How powerful are these giants? A group of Indians came upon a small canyon in British Columbia, the group first noticed many tree breaks and twists. The natives were petrified when they saw a huge hairy giant they called Gilyuk and a large brown bear in an ear-shattering battle. It was a long, hard fight, but the giant finally strangled the big bear to death!
Tree breaks and twists have been historically associated with Sasquatch activity. Several Native American tribes describe this behavior in their traditional stories. The Nelchina Plateau Tribe tells a story of a “Gilyuk,” which twisted trees. As reported by Green (1981:336), the following relates the story:
There is a story published in Sports Afield in 1956, in which the writer, Russell Annabel, tells of an Indian being carried off, presumably for dinner, by “Gilyuk, the shaggy cannibal giant sometimes called The-Big-Man-With-The-Little-Hat.” The Indians knew that Gilyuk was around because they had seen his sign, a birch sapling about four inches through that had been twisted into shreds as a man might twist a match stick. The scene is set on the Nelchina Plateau, south of Tyone Lake, sometime about the 1940s.
This is significant, as there is no reason for Native Americans to associate known ape behavior with a Sasquatch, when apes were not present in North America. Grover Krantz and wildlife biologist John Bindernagel describe tree breaks as a known Sasquatch behavior from reports from the 1960s to present.
However, there are other explanations for such breaks including natural, snow broken or bent trees. There have been many documented tree breaks and twisted limbs that fall outside of anything natural.
References:
Bindernagel, John A.
1988 North America’s Great Ape: the Sasquatch. Courtenay, B.C.: Beachcomber Books.
Green, John
1981 Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. Vancouver: Hancock House Publications.
Krantz, Grover S
1992 Big Footprints. A Scientific Inquiry into the Reality of Sasquatch. Boulder: Johnson Printing Company.
http://www.bigfootresearch.com/index.php?name=News&file=print&sid=49
Christopher c
This story talks about a Denna Chief named chief stickman who had a bad reputation but ran into trouble even he could not handle so he enlisted the help of a trapper named Tex Cobb and his hunting party for help,the chief wanted Tex and his party to stay in camp with the chief’s hunting party until they had bagged enough caribou,the funny thing about the story is chief stickman said gilyuk doesn’t molest the white man and if you are in our camp maybe gilyuk wont molest us,this can be found on page128-132 in the book “The Bigfoot Film controversy”,by Roger Patterson and Christoper Murphy.
Rob C
Fascinating and informative. Just for the record, Bindernagel’s book was copyright 1998, not 1988. Thanks!!