasn't stupid then. I simply did not have enough information in hand to discern what is the full situation in hand. The way for me to do that was simple: I examine specific claims to see if they have any merit, and I continue spending lots of time in the habitat where Bigfoot is said to live.
My contention here is this: If Bigfoot lived across North America and did such things as take food from native tribes and even occasionally abduct children, I don't care how nasty some people think Bigfoot is, that monkey is going to die. That monkey os going to wind up somebody's rug, or cloak, or necklace, etc. I just wrote the following in my PGF thread...
If Bigfoot is out there across North America and being in our places of recreation and living and working, it is going to wind up dead after coming into contact with us. The people who I think have gone to far with fortean ideas and see Bigfoot as some near godlike thing in the forest that would shake off bullet wounds and any attack a human could make are just not thinking rationally to me. We are humans and we are badass. We're not always badass, but whether it's here and now with the Western domination of North America, or before that with the countless native cultures, we have always had groups of badass humans. They could bring down mammoths, polar bears, brown bears, etc with little more than brains and spears and lances. Want to take down a mammoth? Use fear, a cliff, and some spears. Want a whale? Get some boats and some harpoons. Want a polar bear? Spears and team work. We are badass. We are phyically weak, but with our massive brains we make up for it and we go out across the globe and annihilate whatever messes with us. Bigfoot could not contend with our badass ways, nor could it remain safe from our badassness across North America for hundreds of years.
Bigfoot would show up, try to take our food or yoink one of our kids, and wham, Bigfoot is a rug.
I want to talk about badass natives. Tribes of humans in North America that would take a big monkey down to Chinatown if they messed with them at all. First let's look at some specific badasses...
Badass #1 - Iroquois warrior:
http://warandgame.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/iroquois_warrior_sm.jpg
That guy and his homies live smack in the middle of alleged Bigfoot territory. Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada was their turf. Any giant monkey that messes with those badasses will wind up a decorative showpiece.
Let's see what they have in the arsenal to make some monkey salad with...
http://www.catesdesigngroup.com/images/weapons_01.jpg
Ouch. Those look sharp. If I were a hungry monkey with a hankering for human kid legs, I would think twice before trying to yoink one and mess with those badasses. And more...
http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/600/1884.12.34.jpg
Yep. I don't care how big your sagittal crest is, mess with the Iroquois or the Huron and you're asking for your head to be made a pastey soup.
Badass #2 - Blackfoot warrior:
http://www.blackfootcrossing.ca/images/na-790-1bearshield.jpg
He doesn't look like one to mess with. The Blackfeet or Blackfoot roamed the plains and woodlands of Montana and Alberta. They were badass and the mighty buffalo was one of their main quarry. I would say him and ten of his brothers could make some mean monkey salad. Let's see some of their tongs with which to toss that mean monkey salad...
http://ushistoryimages.com/images/indian-weapons/fullsize/indian-weapons-4.jpg
Those are just an example of some of the things the Blackfeet might use. If I was a 7 ft monkey, and I wanted to keep my funky hide in one piece, I would not ever mess with the Blackfeet. If you think Bigfoot and the Blackfoot would never meet, think again. They did not live only on the plains. The lived in places such as this...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Blackfoot_teepees.jpg
And this....
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3193/3061671964_9b97bc9096_z.jpg
Badass #3 - Chiricahua Apache Warrior:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...jpg/220px-Chiricahua_Apache_Ba-keitz-ogie.jpg
Bob Gimlin is 1/4 Chiricahua Apache. Let's see something they might use to take out a Bigfoot with...
http://i.ehow.com/images/a04/ba/g8/apache-indian-symbols-200X200.jpg
These people have traditionally lived in New Mexico, Arizona, and in norther Sonora in Mexico. This is there turf...
http://www.soenyun.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/chiricahua-cochise-head.jpg
Badass #4 - Shawnee warrior:
http://michaeljtaylor.com/images/OIL PAINTINGS - Counting.jpg
Historical painting description...
http://michaeljtaylor.com/historical_paintings2.htm
That painting is of a dude from a tribe that historically have inhabited Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. I think i covered about six major Bigfoot research organizations there. Let's see how the Shawnee would toss their mean monkey salad...
http://www.nativeworkshop.com/images/tradepointballclub.jpg
And this...
http://www.hbforge.com/images/shawneehawk_260x110.jpg
And this...
http://www.furtrade.org/3collct/picscolct/guns/JB 67 NW TECUMSEH.jpg
Hello, Boss of the Woods. How are you today? Put down the child and back away slowly or me and 12 of my Shawnee brothers here are going to hack your feet of, strap you to a pole, disembowel you, and cut of your eyelids while you die in slow agaony.
I understand that some people will say that the badasses I am showing are in places that is not prime tradition Bigfoot habitat re: PNW. To that I would say I hope you don't throw your New York State, Ohio, Arizona counterparts under the bus, so to speak, but let's get really on target...
Badass #5: Tlingit warrior:
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/nwca/images/nwcah17b.jpg
Now, that is a painting of a Tlingit warrior in a war canoe with rifle, dagger, helmet, and armour going to raid another village. The Tlingit lived in the PNW here...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Tlingit-map.png
That painting "Raven Warrior" is from 1991 by Bill Holm. Here is the description...
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/nwca/nwcah17e.shtml
These people we have been told by Hairy Man and other had Bigfoot in their culture. Here are some of their arsenal with which to make mean monkey salad...
http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/600/1921.53.3.jpg
http://s7d2.scene7.com/is/image/Sothebys/N08554-77-lr-1?$lot_main$
http://forensicfashion.com/files/1802TlingitWarriorDaggerAMNH01.JPG
Those people were badass and had no problem slaughtering other humans. One Bigfoot comes and tries to yoink one of their kids, and that Bigfoot is going to end up dead. That's because people in the PNW had things like this...
http://www.alaskanartifacts.com/Typology/LargeHaftedLance_1.jpg
And gear like this...
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/haida/images/havwa02b.jpg
And most important of all, this...
http://www.thelatestnews.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/human-brain.jpg
With these things natives killed everything over the ages from other people, to polar bears, to whales, to brown bears, to mammoths. They made artifcats from them that are here today and in collections around the world. Not one of these artifacts is a Bigfoot pelt, bone, or tooth. What I am arguing is that if Bigfoot did in fact live from Alaska to Ohio to New York to Arizona, etc, and it did do the things that people are saying they do, like stealing food and yoinking kids, we would have physical evidence of Bigfoot in the form of artifacts actually coming from Bigfoot physically. If Bigfoot is a social construct, something like a combination of the woodwoses and troll Western Civilization brought, and the human/animal hybrid boogeymen that natives had which feature animalistic qualities, which humans around the world do, we would never have anything physical. All we would have a myriad of tales that you need to cherry pick to get something like our current conception of Bigfoot from. The problem there is that there is not even consensus now on what exactly Bigfoot is and how it looks.