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| Alaska's Boreal Sasquatch & Marked Hominid Authority since 2005. |
| ALASKA's HISTORICAL BAD BOYS |
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| SASQUATCH TRACKER |
story, Long Hunter – Alaskan Style recently appeared on William Jevning’s blog.
This story appeared in the July, 1963 issue of Sports Afield Magazine and has been repeated and
retold several times throughout the years. I don’t know if the tale is purely fiction written to entertain
readers of Sports Afield, however, the story doesn’t “wear out” or weaken with time. Take a look:
The Denna Indian people liked him, Tex Cobb.
No sentiment was wasted on either side, but he and the tribesmen had a live-and-let-live
understanding that was rare in those days. He stayed off their trap lines, and they stayed off his.
If an Indian had salmon net in an eddy, Tex found another eddy, and vice versa. Due to the fact that
the Indians trusted him, we became involved one autumn with what would be called, I suppose, an
abominable snowman. I have since heard and read a great deal about the abominable snowman.
I have seen photographs of those tracks in the snow on a Tibetan mountain, and to me they are simply
the tracks of a man with gunny-sacking or some other cloth wrapped around his feet for protection
from the cold, climbing slew-footed because the slope was steep and he had no crampons.
But when I was a youngster roaming the North with Tex, we had never heard much about Gilyuk, the
shaggy cannibal giant sometimes called The-Big-Man-with-The-Little-Hat.
Our adventure with Gilyuk occurred while we were camped in a pretty spruce park on Yellowjacket
Creek, south of Tyone Lake. We had spent the entire summer on this mountain-girt Nelchina Plateau,
wandering and looking for fur sign.
Maybe we were. He always had to have an excuse for enjoying the country, a commercial excuse if he
could think of one. Anyway, it was now late September, the beautiful time, no mosquitoes, the land
ablaze with color, the fish and the meat animals summer-fat, the caribou horde gathering, and we
were footloose and free as perhaps men can never be again.
This morning Tex was making coffee, and I was down at the creek cleaning a mess of grayling for
breakfast, when six Indians filed in through the timber.
They stood a moment solemnly regarding our four horses. To them a horse was a rarity, a mysterious
animal. They called them McKinley moose, because McKinley was the only president they had ever
heard of, and the horses were as big as moose. I followed them to camp.
“Have you eaten?” Tex asked them in Denna.
They said they had eaten. Chief Stickman was with them. I had seen him once before, at Eklutna
Village. A squat, square-faced man, very dark, with long hair and quick-moving obsidian eyes, he was
the Denna boss of the entire area, and his reputation was bad. But now he had trouble that he couldn’
t handle.
He told us about it, balancing himself with the moccasined sole of the free foot against the knee of the
supporting leg. I don’t know whether it was a bad habit or a medicine trick to ward off evil spirts, or
both, but it was disconcerting.
He had come into this area two days ago, he said, with some of his people to kill and cache caribou for
winter use. But they discovered that Gilyuk, the shaggy giant, was hanging around. They had found
sign yesterday. And of course everybody knew that Gilyuk wasn’t interested in caribou. Gilyuk ate
men.
“What kind of sign?” Tex asked.
“We will take you to see it,” Stickman said. “It is not far.”
After breakfast we followed the Indians upstream a couple of miles to a burned flat on which a nurse
crop of aspen and birch had grown. In the center of the flat stood a ruined birch sapling.
It had been about four inches through and maybe ten feet tall. Something had twisted the sapling as a
man would twist a match stick. The wood had separated into individual fibers, the bark hung in tatters.
Stickman and his hunters stood back, while Tex and I looked the site over. Moose often ride a sapling
down to get at the tender upper twigs. So do caribou. But no moose or caribou had done this. This
had been done by something with hands. It had happened yesterday, because the leaves of the
sapling had not yet completely wilted.
It wasn’t the work of lightning—no burns. A freak whirlwind hadn’t done it, because trees and brush a
few yards distant were undamaged. The hard ground showed no tracks. We found no snagged hair
in the brush. Absolutely nothing except the incredibly twisted birch sapling. It was without question
the eeriest sight I ever beheld in the wilds.
Stickman said, “It is Gilyuk’s mark. We have seen it before.”
I wish to make clear that to the Denna people Gilyuk was no legendary creature their grandfathers
had told them about. He was reality, and they spoke of him as they spoke of the bears and wolves.
They saw his sign, and they saw him. He was a shaggy giant who wore a little hat and ate men.
“We want to ask you to camp with us until we have killed our caribou,” Stickman said. “Gilyuk doesn’t
molest white men. Perhaps he will not molest us if you are in camp.” Stickman had already told us that
he bivouacked on the shore of a pothole lake two hours to the eastward.
Tex said all right, we would move to his camp in the morning. As he spoke, he was still looking at the
twisted sapling, his green eyes narrowed in thought. I couldn’t take my gaze off it either.
Stickman said, “Thanks Kosaki,” a strange word of respect, held over from the old Russian Cossack,
and we parted company with the Indians.
Next morning I brought the horses in at daybreak. We ate, broke camp and were putting on the
packs, when here came the Indians, all of them—all, that is, except Stickman.
