I want to apologize for some of the mispronunciations in my video. I really did try to use the indigenous pronunciations, but even so, I had to learn a ton of words I wasn't familiar with and some wrong pronunciations slipped through the cracks. Examples, Haida should really be pronounced "High-da" (do not trust Google's pronunciation because it is wrong) Tlingit should really be "Kling Kit" Micmac should be "meeg-mah" or "Migmaw" Sorry again, I wish I noticed them sooner. My apologies to these respective tribes and nations.
I don't really agree with the 11/89 breakdown you made in this video for a few reasons. It doesn't really reflect the range of the possibilities of how a bigfoot like animal might interact with folklore in my opinion. There are more nuanced possibilities than just the [The natives saw a bigfoot and recorded it exactly as it was] and [The natives invented legends that are not connected to any bigfoot like animal at all]. There is room here for ambiguity and influence and I feel like more categories are merited to reflect this. The first extra category I would suggest would be a sort of "Maybe" or "ambiguous" category for legends that could potentially be describing a bigfoot like animal, but there isn't enough to say definitively one way or another. It doesn't meet the criteria but it doesn't rule out the possibility entirely. I feel that is more fair than grouping them in with legends that describe things that definitely do not describe anything resembling a bigfoot. The second category I would suggest is a "potentially inspired by" category, one that covers legends that could have been inspired, wholly or partially, by a bigfoot like animal or it's behaviors. Some of the nondescript giants for example shouldn't really be disqualified into the 89%, but rather put into the "Maybe" category. If a bigfoot like animal did exist and represents a relict hominid or hominin, they might look human enough that some native people simply referred to them as giant men and nothing more. The natives didn't have apes or gorillas to compare them to after all, so they wouldn't have called them apes, the only thing they did have was themselves. If it walks on two feet like them they might just call it a man. Some parts of the Double Face legend are consistent with what people report as being bigfoot behavior, such as watching from the edge of the forest, and other parts of the legend are consistent with other legends, the kidnapping of children and women being a running theme. I don't see the physical description being a real disqualifier in this case when the behavior seems to be consistent and those behaviors could easily have been grafted onto a mythological being. People very rarely see these animals after all (if they do exist), so it follows that some tribes might not have seen them as often either. They would have a set of behaviors with no face or form to attach them to, so they invent their own and you end up with something like a doubleface or basket woman. In that case It would be a legend that fits into the "inspired by" category as it could have been inspired by the creature and it's behavior rather than it's physical appearance. One more thing I disagree with is taking the stories being told at face value. Hyperbole could account for some of the absurd proportions described in some of these stories. When people see something large they tend to exaggerate it's size, that exaggeration growing more and more absurd as the story is told and retold over generations, and I can see that happening to a bigfoot like animal as well. The animals being made of stone in some of these stories could easily have been a error in the retelling of the story, initially they could have just lived in and around caves and over time that morphed into them being made of stone themselves.
@@jellomob9363 This was my takeaway too. Trey claims that his criteria for a story depicting Sasquatch are very generous, but they’re not. He’s using a very narrow and inflexible conception of how this creature might appear in folklore, if it existed.
My favorite but of business with the woodwose is that a lot of their legends ( live in caves, use wooden clubs, steal women,) were merged onto hominid ancestors pretty much as soon as they were discovered and "cavemen" have been fighting that image ever since
The awkward part is, when you've seen them and know they're real and you hear someone put so much effort into scrutinizing and disapproving them. Eyes open, when they're ready to open.... And sometimes you just get chucked in the deep end and have no choice but to accept reality. I don't mind scrutiny as long as it's polite.
Name-calling isn't a "Higher Minded aka Mature Minded" acceptable behavior in the area of Academia. That's why there's "Standards of Science and Research". The Human "Lower Mind" is also referred to as the "Ego Mind aka Adolescent Mind" and Adults are only truly Adult when they mature of Mind. Observing noted "Adult figures" behave as Adolescents, on public Medias, "is a major clue to their potentials". I will let you apply that to those in Mainstream Media you've observed. For details on the "Standards of Science and Research" see an excerpt copy from my comment below: Copy: ("With Conscious Thought, "apply Mind fully Open, free of any predetermined Beliefs, Theories, Opinions"; and "allowing the Research Methodologies applicable to extract the greater findings/associated consistent results/facts.") There's a great Politeness in applying the Higher Mind . Beth Bartlett Sociologist/Behavioralist and Historian Tennessee, USA
@@lukespringthorpe8211 I've gone down many rabbit holes and at the bottom of all of them is a total lack of any real evidence beyond sketchy sources claiming they've seen it. If cryptids were alive in the US, we would have proof by now as we see how many animals happily move into our urban and suburban areas. No DNA, no verifiable videos or photos, and most importantly no body. So the awkward part is how unscientific believers sound while trying to legitimize their views among scientific individuals.
@@lukespringthorpe8211Yeah i just laugh when i stuff like that nowadays. Once you encounter one on a mountain 4 miles away from the nearest road, it’s not a matter of believing anymore. I don’t even care when people laugh at my story. All I can say is, you won’t be laughing when it happens to you. They’re real, and it’s an absolute reality changing experience.
