Is This Proof Bigfoot Was Around During the Civil War?
Newspaper articles from the mid-1800s detail some of the earliest known encounters with the hairy, humanlike creature.
By Jessie Schiewe
Art: Megan Liscomb
Halfway through the 19th century, shortly before the start of the Civil War, just as tensions were beginning to boil over between “free” and “slave” states, could there have been Bigfoot skulking around the United States?
According to a few newspaper articles, yes.
Before becoming known as Bigfoot, Sas, or “the Hide and Seek World Champion,” scholars say the bipedal creature was known by another name: the “wild man.”
European folklore from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century is rich with references of wild men who were thought to inhabit the darker parts of forests and countrysides.
By the Middle Ages, lore about the creature expanded. It was said to have a thick coat of hair and the hunting and foraging tendencies of a wild animal. With time, the image of the wild man evolved further, becoming more animalistic and less human in form.
By the 1800s, newspapers in the U.S. were dedicating spaces on their pages to first-person accounts of wild men sightings. According to the academic article, “From Wild Man to Monster: The Historical Evolution of Bigfoot in New York State,” one of the earliest reports was published in the Exeter Watchman on September 22, 1818.
While in Ellisburg — a small town in upstate close to the Canadian border — a “gentleman of unquestionable veracity” claimed to have seen a man covered in hair dashing through the woods. It was described as bending forwards as it ran, and was said to have left behind footprints characterized by a narrow heel and spread-apart toes. After news of the encounter was published, a massive search to find the creature ensued and hundreds of residents turned up to track it down, without luck.
Related: “Where’s Bigfoot? Check Instagram”
Reports of wild man sightings began appearing in newspapers across the country more frequently after that. Small, hairy, child-sized creatures were spotted in Indiana and Pennsylvania in the 1830s, and a giant wild man in the Ozarks was seen by many people beginning in 1834. A boy in New York tried shooting one the size of his 6-year-old brother in 1838 and there were at least two accounts of wild men taller than 10 feet and heavier than 1,000 pound from eye-witnesses in Maine. of wild men taller than 10 feet
Whether truth or fabricated, these tales were popular with readers who found themselves both horrified and titillated by the idea of gigantic hairy creatures looming in the outdoors.
According to Michelle Souliere, a weird news blogger in Maine:
“On slow news days, really hairy men were good press.”
Even as the country became further divided, inching closer and closer to civil war, wild men sightings didn’t stop. One of the best-preserved accounts of an early Bigfoot encounter happened in Arkansas and was published in the Memphis Enquirer on May 9, 1851.
Although OK Whatever was unable to track down the original newspaper text, a version of the article (“Wild Man of the Woods”) still exists online. It is as follows:
"During March last, Mr. Hamilton of Greene County, Arkansas, while out hunting with an acquaintance, observed a drove of cattle in a state of apparent alarm, evidently pursued by some dreaded enemy.
Halting for the purpose, they soon discovered as the animals fled by them, that they were followed by an animal bearing the unmistakable likeness of humanity.
He was of gigantic stature, the body being covered with hair and the head with long locks of hair that fairly enveloped his neck and shoulders.
The "wildman," for we must so call him, after looking at them deliberately for a short time, turned and ran away with great speed, leaping from 12 to 14 feet at a time. His footprints measured 13 inches each.
This singular creature has long been known traditionally in St. Francis Green and Poinsett Counties. Arkansas sportsmen and hunters having described him so long as 17 years hence.
A planter, indeed, saw him very recently, but withheld his information lest he should not be credited, until the account of Mr. Hamilton and his friend placed the existence of the animal beyond cavil."
According to the newspaper article, the so-called “wild man” had been seen in the area since at least the 1830s, but it noted that not everyone who’d spotted the creature had been brave enough to speak out about it.
Like most Bigfoot accounts, the article mentions the hirsute nature of the beast, describing “the long locks of hair that fairly enveloped his neck and shoulders.” It possessed the ability to run “with great speed” and leap from “12 to 14 feet at a time.” And, of course, it had big feet, with its footprints measuring around 13 inches each.
Related: “Where to Find Bigfoot in the United States”
Wild man sightings like this continued until well after the Civil War’s end and into the next century. They still occur today, but now we refer to the mysterious upright creature by a new name: Bigfoot.
The use of the term “wild man” faded from use by the 1960s after two journalists for the Northern Californian newspaper, Humboldt Times, began publishing stories about gigantic footprints that had been spotted in the area. Loggers had already dubbed the beast that made them “Bigfoot,” and the reporters decided to adopt that same term in their articles. Thinking the tales would make for “a good Sunday morning story,” they made Bigfoot the focus of their columns again and again.
Use of the creature’s new name spread beyond the Pacific Northwest when the televised game show Truth or Consequences offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove the existence of it. Nobody could, but after that, Bigfoot began appearing as a character in men’s adventure magazines and in cheap paperbacks.
Today, though the creature is known by a number of monikers, none are as popular or widely-used as Bigfoot. But will it forever be known by that name? Only time will tell.
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN UNICORNS AND SHE THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
Megan Liscomb is an illustrator in Brooklyn and her cats are named Lebowski and Smalls.
More OK Whatever:
