(From : Traditional Attitudes Toward Bigfoot in Many North American Cultures, By Gayle Highpine)
Originally printed in the Western Bigfoot Society Newsletter "The Track Record". Excerpted from "Legends Beyond Psychology", by Henry James Franzoni III. Reprinted with permission from all parties.
"Here in the Northwest, and west of the Rockies generally, Indian people regard Bigfoot with great respect. He is seen as a special kind of being, because of his obvious close relationship with humans. Some elders regard him as standing on the "border" between animal-style consciousness and human-style consciousness, which gives him a special kind of power. (It is not that Bigfoot's relationship to make him "superior" to other animals; in Indian culture, unlike western culture, animals are not regarded as "inferior" to humans but rather as "elder brothers" and "teachers" of humans. But tribal cultures everywhere are based on relationship and kinship; the closer the kinship, the stronger the bond. Man Indian elders in the Northwest refuse to eat bear meat because of the bear's similarity to humans, and Bigfoot is obviously much more similar to humans than is the bear. As beings who blend the "natural knowledge" of animals with something of the distinctive type of consciousness called "intelligence" that humans have, Bigfoot is regarded as a special type of being."
"But, special being as he is, I have never heard anyone from a Northwestern tribe suggest that Bigfoot is anything other than a physical being, living in the same physical dimensions as humans and other animals. He eats, he sleeps, he poops, he cares for his family members. However, among many Indians elsewhere in North America... as widely separated at the Hopi, the Sioux, the Iroquois, and the Northern Athabascan -- Bigfoot is seen more as a sort of supernatural or spirit being, whose appearance to humans is always meant to convey some kind of message."
"The Lakota, or western Sioux, call Bigfoot Chiye-tanka (Chiha-tanka in Dakota or eastern Sioux); "chiye" means "elder brother" and "tanka" means "great" or "big". In English, though, the Sioux usually call him "the big man". In his book "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," (Viking, 1980), a non-fiction account of the events dramatized by the excellent recent movie "Thunderheart", author Peter Mathiessen recorded some comments about Bigfoot made by traditional Sioux people and some members of other Indian nations. Joe Flying By, a Hunkpapa Lakota, told Mathiessen, "I think the Big Man is a kind of husband of Unk-ksa, the earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this One is a kind of reptile from the ancient times who can take a big hairy form; I also think he can change into a coyote. Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, and they are already gone."
"There is your Big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day," Oglala Lakota Medicine Man Pete Catches km told Mathiessen. "He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren't there... I know him as my brother... I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me."