The interview around the hour mark reminds me of a documentary about butterfly (monarchs specifically) migration to mexico. They interview a local native woman who says that when butterflies arrive in mexico, they tell little kids that they're the spirits of their ancestors coming back to say hello, and that it's not something everyone believes, its just something cute to tell children so they wont hurt the butterflies and to celebrate the butterflies arrival. In the VERY SAME interview, the narrator then goes on to say how bizarre it is that native peoples of Mexico REALLY believe that butterflies are spirits. It's this need to make other cultures seem weird when our own culture tells children that there's a santa claus and an easter bunny. Children's fairy tales and actual spiritual beliefs get conflated so much and lost in translation, and unfortunately often used to make a mockery of other cultures by claiming they don't or aren't capable of understanding the absurdity of a myth. Most people don't /actually/ believe in an easter bunny or santa claus. Or a boogie man for that matter.
THIS THIS THIS. Its so prominent! Like, the whole thing about Santa is so kids can have a tantamount presence in their minds revolving around the spirit of the holiday! Thats the fucking point of these stories!
Then again, our culture also literally believes that a man walked on water and rose from the dead. No amount of white-knighting for other cultures is going to change the fact that humans DO believe absurd things, and that those beliefs can stand alongside (and even intertwine with) the less-literal beliefs/myths. So it's actually very understandable that things will get lost in translation, and that it'll be difficult for those NOT a part of another culture to differentiate tongue-in-cheek myth from sincere belief.
@TheParadoxGamer1 Santa is only one figurehead of the Christmas holiday. The other is Christ, and many people do literally believe in him. So how is someone entirely unfamiliar with our culture to assume that we believe in one and not the other, if viewing our beliefs and customs from the outside? You act like it should be so obvious, but I'm not sure you'd fare much better.
@@-Zer0Dark-You’re right, it isn’t easy . Which is why the people who collect these stories have a responsibility to is to listen to the original storyteller without trying to twist their words to fit an agenda. The original commenter made that clear, the woman telling the story clarifies that it is a children’s tale, but the reporters ignored that in order to make her culture look for exotic.
Part of me wishes it was convergent mythology that could be explained by people encountering other humanoid groups, but all the "wild man" myths are likely just attempts of one tribe trying to dehumanise the surrounding ones . I do like these convergent myths as In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas. He was forced to hold up the sky for eternity, and was therefore unable to protect his daughters. To save the sisters from being raped by the hunter Orion, Zeus transformed them into stars. But the story says one sister fell in love with a mortal and went into hiding, which is why we only see six stars. A similar story is found among Aboriginal groups across Australia. In many Australian Aboriginal cultures, the Pleiades are a group of young girls, and are often associated with sacred women’s ceremonies and stories. The Pleiades are also important as an element of Aboriginal calendars and astronomy, and for several groups their first rising at dawn marks the start of winter.
Bigfooting is like reading Roman records about 'barbarians' and coming to the conclusion that Rome was constantly under attack by anthropomorphic sheep.
Kathy Moskowitz Strain should be ashamed of herself, as she is an Anthropologist. Native source: "This creature brings good fortune and memories to the children who venture into the forest" Kathy Moskowitz Strain: "Ah, a cannibal." She's a horrible liar who should lose all her credibility.
Kushtaka is not “half human, half otter.” That’s a common misconception created by cryptozoologists who did not research it and is often misappropriated in an effort to claim it as “Bigfoot.” Kóoshda Káa is called “land otter man” in association with otters and the otterskin bag used to contain it by shamans and because of it’s similar habit of shapeshifting and abducting people that land otters were thought to do, note that wolverine also does the same. Unlike otters however Kóoshda Káa can shapeshifter not just to appear as a relative or friend, but can resemble inanimate objects like logs. Also unlike otters it does it to possess people, not abduct them. Kóoshda Káa is a powerful and feared supernatural entity associated with shamans in Tlingit culture, it is not a hairy ape. Edited for spelling.
@@Kuwagumo It’s hard to find sources online, I was told by my grandfather who grew up in Wrangell Alaska, there are many varying versions from different tribes though. The gist of the story is about the origin of the first shaman. He was taken by land otters who pretended to be his mother and sister and kept in the land otter village for many years. Unlike others who are taken he knew that they weren’t really his family as they couldn’t control themselves and kept playing as otters do. Eventually the elders of the village realized that they couldn’t make him one of them and were worried he would learn their secrets, he was too strong and resisted them so they decided to let him go. He was told to leave and lie down on the first log he found. He did so and instantly fell asleep as soon as he sat on the log. The log contained the spirit of Kóoshda Káa and spirits of those who had been taken by it in the past and they spoke to the man. Eventually he was found by his real family who had been looking for him for years. They found him wild eyed and strange, and that when he spoke his voice was that of the elder land otter and those of people who had been taken by it before as they had become her/her spirits, but the man, being so spiritually strong couldn’t be possessed by Kóoshda Káa and instead made Kóoshda Káa his/her spirits instead, he possessed Kóoshda Káa and all of its spirits and kept it in an otterskin bag.