An old man told us that they were returning to their town on Tyone Lake. Stickman was dead, he said.
Gilyuk had taken him. The chief had got up in the night and gone down to the lake, perhaps for
water, but nobody knew. A squaw with a birch-bark torch found his red flannel underwear on the
gravel beach.
It had been torn off him. There may have been tracks, but the entire hunting party had swarmed over
the beach, and by daylight no tracker on earth could have made sense of the jumble.
Well, until the day of his own death last July, while on a sentimental journey to a fateful spot in Cook
Inlet, Tex was convinced that the cannibal giant Gilyuk killed Stickman.
When asked if he believed in the existence of abominable snowmen, Tex would reply that he didn’t
think there were any around Alaska nowadays, but that they had existed, at least one of them, a
couple of decades back.
So let’s take a look at three elements in this story that are of significance to me personally. First of all,
I always thought it was interesting that Gilyuk is referred to as a cannibal giant. Think about that. In
order to be a cannibal, you have to be willing to eat your own kind. I’m not counting people in
desperate survival situations facing starvation deciding to eat some of their dead friends. That’s a
different scenario. But calling Gilyuk a cannibal would indicate that he (or she) was considered to be
human or at least partially human. The story stated that Gilyuk ate men, meaning Athabascans, miners
and trappers in the area rather than other “Gilyuk”. Does that indicate that Gilyuk had / has human
DNA? Or does describing Gilyuk in this way show his condition of kinship with the local people?
Being called “The-Big-Man-with-The-Little-Hat” is the second element. Gilyuk is a True Giant as
identified by Mark Hall. In fact, in The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates
Worldwide, Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe list “gilyuk” as a popular alternative name for a True
Giant and go on to state that, “True Giants occasionally wear primitive clothing, especially in colder
climates…”. Would a little hat be considered primitive clothing?
The third and last element is that the chief’s name was “Stickman”. Based upon my own research,
Stickman is a common name for the Boreal Sasquatch or Marked Hominid in the Upper Tanana area.
Tyone Lake is a few hundred miles distant from the Upper Tanana area, but I tend to feel it is a general
name and it is not bound by a specific region. Calling someone a “nerd” in Florida has the same
connotations as calling someone a “nerd” in Alaska. Yep, a general name not bound by region…
Okay. There you have it. It’s your food for thought this week. Godspeed loyal readers.
Annabel, R. 1963. Long Hunter – Alaskan Style. Sports Afield. #150 (July 1963) http://williamjevning.
com/long-hunter-alaskan-style-alaska-and-a-history-of-bigfoot/ Online. (Accessed 25JAN2016).
Coleman, L and Huyghe, P. 1999. The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates
Worldwide. Avon Books, Inc., New York, NY.
MINERS, KILLS ONE...
From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: February 05, 2016
Mysterious wild men are frequently mentioned in Alaska’s history and many locations have their own
legends regardless of the native or non-native human population inhabiting the area. Valdez is no
exception to this.
The Glacial Demon was a resident of the glaciers surrounding the Valdez area. The Glacial Demon was
a bad boy, a trouble maker. He had a history of hostility towards people and even killed at least one
man. Let’s take a look:
Captain W.R. Abercrombie, Second US Infantry, was sent to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush of
1898-1899 and ordered to explore Valdez and the Copper River Area and to then report his findings
to the War Department. During this time, many prospectors elected to travel to the Dawson area via
the port of Valdez, Alaska. This is not unusual in itself because miners from all over the globe
attempted access to the Klondike through many different routes.
In April of 1899, Abercrombie reached Valdez. Upon his arrival, the captain encountered a destitute
group of miners. The miners were suffering from the effects of scurvy and were living in less than
ideal conditions where survival was a daily struggle in the sub-arctic winter (Kirtley, 1964). After
speaking with miners, the captain made the following entry in his journal:
I noticed in talking to these people that over seventy per cent of them were more or less mentally
deranged. My attention was first directed to this fact by their reference to a “glacial demon”. One
big, rawboned Swede, in particular, described to me how this demon had strangled his son on the
glacier, his story being that he had just started from Twelve-Mile Plant (a small collection of huts just
across the Coast Range of Mountains from Valdez) with his son to go to the coast in company with
some other prospectors. When halfway up the summit of the glacier, his son, who was ahead of him
hauling a sled, while he was behind pushing, called to him, saying that the demon had attacked him
and had his arms around his neck. The father ran to the son’s assistance, but as he described it, his
son being very strong, soon drove the demon away and they passed on their way up toward the
summit of Valdez Glacier. The weather was very cold and the wind blowing very hard, so that it made
traveling very difficult in passing over the ice between the huge crevasses through which it was
necessary to pick their way to gain the summit. While in the thickest of these crevasses, the demon
again appeared. He was said to be a small, heavy-built man and very active. He again sprang on the
son’s shoulders, this time with such a grasp that, although the father did all he could to release him,
the demon finally strangled the son to death. The old man then put the son on a sled and brought him
down to Twelve-Mile camp, where the other prospectors helped bury him.
