This is a fun story that is always interesting. When I was younger I LOVED the show MonsterQuest on the History channel. The season one episode “Swamp Beast Revealed” dealt with the Southern Bigfoot or “Skunkape.” A story shown on the episode really captured my imagination, and it was an early 1800s account of a Bigfoot attack in the Okefenokee Swamp on the Florida- Georgia border. The story told regales the viewer with an account of Florida And Georgia frontiersman forming a group and hunting down a giant hairy beast, having several of their own number killed in the process, before the beast eventually is fell by countless musket balls and stab wounds from the hunters. MonsterQuest cites “early newspapers” for this story, and hey, for pre- History major Jake, that was good enough for me! It was a great story!
But things have changed now, and in an effort to distract myself from things going on, I was re watching this old episode of MonsterQuest. While watching I decided to track down the story for myself, and do what historians do, try and find the primary source. The first thing I found was a webpage put together by an amatuer historian Dale Cox called “exploresouthernhistory.com" and an article named “BIGFOOT ATTACK IN THE OKEFENOKEE:A 19th Century Bigfoot Attack?” The article goes into more detail than the MonsterQuest episode, and includes some things that the producers left out, especially the stuff that doesnt make as much sense, for instance Cox describes the hunters becoming lost and quotes the following from the original newspaper article
“ ..[They] being lost in inextricable swamps and bogs and on the point of perishing, were unexpectedly relived by a company of
beautiful women, whom they call daughters of the sun, who kindly gave them such
provisions as they had with them, consisting of fruit and corn cakes…”
“Beautiful women” referred to as the “Daughters of the Sun” later warned the men to leave the swamp because their husbands were dangerous and fierce and cruel. The newspaper article goes on to describe how a hunting party discovered 18 inch footprints, and were later attacked by a huge beast who killed 5 men and only died after being shot 7 times. The Article claimed that the beast was 13 feet tall and of a girth and weight complimentary to that height. Naturally the hunters left the body where it fell along with the bodies of their own comrades and left in a hurry being afraid of encountering another of the monsters.
Cox claims the story was published in the Midgeville Georgia Statesman in January of 1829. I could not find that particular article, I was able to locate a scanned copy of the Georgia Messenger out of Ft. Hawkins Georgia on January 17 1829. Why I couldn’t find the source Cox mentioned I will never know, but it seems I found the same story. This is common practice in the 19th century, just as it is today, for newspapers to pick up and re print stories, especially interesting ones involving monsters and the like.
Does this story reflect an actual Bigfoot attack? probably not. To my ear the original story, involving the race of beautiful tall giants and the “Daughters of the Sun” living on an island in the Okefenokee smacks more of stories of giants or biblical nephilim than more modern stories about Bigfoot. The original newspaper cites Native American Legend as the source of these stories, and I do not know enough about the native tribes living in Georgia at the time to speak to whether or not these were actual legends and stories of theirs. What I do know however is white people, and if there is one thing that white people love to do it is to take fantastical stories and shroud them in the mysteries of the “local Natives” to their own ends, in North America or otherwise. Of course, we are left thinking though, why the producers of MonsterQuest and other retellers have ommitted the parts of the story about beautiful women and other more fantastical elements. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that those elements do not exactly support the modern “Skunkape/Bigfoot” narrative.
This omission of fantastical, or non supportive elements is not an isloted incident in this circle either. Since the 1970s, suspiciously coinciding with the then recent release of the Patterson Gimlin film, and the subsequent release of cult classic film “The Beast of Boggy Creek” in the late 1960s and early 1970s, people have reported seeing strange two legged creatures all over the United States. The descriptions of the animals seen over time has changed as well. Many of the early (1960s-1970s) sighting in Florida claimed to see creatures that were more ape-like than man like, even Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman does not classify southern ‘Bigfoots’ as an actual bigfoot, but instead uses his own classification, the North American Ape, that as he states “Are more apelike, shorter, often not much more than five or six feet tall, go down on all fours sometimes, and leave behind paw prints that look like your hand-that is,with their big toe sticking out to the side.” (Coleman 158).
It must be entertained as highly likely that many of the “original” sightings of Bigfoot or Skunkape creatures in Florida were probably escaped ecotic pets or other escapees from captivity. Florida, a subtropical envoiroment that is also home to major international ports and exotic pet trades, is a perfect envoiroment for invasive species. There is ample oppurtunity for escaped or released pets to make a pretty good living, as evidenced by large populations of Pythons, Recus monkeys and even a few Nile Crocodiles in the everglades! (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article78680152.html). For my part, it is pretty clear that many of the early “ape like” sightings can easily be attributed to escaped monkeys or apes trying to make a living in the everglades and other south Florida envoiroments. Or misidentification of black bears.
What happens is an issue with consisitency. The stories from the early 19th century describe 12 foot tall giants, and are not consistend with sightings from the 1960s and 70s that desribe sub 6 foot tall ape like animals, because they are not meant to be. For my money, people in the 1960s and 1970s were actually seeing something, escaped apes in South Florida. Modern sightings from Flordia are not consistent with sightings from the 1960s and 70s because they are not meant to be either, they are likely more influenced by stories from television and other parts of the country that describe “patty” type creatures, and they are also more consistent with stories of “wild men” and “giants” from the 19th century as sort of a ret con if you will.
Why the inconsistency? Well, there are only a few options. Option 1- its true and there are multiple species and sub species of non human primate living in North America undetected by science, or even better, hidden by the government! Option 2- Bigfoot is real, and the sightings of ape like cretures are isolated sighting of invasive species or young bigfoots that behave diffrently than adults do. And of course, it’s all undetected by science or hidden by the government. Option 3-It’s all bullshit more influenced by pop culture than actual animals in the wild. Do I want it to be real? Heck yes I do, that would be awesome. Is it? Unfortunatly, for me, all signs point to no.
I’ll leave with this, if Skunkape or Southern Bigfoot were a real thing, it would almost certainly have historic sightings going back to the period of Spanish exploration and settlment in the region. Many Americans like to think of the American South and especially Florida as some sort of impenatrable wilderness prior to the 19th century, but, like most things in anglo- centric histories of the United States, that’s not accurate at all. Europeans have been criss crossing Florida regularly since at least 1513, and probably at least a few unoficially before that. Spaniards like Ponce De Leon, DeSoto, Navaraez, Tristian De Luna and Frenchmen like Jean Ribault all explored Florida quite a bit prior to settlement by Pedro Menendez in 1565. Once St. Augustine was established, the Spanish set up missions and military outposts throughout Florida that were active for many years well into the 1700s. Florida was far from an untouched wilderness when the Americans got onto the scene. So, are here historic sightings dating back to Spanish Exploration Jake? Funny you should ask, I am still working on that. So far, in the words of famed Yeti hunter Yukon Cornelius….. nothin. Yet? Until next time!
Cox, Dale. Bigfoot Attack in the Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia (1829), www.exploresouthernhistory.com/okefenokeebigfoot.html.
“Georgia Historic Newspapers.” Georgia Messenger. (Ft. Hawkins, Ga.) 1823-1847, January 17, 1829, Image 2 " Georgia Historic Newspapers, gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn82014212/1829-01-17/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=01%2F01%2F1829&city=Fort+Hawkins&date2=12%2F31%2F1829&words=&searchType=advanced¬text=&index=3&sequence=0&proxdistance=5&sort=relevance&rows=12&ortext=&proxtext=&andtext=&page=10.
Coleman, Loren. Bigfoot: the True Story of Apes in America. Paraview Pocket Books, 2003.
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