As a native American (Ojibwe from the Bad River tribe) this was done SO respectfully and I really appreciate it. It's amazing to see people getting involved in the culture and checking with current tribes. Sad to say, but it's rare to see someone talk about Native Americans or their history straight from the source. It's usually whitewashed to all hell. Amazing video as always.
yeah, i like how he actually interviewed someone; so often white folk talk about native americans like they're some mythical creatures and not like, ordinary human beings you can just like, talk to
I'm very tempted to "write" a similar book about Bigfoots in the British Isles where I chose to interpret stories about leprechauns, boggarts, pookas, Ents and Aslan as documentation of the existence of Bigfoots. I don't think I could come up with a better title than "Giants, Cannibals and Monsters", though
Im Plains Cree from the Willow Cree Nation. Stories I was always told growing up were that the Sasquatch was a person who helped and took care of children. We were always taught to be a little bit afraid but reverent of him. An uncle that I used to talk to always called him 'our cousin'
That makes sense to me cause 1st nation's people have dealt with them for what possibly thousands of years? As far as I know there are no human kills by bigfoot in modern times and a sasquatch could easily kill anyone that ventures out in the forest. That makes perfect sense. I don't think that they purposely ever set out to hurt humans, like humans though of you kill one of them I do believe there is a price to pay. Respect their home and if they want u to leave oblige them. Simple etiquette.
Did you have a name for them brother? I've heard Dzunukwa and Sabe from some of my acquaintances. I heard the people of the Kainai Nation believe in them as well.
In Alaska the hairyman stories of it's interest in children isn't to "help" them (source: Fred Roehl, Subartic Alaskan Sasquach). Fred is a Dillingham native retelling literally hundreds of first hand encounters. Yall go listen to all his content, review his interactive map and get back to me. Hint: you're not on the right track
Sort of. There is a common running theme across the stories of pretty much all Native peoples of people who got banished from the villages for one reason, or another & forming bands of bandits in the wild or living solitary lives in single lodges built on the sides of Indian Paths out in the middle of nowhere. I've known for a while that the cryptozoolgists were being a bit cavalier in their use of Native American terms- others that get badly misused are Thunderbird (somehow, they always ignore the parts about rainbow feathers, a single eye, power over the weather, shapeshifting into humans, living in secret villages in the mountains & being able to speak) Piasa (a white story very, very loosely based on a real cliff painting of a mythological creature & a local name for a Thunderbird that kind of got away from them) & Shunka Warakin (far as I can tell, might have been completely made up out of someone's ass. Real Lakota, but incorrect Grammer that barely makes sense & I can find any stories or mentions of it outside of cryptozoologist communities)
@@MrChristianDTabout the thunderbird. It's kinda sad that in cryptozoologist that thunderbird is seen as a big bird despite the examples you show. For me I remember learning one story of when the Thunderbird was hunting a whale(or some whale like monster) but drop and cause a tsunami and earthquake. It thought that it a mythical version of the big one earthquake of the Pacific northwest in the early 1700s(an earthquake so big, it was felt across japan
I love that so many of these are "there's a weird filthy dude in the woods, he's probably white," like can confirm, have gotten lost and filthy in the woods myself
In our culture - Anishinaabe (Ojibway) - 'Bigfoot: is called "Sabe" (pronounced suh-beh). It is different from the Wiindigo or Manitou that were briefly seen in this vid. Sabe is our protective older brother that watches us on our travels and was the one who led us West 😊
I really appreciate how you actually reached out to a tribal representative. So many people just ignore and force their own narratives onto native American stories and folklore. Thank you for doing your homework and looking into it yourself
The basket woman segment made me realize my home town had its own version of that. The Goat-Man would go out at night and steal children that he would bring back to his home. He would use their skin to make dolls.
Thank you so much for this. I'm an Indigenous person myself (diné and ani yun wiya) and i have been complaining about this for YEARS! white people so often appropriate our stories for their own means. their "translations" and "interpretations" of our stories are so obviously someone trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. thank you for asking us what WE think instead of european american "experts".
Are there any stories from your cultures that make the "bigfoot" lists? I didn't see Dine here and I don't know the Ani Yun Wiya at all, but they didn't show up in the video as far as I can tell.
Since I got into the Bigfoot online community I eventually started cringing at how often RU-vid channels dumb down and reinterpret characters like bigfoot, wendigo and skinwalker.. it's painfully obvious that these modern ideas have almost no basis in the native source material
Honestly I think it’s because MANY people in America lack any and all curiosity, and can scarcely imagine a culture different from their own. They won’t even make a token effort with any language that isn’t English because they consider that to be incredibly difficult on an intellectual level. Trying to get American white people to properly pronounce even German words is like pulling teeth. Whites aren’t the only ones who do this though. Am white myself.
It's kind of funny that you mentioned that you could do this to European myths too, because I actually knew a South American man who believed exactly that. You see, I am from Norway and live there. I used to know this guy from Peru who was legitimately convinced that Norwegian myths about trolls and giants were misunderstood encounters with some missing link or caveman species. As someone more familiar with the myths, that conclusion doesn't make much sense, but to him, it was clear proof.
Troll stories are usually just children's stories in Scandinavia as well, like no adult really believes them but the story of The Three Trolls is just a really cute children's story that has stuck around. I guess this is basically how any native american must feel when hearing about these “bigfoot” stories.
The Wildman motif trey discussed also fits well in a world mythology context: including the various woodwose of Europe, the Babylonian Enkidu, and heck, even the biblical presentation of king nebuchadnezzar
"They wore no cloths, but had guns" Okay the video is extremely well done, very relevant, and addresses a problem I think needs noting. But I also now wanna see a bigfoot film where the ape is loaded and just pulls out a shotgun.
Wait, why is Iktomi considered a type of Bigfoot?! Iktomi literally means Spider (Lakota/Sioux), and was a trickster/shapeshifter who is usually involved in comedic or cautionary tales. Think Loki, but more down-to-earth. He's called two-faced both because he will trick or lie to you in a heartbeat for something material you have, but also because his father was Inyan (Stone) and his mother was Wakinyan (The Thunder Beings/Thunderbird), so half of him was jagged and wonky like lightning bolts (think: the stone being the body, the lightning being the 8 legs.)