During the recital of this tale the old man’s eyes would blaze and he would go through all the actions
to illustrate just how he fought off this imaginary demon. When I heard this story there were ten or
twelve other men in the cabin and at that time it would not have been safe to dispute the theory of the
existence of this demon on the Valdez Glacier, as every man there firmly believed it to be a reality
(Abercrombie, page 16, 1899 in US 56th Congress, 1900).
There you have it. Thus ended Abercrombie’s interpretation of a miner describing a violent
encounter with a Marked Hominid that ended in the death of his son.
Abercrombie, Capt. W.R. 1900. “Copper River Exploring Expedition, 1898,” in A Compilation of
Narratives and Explorations in Alaska, U.S. 56th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1023 (Washington: 1900), p. 16.
Kirtley, B.F. 1964. Unknown Hominids and New World Legends in Western Folklore, Vol. XXIII April
1964, No. 2. Online: http://www.bfro.net/REF/PRECOL/kirtley.html (Accessed 02FEB2016).
From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: February 05, 2016
Mysterious wild men are frequently mentioned in Alaska’s history and many locations have their own
legends regardless of the native or non-native human population inhabiting the area. Valdez is no
exception to this.
The Glacial Demon was a resident of the glaciers surrounding the Valdez area. The Glacial Demon was
a bad boy, a trouble maker. He had a history of hostility towards people and even killed at least one
man. Let’s take a look:
Captain W.R. Abercrombie, Second US Infantry, was sent to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush of
1898-1899 and ordered to explore Valdez and the Copper River Area and to then report his findings
to the War Department. During this time, many prospectors elected to travel to the Dawson area via
the port of Valdez, Alaska. This is not unusual in itself because miners from all over the globe
attempted access to the Klondike through many different routes.
In April of 1899, Abercrombie reached Valdez. Upon his arrival, the captain encountered a destitute
group of miners. The miners were suffering from the effects of scurvy and were living in less than
ideal conditions where survival was a daily struggle in the sub-arctic winter (Kirtley, 1964). After
speaking with miners, the captain made the following entry in his journal:
I noticed in talking to these people that over seventy per cent of them were more or less mentally
deranged. My attention was first directed to this fact by their reference to a “glacial demon”. One
big, rawboned Swede, in particular, described to me how this demon had strangled his son on the
glacier, his story being that he had just started from Twelve-Mile Plant (a small collection of huts just
across the Coast Range of Mountains from Valdez) with his son to go to the coast in company with
some other prospectors. When halfway up the summit of the glacier, his son, who was ahead of him
hauling a sled, while he was behind pushing, called to him, saying that the demon had attacked him
and had his arms around his neck. The father ran to the son’s assistance, but as he described it, his
son being very strong, soon drove the demon away and they passed on their way up toward the
summit of Valdez Glacier. The weather was very cold and the wind blowing very hard, so that it made
traveling very difficult in passing over the ice between the huge crevasses through which it was
necessary to pick their way to gain the summit. While in the thickest of these crevasses, the demon
again appeared. He was said to be a small, heavy-built man and very active. He again sprang on the
son’s shoulders, this time with such a grasp that, although the father did all he could to release him,
the demon finally strangled the son to death. The old man then put the son on a sled and brought him
down to Twelve-Mile camp, where the other prospectors helped bury him.
During the recital of this tale the old man’s eyes would blaze and he would go through all the actions
to illustrate just how he fought off this imaginary demon. When I heard this story there were ten or
twelve other men in the cabin and at that time it would not have been safe to dispute the theory of the
existence of this demon on the Valdez Glacier, as every man there firmly believed it to be a reality
(Abercrombie, page 16, 1899 in US 56th Congress, 1900).
There you have it. Thus ended Abercrombie’s interpretation of a miner describing a violent
encounter with a Marked Hominid that ended in the death of his son.
Abercrombie, Capt. W.R. 1900. “Copper River Exploring Expedition, 1898,” in A Compilation of
Narratives and Explorations in Alaska, U.S. 56th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1023 (Washington: 1900), p. 16.
Kirtley, B.F. 1964. Unknown Hominids and New World Legends in Western Folklore, Vol. XXIII April
1964, No. 2. Online: http://www.bfro.net/REF/PRECOL/kirtley.html (Accessed 02FEB2016).
| . |
| Home of the Glacial Demon, The Valdez Glacier. (Created by author from Public Domain image, 2016.) |
| (Public Domain image). |
HISTORICAL BAD BOY: BUSHMAN'S ASSAULT RESULT IN FATALITIES ALONG THE YUKON RIVER... From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: February 19, 2016 HISTORICAL BAD BOY: PROSPECTOR HAS STAND OFF WITH MALASPINA GLACIER BEAST... From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: February 26, 2016 HISTORICAL BAD BOY: HUNTER CHARGED BY ENRAGED HOWLING MAN... From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: March 04, 2016 HISTORICAL BAD BOYS: THE HIDEOUS MOON LAKE GANG PURSUES PROSPECTOR... From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: March 17, 2016 HISTORICAL BAD BOY: THE NUNIVAK ISLAND BEAST TERRORIZES HUNTERS... From Sasquatch Tracker's Blog: March 25, 2016 |
