Hmm, interesting articles, but there are some things that should be noted. Firstly, many of these are not local reports, especially the first few and some are about events on the other side of the country, which is suspect at best. The late 19th century was the heyday of yellow journalism, when in order to make money, journalists made up whatever stories they wanted, including
petrified babies,
mammoths roaming the countryside and of
wild men. This doesn't invalidate the articles, but they should be treated with caution.
So, let's see them...
1: An article from Pennsylvania that quotes a one month old piece from California, that conveniently doesn't include any names. The old hunter is also suspiciously compassionate for the 1870s, and doesn't shoot the "gorilla".
2:Same papers, but the story is from Nevada. Still no names. "Undoubtedly a white man".
3: Louisiana paper, about events in Georgia concerning bears practicing animal husbandry. I think this sounds very much like a hoax and not at all like bigfoot.
4: Ohio-Ontario, not that far. But there is one strange thing: Pretties Island, Ontario is not a hundred miles north of Ottawa, but about thirty miles to the Southwest from there. Interesting Once more, no-one can be clearly identified. The creature is armed with a tomahawk and a "bludgeon"
5: A third-hand report, ("reliable gentleman" - Walker County Messenger - Atlanta Constitution), The wild man makes rude gestures with its hands, its facial features are clearly visible from 100 yards (though they are never described), wields a long pole and throws 100 pound rocks at the same time.
6: The first completely local report. It describes a half-naked man with long hair and a long beard, bare feet and a bare head. This doesn't sound like bigfoot at all.
7: Another third-hand account from the state of New York. Somewhere, Peter Thomas's carriage is attacked by something hairy in the middle of the night and he loses one of the horses. Later, berry pickers find a campsite with smoldering fire. They somehow identify the remains of Thomas's horse (how?) and find the bones of other animals. "It is thought by some" (at wikipedia, this would be followed by [who?] at least) that it's a chimpanzee or a feral human.
8: A wild man who wears sheepskin clothes and has a "flowing mane", but isn't said to be covered in fur. Doesn't sound like bigfoot.
9: A Nevada paper reporting from Missouri, about a naked black woman doing crazy stuff near a road. Doesn't sound like bigfoot.
10: A small town newspaper from New York references a small town newspaper from Pennsylvania about some people who found some footprints somewhere.
11: Now this is interesting. The Manitoba Free Press publishes a letter to the New York Sun about Vermont hunters in Massachusetts. They say that the creature had long, hairy arms, a beard and looked like a man. Or a gorilla, it's not completely clear. (I have to add here, I doubt that hunters from 1879 era Vermont had any idea what a gorilla looked like)
While these stories are fascinating, I don't see clear indications of bigfoot in most of them, and their veracity is doubtful as practically all are small town newspapers reporting about faraway events with as little traceable facts as possible.
What it proves is that I was wrong and the media-fuelled bigfoot craze has its origins in late 19th century "wild man" articles that were probably inspired by tales of Native American religion.
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evancj, on 24 December 2012 - 04:02 AM, said:
personal experiences/anecdotal evidence. My thoughts on personal experiences and anecdotal evidence are that they are almost all either sightings of misidentified already existing animals, hoaxes, or hand-me-down versions of the former. 