Just to add on, the only Two-Face story I'm familiar with (told to me by my mother) described it as a man with two faces side-by-side that watched a woman sleeping. When she woke up, she was indeed frozen with fear. The face that was looking at her was beautiful and handsome, while the other one was disfigured, burned and twisted, but looking away. In this version, it's definitely described as a spirit which invades the home and is frightening, but ultimately it does no harm other than unintentionally scaring the woman.
Yeah I don't know that munch about native American mythology but even know I know Iktomi is more of a trickster type as you said more akin to being like Loki, Hermes, and Anansi. It's like calling thunderbird a dragon
In my hometown there’s a small little Bigfoot Museum primarily showcasing the owners own art with a few neat features that made in unforgettable, a to scale head mount of a bigfoot to take pictures with, headphones to put on to hear recordings of calls, and in the back wall was just the owners collection of electric guitars, there was also a dog named Banjo who was very friendly and helpful during the tour, would recommend.
One issue people are constantly bringing up is the idea that Trey's concerns about speech/tool and technology use not matching modern ideas of Bigfoot is overly restrictive. If you go to the actual spreadsheet, though, it is obvious that Trey did not immediately discount narratives where the entity talks or uses tools if there were otherwise close to the general 'bigfoot description. Of the 17 stories Trey considered to relatively closely resemble the Bigfoot legend, 4 (the Mayak Dadach, a 1940 Chehalis account of a Sasquatch, and the Iofe and 'Mr. Hairy Man' of the Chickasaw) are described as speaking; and three (Mr. Hairy Man, the Cáməqwəs of the Lummi, and the Ssti capcaki of the Seminoles) are depicted using tools. Trey clearly wasn't instantly disqualifying stories for containing speech, but rather flagging up that many of these stories are not clearly indicating that these creatures are mundane, non-human animals.
The interesting part of that is those stories come from the Cascades & Pacific Northwest regions, areas that had a number of Russian traders from the colony of Alaska. (Also refer to Fort Ross, California.)
Bigfoot here. I just want to thank you for how well you covered our people. There is so much bad information out there on us and it gives us a bad wrap. We are just like you guys, ultimately...just hairier and larger.
Wow I never expected to see an article written by mom cited in a @TREYtheExplainer video, I sent the video to my mom and said that she was a source and she really enjoyed it. However she wanted me to point out that you incorrectly cited the editor of the article Nancy McClure as the writer instead of her.
Hi Trey, I live in Northern Idaho and have grown up around and with the Nez Perce tribe, I grew up hearing “Coyote stories” which are the Nez Perce’s oral story telling tradition of history and religion and the works. I have taken a few years of the Niimipoo language and I can tell you from what I know, there are no Nez Perce stories about big foot, we have monsters but nothing real. Living in an area close to the PNW which is the hotbed of most Bigfoot sightings you would think we’d hear about them, but we haven’t. I have asked my Nimiipoo teacher who is fluent in the language and knows many more stories than me and he doesn’t know of any and I asked the Elders of the nation who would come into class and help us with language, also no account. As much as I love the story of Bigfoot it has no evidence in the Nez Perce tribe. Hopefully this gives you some help, love your content keep up the great work.
A different tribe, but I’ve spoken to the Crow in near by Montana and they believe in similar creatures being 100% real. Mostly the little people, though I’ve yet to press them on if they also believe in what we would consider a “Bigfoot”
I noticed your quotations from the Tule representative are from 2022. That speaks to how much time and care you put into this project. I found it to be quite enlightening and enjoyable. I think you did a great job.
This video sheds light on what I'll call "The Ancient Aliens Phenomenon." People have an outlandish idea in their mind with minimal supporting evidence and want people to believe them. A small in-group of like-minded figures repeat each other's talking points, drawing parallels to other situations, tales, or relics that are at best adjacent to the topic at hand. Over time they scrounge up more and more evidence that, by itself, could be construed as plausible, but has logic that falls apart when held to its own scrutiny or similar-yet-contradictory evidence. Creatures from the sky give knowledge to people and people make structures that match a constelation they came from. Except there's a different star cluster for each culture and then the question becomes what all of these aliens from different branches of the galaxy are doing meeting up on odd ends of this one planet. The theory ends up making so many assumptions to mental gymnastics their way through perceived inconsistencies that it just collapses under itself.
There's plenty of supporting evidence for the existence of Sasquatch. Ignoring the Native American accounts, that still leaves the ever-growing number of eyewitness reports, videos that can't be debunked, audio like the Sierra Sounds, and the photos. Sure of them them are hoaxes, not saying every single video or photo is real. But, again, some of them have never been debunked, which, you would have thought it'd be easy if Sasquatch doesn't exist and all the videos and photos are just people in cheap gorilla costumes.
The real phenomenon that should be studied is how easily people believe this stuff. Not only believe it but argue and fight over it despite all evidence being against them. Surely there must be some mental or social reason behind this.
