January 7, 1811, David Thompson’s journal…
Continuing our journey in the afternoon we came on the track of a large animal, the snow about six inches deep on the ice; I measured it; four large toes each of four inches in length; to each a short claw; the ball of the foot sunk three inches lower than the toes, the hinder part of the foot did not mark well, the length fourteen inches, by eight inches in breadth, walking from north to south, and having passed about six hours. We were in no humour to follow him; the Men and Indians would have it to be a young mammoth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzled bear; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a Bear, otherwise that of a very large old Bear, his claws worn away; this the Indians would not allow.”
40 years later, while writing the draft of his Narrative, David Thompson expanded on his experience further:
“January 7th continuing our journey in the afternoon we came on the track of a large animal, the snow about six inches deep on the ice; I measured it; four large toes each of four inches in length, to each a short claw; the ball of the foot sunk three inches lower than the toes. The hinder part of the foot did not mark well, the length fourteen inches, by eight inches in breadth, walking from north to south, and having passed about six hours. We were in no humour to follow him; the Men and Indians would have it to be a young mammouth [sic] and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzly bear; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a Bear”
David Thompson was born April 30th 1770. He was a British and Canadian fur trader, surveyor and cartographer. He was known to the native peoples as Koo-Koo-Sint or “the Stargazer”. He has traveled some 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) across North America mapping 4.9 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles). For this venture , Thompson has been described as the “greatest practical land geographer that the world has ever produced.
He had to have seen a lot of wildlife on his travels. He most likely had seen a lot of bears out that. So would he mistake a bear as a Sasquatch? He might. But I doubt he’d fake the story, he likely wouldn’t have gained anything in the telling. But it still fascinating, end I love the older tales….
Sasysquatchgirl 