6. In 1884, a Sasquatch was apparently captured in British Columbia and named Jacko
Hailing from British Columbia, one of Bigfoot’s main haunts, comes a tale entitled ‘What is it? A Strange Creature Captured Above Yale’ from July 1884. A group of men saw a strange creature on a rocky bluff and, ‘after considerable trouble and perilous climbing, succeeded in capturing a creature which may truly be called half man and half beast… something of the gorilla type standing four feet seven inches in height and weighing 127 pounds. He has long, black, strong hair and resembles a human being… [but] his fore arm is much longer than a man’s fore arm’.
Other newspapers took a dim view of the whole episode: ‘no such animal was caught, and how The Colonist was duped in such a manner, and by such a story, is strange’, scoffed The Mainland Guardian on July 9th 1884. On July 11, 1884, The British Columbian reported that 200 people ventured to see “Jacko”, as the creature was christened. They came to find that the ‘only wild man visible’ was a man, referred to as the ‘governor of the [jail], who completely exhausted his patience’ answering questions about the creature. Sadly, it seems, the whole thing was a hoax.