@@John-ky9so it's wild to say this when ancient aliens people are too arrogant to even believe non European cultures can do anything on their own. Why did aliens build the pyramids but not the cathedrals of Europe? There was even an ancient aliens episode talking about how Easter Island couldn't have made its own writing system and it had to be inspired by aliens....like it's just racism at this point
Our local trip of the Yokut describes it as follows. Big Foot, The Hairy Man Big Foot was a creature that was like a great big giant with long, shaggy hair. His long shaggy hair made him look like a big animal. He was good in a way, because he ate the animals that might harm people. He kept the Grizzly Bear, Mountain Lion, Wolf, and other larger animals away. During hot summer nights all the animals would come out together down from the hills to drink out of the Tule River. Big Foot liked to catch animals down by the river. He would eat them up bones and all. It was pleasant and cool down by the river on hot summer nights. That is when grown ups liked to take a swim. Even though people feared that Big Foot, the hairy man, might come to the river, people still liked to take a swim at night. Parents always warned their children, "Don't go near the river at night. You may run into Big Foot." Now Big Foot usually eats animals, but parents said, "If he can't find any animals and he is very hungry, he will eat you. Big Foot, the hairy man, doesn't leave a speck or trace. He eats you up bones and all. We won't know where you have gone or what has happened to you." Some people say Big Foot, the hairy man, still roams around the hills near Tule River. He comes along the trail at night and scares a lot of people. When you hear him you know it is something very big because he makes a big sound, not a little sound. Children are cautioned not to make fun of his picture on the painted rock or play around that place because he would hear you and come after you. Parents warned their children, "You are going to meet him on the road if you stay out too late at night." The children have learned always to come home early. Told by Ruby Bays Jennie Franco From Big foot and other stories Copyright Tulare County Board of Education 1975 Tulare County Department of Education Office of the Superintendent 202 County Civic Center Visalia, California 93277
Basically, "Don't go to the river at night because you will drown and get swept away, and no one will ever find your body," because kids don't understand death, but they do understand scary big guys
God bless the YA author John Green for having a common name because gd "Landmark Bigfoot expert John Green" has to be one of the funniest sentences ever uttered 💀
I thought that John Green the author and John Green the RU-vid personality were the same person for an embarrassingly long amount of time Like it’s such a generic name it sounds fake
As an indigenous person isolated and distanced from my heritage, this is a great video for me. I really like researching native myths and legends, and I also like writing stories about these creatures. This is helpful so that I don’t misunderstand certain things relating to “Bigfoot”
I would recommend seeing if your ancestral tribe holds any events on their reservation so you can visit! That way you can see if you want to engage more with them or if it's not what you expected. Plus, it is much less awkward to show up during tourist times as opposed to out of the blew, when they might not be open to visitors.
^You shouldn't use a random video by a random youtuber on youtube to reconnect to your cultural roots. (it's all a filtered and often biased presentation after all) There are better ways, like getting in contact with native communities et cetera.
They don't reveal themselves to just any one. Natives generally have more encounters, I've seen them numerous times. Experienced mind speak also. I have a hunch why.
I was wondering why your criteria was so loose (only needing 2/5 arguably essential qualities) but the reason became clear when you revealed that only 11% passed even that low bar.
I love the art of the west coastal tribes like the Haida. I find their art so beautiful, and mesmerizing. There was an entire section of the Chicago museum with art and artifacts of theirs I loved it. I even bought a Tshirt with a Haida styled bird print on it.
The cryptid community has an ongoing issue with appropriating and twisting indigenous culture and mythology to support their beliefs while disregarding anything that doesn’t. Cherry picking and manipulating Native American mythology to “prove” Bigfoot exists is insulting and destructive to indigenous culture.
@blugaledoh2669 in this context it's a culture's folklore being taken from outsiders and being turned into a totally different story as "evidence" for their own belief system. Essentially white people taking strawmanning Native American beliefs into bigfoot "evidence".
Thank you for doing good research in an unbiased way about this. It really irritates me how people will loosely use native folklore to justify their biased beliefs in a way that is ironically way more disrespectful than what they accuse anthropologists of doing by so called ignoring it. Native folklore from all around the world is complex and fascinating as an insight into the cultures they are attached to and their way of viewing the world. Not to mention many of these are intended to be personifications of natural events, revered animals, spiritual beings, and as you stated, other human cultures. To reduce them all to one cryptid in such a lazy way is so reductive and completely misses the mark on why all these tales and depictions are so interesting and inspiring
Did you grow up in Indian country? I have (Taos) and from the experiences and subsequent conversations I have had with friends from the Pueblo, this is a very real thing.
Here in the philippines, westerners have been for example using the manananggal as a type of "Vampire" But in truth, the manananggal is anything but a vampire. Really our creature here is more comparable to a demon or an evil spirit, then just some vampire
A big takeaway from this video is that we really need native american stories (and indigenous stories in general) to be more widely told and understood.
I remember you posting about this on Twitter ages back and it was SO worth the wait, Bigfoot is a fun creature to imagine in campfire stories (or low-rent Amazon romance novels, if that's your thing) but they are just that, fiction, and I always did feel really skeeved out by how often and how loudly Bigfoot true believers mishandle indigenous beliefs and stories to back up their narrative, sometimes even going as far as to give themselves fake indigenous-sounding names in an attempt to make themselves appear more credible. I appreciate you taking the time to delve deeper and actually reach out to the tribes and the care you took in representing their stories as respectfully as you could. I also think it's fascinating how many of the "Bigfoot stories" turned out to just be ordinary humans stuck in a changing and ever-shifting world, sometimes even pushed to the fringes and into the woods themselves. Maybe the real Bigfoot was inside us all along (and/or the friends we made along the way).
tbh, most of the stories are transcriptions by white researchers, bigfoot believers will fit anything to their funny conspiracy theory, regardless of race.
