In July of 2014, I was attending the Moosehide Gathering, hosted by the Tr’ondëk Hëwch’in First Nation (THFN) at the community of Moosehide, located some five kilometres downstream from Dawson City.
The THFN had lived at many locations along the Yukon River, for hundreds of years, at a time when there was no such thing as a border between what became Yukon and Alaska. One of these communities was the fish camp of Tr’ochëk, at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers (where Dawson City is now). However, when gold-mad prospectors arrived by the thousands during the Klondike Gold Rush, the First Nation moved some five kilometres downstream and set up the community of Moosehide.
Gatherings were not held during and after the gold rush. However, as a means of bringing people from all Nations together for a celebration of the Han First Nation culture and traditions, based on the traditional potlash, the gatherings were revived in 1993 by Elders and interested citizens of THFN, at Moosehide.
I set up a tent at the gathering and invited participants to share their sasquatch experiences with me. One such person was an Elder, a First Nation gentleman from Eagle, Alaska, who took the time to share his encounter. Eagle is located some 10 kilometres from the Canadian border, along the western shore of the Yukon River, while the First Nation village is only 6 kilometres from the border.
In the fall of 2004, the Elder was hunting moose, along the river, with three other members of that First Nation. By late afternoon they were just about at the Yukon-Alaska border when they decided to set up camp for the night. They found a suitable location and two of the hunters started unloading gear from the boat, setting up the tent and campsite while the other two gathered wood for a fire.
While gathering wood, one of them heard what he thought was a baby crying—Odd to hear such a thing along the river, he thought. He thought perhaps there was a family group hunting nearby. He called his companion over and started walking in the direction of the crying. At one point, amongst large boulders, they observed a large, bipedal creature, which he described as a female sasquatch that was holding the hand of a very young sasquatch who was crying loudly. The two hunters immediately stopped walking and, at that moment, the mother noticed them.
What happened next really intrigued the hunters … They witnessed something never seen before. The mother placed her baby on her upper back and the young one held her (or his) mother by her long hair. Then the mother gathered a few dead trees that were lying closeby on the shore, and while holding on to those (sort of wrapping both arms around them), she threw herself into the Yukon River. She used the trees as a flotation device and paddled with her feet, navigating the river for herself and her baby by taking advantage of the swift current.
As she swam away, the two hunters called to their friends, telling them to look at the river, and they, too, observed the mother swimming across the river with her young one on her back.
The gentleman I talked to mentioned that he and his companions had shared this unique encounter with other members of their First Nation at Eagle, none of whom had ever witnessed such action before. He had never shared this information with anyone outside of his community.
As part of my investigations, over a number of years, researching sasquatch-related websites, reading thousands of reports and talking with colleagues, I had never come across any mention of such sasquatch activity by this legendary bushman (in this case, a “wild bush woman.” Besides the swimming, which had been observed by many in the past, the significance of this story was the youngster, which showed the family aspect of the sasquatch phenomenon and which went hand in hand with previous reports of a pregnant sasquatch observed in 2008 (in my fourth column), and a newborn sasquatch observed in 2000, which I wrote about in my book Nahganne: Tales of the Northern Sasquatch.