Excellent work, this made me reconsider a lot of the stuff I've heard and uncritically repeated about Bigfoot and indigenous conceptions thereof. Thanks for doing all this work and research to clarify this awful misrepresentation with indigenous input where possible! You reactivated this believer's skepticism and surely will do the same for many others.
This is similar to the Stiff-Legged Bear myths being thought to be mammoths. Which is a bit weird that a lot of these people want to insist other peoples myths are just animals, while not having the same fervor for finding Gnomes, Elves, Fairies, and Dragons etc... as real creatures.
Now that you mentioned the basket woman and other basket women-like beings from different cultures, I got reminded of the Hantu-tetek here from Malaysia. She's basically this ghost lady that kidnaps small children by hiding them somewhere in her uhhhhhhh, bosoms I think... But I remember back when I was small staying at my grandma's house, shed sometimes tell me about this being so I wouldn't run off somewhere and it actually worked because I remember being so afraid of her. Now that I remember about this spooky tale it just becomes more weird than it is terrifying unlike how it used to be.
The gollum illustration at 21:40 brings me back. The copy I read as a child was the edition of the Swedish translation that had illustrations by Tove Jansson, more commonly known for creating Moomin.
This is why trusting 'outsider' research tends to backfire. If you really want to know what natives of any culture think or know about something, you have to listen to them and their words directly; don't trust second (or fourth) -hand accounts.
You can't expect them to be forthcoming with everything either. There are some aspects of dealing with these beings and entities that is taboo or part of initiation proceedings that cannot be discussed with *anyone* not just tribal or cultural 'outsiders'. The elders, shamans and medicine practioners take these aspects *very* seriously since they can be tied to Spiritual Science not just social parables or historical narratives. -------------
And be prepared to not get the whole truth either. Many don't want to tell outsiders 100 percent accurate info, and can you blame them? Even the medicine men keep secrets from the rest of the tribe. They believe that if an untrained individual knew some of those things they could get hurt. I truly don't think any of the Native stories we have in English are accurate.
Trey, I'm so glad you did this. A few years back I attempted something like this in mirror, cataloguing bigfoot sightings since the PG Film and comparing them to their regional native wildmen (using GCM as my reference point), sorting them into regional clades based on their descriptions (inconsistent), and trying to see if sightings had an organic spread out from N California after the PG Film's release (there was not).
The amount of effort you put into this video is seriously impressive. I miss the days your videos were a bit more regular but the quality of the information definitely makes up for the wait between them. Well done 🤟
@@kuman0110in a video where one of the central points is how racist it is that people continually jump to conclusions about the hairy man without actually listening to native people, it's wild to comment doing literally that.
Extremely good and thorough. A good thread to follow is how literally thousands of different cultures across millions of kilometers of continent are flattened down into a single category (native Americans) and the same thing happens to folklore. Like, there are many relationships and commonalities between different peoples, but it's like taking morris dancing and bouzouki music and just describing them as "European culture"
Love this analysis. I think the "Bigfoot" story is the first example of cultural appropriation gone wild. Natives were and still are known for being story tellers. We like to tell stories. Some of us are better than others. This one has gone viral over the centuries. I also think we misunderstand how fast information did actually move pre-colonial times.
Born in Coast Salish territory, here - For some added context to the Seraphine Long story, The tale of being kidnapped has striking similarity (if not a play-by-play retelling) of the legend told from Tlingit territory to Coast Salish lands, which is the "The woman who married a bear", in which the creature in mention varies between shapeshifter, creatures, or actual bears (which are shapeshifting because all animals are spoken of in personified language and literal description, and described by modern Coast Salish and Haida people as from a pre-dawn time when form wasn't permanent). The general story is a young woman who insults or disrespects the bears, and one kidnaps her, keeps her in his cave, and has a child with her. Sometimes she is pregnant when she returns to her people, sometimes she stays with the bear for a few years. Because of the efforts to capitalize on sacred legends by colonizers in the last century, a lot of stories are kept within an oral tradition among elders, and few are published. Because of this cryptologizing, the value on performance and induction ritual when it comes to stories have been reevaluated in the last several decades.\ also, no worries on the K!a;waq!a pronunciation - "Kwokwa que-wok", rhymes with "pourqoui-you-walk"
Very interesting! It also reminds me of similar stories from another side of the world, also with a bear "husband" or a bear "wife". Seems like bears have been meaning a lot for many people for ages.
Tlingit here. The story to me seems like it’s a historical account of someone who was taken from her people by a man from the bear clan. It isn’t a big stretch considering our clans are named after animals and we refer to each other as our totem animals. We have a long history of gatekeeping our stories and honestly I think it has been to our detriment in the age of bigfooters, because we haven’t been telling our stories to a wider audience the cryptozoology community has been appropriating our traditions and twisting them to suit their narrative.
I do hope that more efforts are being taken to preserve the original stories and their meaning of all native american tribes. It saddens me that so much of it got lost already. As someone who loves fairytales, folklore and myth, I have struggled to find a good amount of information on a lot of these stories and it doesn't help that white people keep retelling them in such ways that they fit their own narratives.
On the bright side, we're constantly creating new fairytales and myths so we'll never run out, they may just seem a bit more mundane and less supernatural (think the babysitter killer, slenderman, dog-man/werewolves, and even big foot/the yeti)
@@randzopyr1038 I know and that's great. But specifically native Americans or other groups like the Australian Aboriginal, I think deserve to be kept in our cultural memories. I think one of the most important aspects of this conservation is the stories we tell each other. But as someone who is very interested in these sorts of things I admit to bias. I just simply wish I could hear the tales of folks who are no longer with us. And we have to be careful as such culture can easily be lost forever. And it I dislike the idea of new stories painting over old once. If the stories of Bigfoot cover up the actual tales of native Americans, they are not worth telling. Eventho from a story aspect I do respect Bigfoot as his own creature, it doesn't justify claiming these other stories to be all about him.
@@ArnLPs My family is First Nations, Mi'kmaq, and I agree. Luckily, my tribe has made some (very old styled) websites that capture our language and stories, but they are few and far between and often a labor of love. I can not say how many times I have had to explain the difference between Skinwalkers and Wiindigo (burn cedar to dissuade them after speaking). Meanwhile, I've also had many friends genuinely ask "There are Native Americans in Canada?" Even so-called well traveled ones who said they visited many tribes, which are also conveniently always the ones in Nevada/Arizona (I'm totally not salty..) Anyway, I agree. We really need to distinguish culture vs American myth.
@@aliceiscalling can I ask you for a link to the website you mentioned and ask about more details about the preservation of the stories on that site? Only if there isn't a detailed one already on the site itself. I can't say that I relate to the people and their questions about for example the Skinwalkers and Wiindigos, or even Canada. I myself at some point had to learn those things. I would be very interested in having further conversations with native American people, but also don't want to bother anyone. Especially about things they don't want to talk about, and I wanna respect that. If you are up to chat a little more with me, some times, I would love to know of a way that I could contract you through private messaging, if you are comfortable with that.
I keep coming back to this, it’s probably my favourite video you’ve ever done. I’d happily wait another year for something of this quality and depth of research.
This is your best and most important video yet. The amount of research you put into this is incredible. Not only did you manage to make a very entertaining video, you managed to shine a light on the real Native American stories that risk being lost to time, stripped of context, and replaced with the narratives ran through the filter of colonialism. This is what you are my favorite RU-vidr man. Keep up the excellent work!
I will never understand why Bigfoot believers are so quick to throw infinitely cooler creatures from Native mythology under the bus for the sake of proving the existence of a boring hairy ape man.
Because people who have experiences with what is called Bigfoot can be as close minded as the people who people who outright dismiss any possibility of it's existence. People need the world compartmentalized in order to deal with it. When something doesn't fit into the neat little boxes they create to deal with things their minds short circuts.
It's criminal how exoticized, over-simplified and repulsively fetishized the "Bigfoot" community has treated our indigenous people, their stories and their traditions. I'm so grateful to hear you set the record straight and help shine a light on the authentic voices representing their own heritage. Thank you for this.
The story of the Mayak dadach is very touching, it's a shame how he got misinterpreted. It happens so often with ancient deities, like there's a movie that depicts Anubis as a killer being, despite the fact that he was an absolutely positive mythical figure, who helped humans and his fellow gods too.
Gods of death in general keep getting villain makeovers in movies - I can think of 3 villainous portrayals of just Hades of the top of my head: Disney's Hercules, Clash of the Titans remake, Percy Jackson, twice, in two radically different ways despite one movie being a sequel to the other - even though in the mythology Hades is overwhelmingly fair and neutral. It also happened with Hela in Thor Ragnarok although that's less the fault of Hollywood's stupid tropes and more Marvel's stupid tropes because the movie Hela is loosely based on the Marvel Comics Hela who bears _extremely little_ resemblance to the mythology's Hel daughter of Loki, who is... _roughly?_ analogous to Hades. I think this is mainly a case of Hollywood and pulp fiction thinking you're stupid. Death is scary > gods are powerful > gods of death are scary powerful > god of death is evil, ooh, scary, how will our hero(es) get out of this one?
@@maddockemerson4603 Hades is especially egregious because in the books, Hades is one of the more reasonable, chilled-out gods. The first book's villain was ARES, being a dick and trying to cause a war.
I just wanted to say thank you for the work you put into everything. In an age where entertainment trumps effort, it’s just nice to see someone who cares. Enjoyed this video immensely, looking forward to the next one!
Heh I summarized my thoughts on Bigfoot about a month ago: "Michigan (of course, because apparently everywhere does) supposedly has sasquatches. Michigan also has a bit over 250,000 miles of roads. In 2022, just under 2,000 people were hit by cars. There were almost 60,000 reported collisions with deer (that's just the reported ones). That was just for 2022. Spread that out across the US where every state has thousands and thousands of miles of roads with often millions of drivers. Now take that back to 1921 when the US began really building up the road systems. In over 100 years... all those drivers... not *one* sasquatch has ever been hit to the extent it was either killed outright or injured so badly it couldn't run off...?"
Even beyond the bigfoot aspect of the video the stories you read were really fascinating. I think this was a great way of bringing back the cryptid videos while keeping it consistent with the current direction of the channel
The best part of your research, which took an hour for you to present, was to contact the indigenous people themselves. Nicely done and I hope more researchers or presenters do the same.
As a Calaveras County resident, I was very surprised and excited to see our little county mentioned! I think this is the first time I've come across a piece of media mentioning Calaveras without explicitly looking for Calaveras media. The video was wonderful, and I absolutely will be reading the books recommended as well as hunting down local Calaveras stories where I can find them! I hope everyone enjoys this video and its recommended books as much as I do!
FINALLY. THE RETURN OF CRYPTID PROFILE! I also hope this means you'll talk about Paleontology again. I like your archeological videos but I do miss the Paleontology ones I watched a lot back in 2015.
I think a lot of the bigfoot believers in the comments are missing the point. The point necessarily isn’t that bigfoot isn’t real, its that co-optimg and cherry-picking unique and varied Native American stories to use as Bigfoot evidence is kinda shitty and you shouldn’t do it
I feel like whenever Trey uploads it inevitably jumpstarts another big interest for myself. Can't wait to learn more and read more native stories. Great video as always!
I just want to say, thank you so much. I've become obsessed with your channel (in the very best sense possible), I love your content. This is the first time I witness the release of one of your videos. Again, thanks, you do an incredible work
as someone who is doing archaeology and folklore in university this was a great and very interesting watch. I remember when I was a kid and I watched, read, and somewhat believed the existence of bigfoot that heard of this idea of the creature being mentioned in native folklore and didn't really look into it. now I can't say I'm too surprised that the majority of these stories had nothing even remotely similar to big foot. But it was still very interesting to learn about all these different stories and creatures described within them.
So excited for this one!!! I was literally thinking earlier today how interesting it would be to look into native stories regarding the creature. So many people just baselessly say that they had stories about "bigfoot" without elaborating.
Seeing my tribe pop up (Northern Paiute) on the list was such a treat. only story i could think of remotely similar I heard from one of the elders was your standard scary banshee that eats children who got too close to the water at night. The elder said so much information and stories were lost due to residential schools, systemic cultural cleansing, and oral history slowly dying with old age and bad archiving... it's depressing All that said, Bigfoot unironically is such a Native icon in young ndn cultures nowadays. Rez kids LOVE bigfoot, I loved bigfoot, he's a fun concept, like reigniting the wonder and mystery of turtle island again. Maybe he IS out there, hidden away and living his best life away from the crushing oppression of modern society
Fun fact, Loki was possibly also a spider god originally. His name is often associated with webs, nets, and spiders in some Nordic languages, and is related to the proto-Germanic root for knotted, locked, tied, and closed.
The thing about Loki is that he has probably been twisted the most by Christian monks out of all the Norse gods so it's very difficult to pin down much of anything about him.
Loke is actually named after the the Scandinavia word lok, which is a shortening of lokomotive, which is a Scandinavian spelling of locomotive. Trust me, bro, I'm Scandinavia, this is factually factual facts and I have almost never made stuff up ...this week, I think.
Bigfoot according to most South American natives: those weird folk living south of Araucania. Bigfoot according to most Colonial Spaniards: those weird folk living in patagonia, thats why we call that place patagonia, they are betwen 9 to 15 feet tall, and eat people. Bigfoot acording to Patagonian folks: I dunno, maybe frost giants like Nosjthej, those who fought against El-lal, maybe my uncle lol hes like 210cm big feets.
And how these (because these are multiple mythologies) are genuinely misrepresented and twisted to say things they didn't say by people with confirmation biaises. This video made me severely reconsider how I see this creature and cryptozoologists making money off it.
Algonquian description of wendigo: Cannibal, often a giant, massive staring eyes, lips often eaten away out of uncontrollable hunger, pale as a corpse. Pop culture wendigo: DEER HEAD
@@wadespencer3623wendigo in native American mythology(specially Midwest tribes): an dark reminder of people losing themselves from the being trapped from the cold. A reminder to keep your humanity and not go towards eating other humans. A creature that symbolizes the glutenous dark side of humanity. Most popular culture: yeti or deer monsters. Seriously until dawn is the only piece of non native American media that gives a more accurate representation of what a wendigo is
@@starmaker75 I'm very partial to Ravenous, because it does capture the symbolic value of eating other humans and becoming less human as a result, but it really isn't that much closer than the classic deer-head.
My mom told me of how my uncle was out in the woods with some relatives and friends hunting. He was by the fire, alone as everyone else had gone to sleep, and heard some rustling nearby in the bushes. He yelled out to the source of the sound, telling his friends to "Stop joking with me! Stop messing around!" When something in the darkness of the brush hucked a log at him and his fire. He'd said all the hairs on his arms stood up straight and he ran faster than he's ever ran. He mentioned though, how it wasn't threatening him, it just wanted him away and off his territory. My mom says all the people on the reserve know someone with a hunting story or another in the dense backwoods of the reserve in maniwaki, QC
I'm guessing the campfire he'd set up for himself was aways away from where his hunting buddies had their sleeping tents set up. Though, I may be misremembering the story, and the hunting buddies may not be apart of my uncles particular story. My memory doesn't serve me well these days
Thank you for exposing the colonization of indigenous beliefs that's rampant among the cryptid community. This is hardly ever talked about and it's important that racism against indigenous culture be brought to light and addressed.
Some native guy 4,000 years ago: "yo I saw a fucked up looking bear walking on two legs yesterday I think it had some sort of disease" Modern bigfoot hunters: "NATIVE LEGENDS PROVE BIGFOOT REAL"
That child eating golem sound both hilarious and terrifying at the same time. Like the concept of sorcerers creating a child eating monster to cull children is scary, but the flippant way it's described in that quote is pretty funny.
