The Ye’iitsoh Fed Us: Navajo Encounters with a Living Primate
By Dr Dyer Professor of Anthropology UNM Gallup
W
itch Wells is near the border with Arizona and New Mexico. Basically a spot on the map, it is a cluster of homes and small “rancheros” at the end of the back side road out of the Zuni Pueblo. In the midst of the area is an arroyo with a natural spring, and an expansive rock face with hundreds of petroglyphs pecked into it. Amongst these petroglyphs are some that people say are of Ye’iitsoh - Navajo for Bigfoot, including multiple representations of large feet next to
much smaller “human” feet, and a full body representation flattened against the rock to emphasize its enormous hands and feet. These petroglyphs could be several thousand years old. This speaks to a potential awareness of some kind of bipedal animal living alongside local indigenous peoples for hundreds of generations.
I learned about this site by accident from a student while teaching a class in human evolution at the Zuni Pueblo, Moreover, one of my students from this class approached me about a “problem” a relative was having. Something was killing her livestock down at Ramah Navajo, and leaving big bipedal
footprints behind. Not being an expert in cryptid primates, having not more than a casual interest in the phenomena, I contacted Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University – considered a world forensic expert on unusual bipedal trackways. After several conversations, including one critiquing a recreation of a Gigantopithecus (a presumed ancestral Bigfoot) skull, I decided to invite Jeff to give a lecture at UNM- Gallup on the phenomena, and maybe help us solve the local riddle of the dead, strangled, and disappeared livestock associated with giant barefoot prints.
In the fall of 2015, Jeff did indeed show up and lecture, although we were unprepared for the response. The lecture and topic were advertised through our UNM-Gallup media department, and we expected at the most to have maybe forty or fifty people show up. This was based on presumptions that Bigfoot sightings were rare in New Mexico, few people knew about it or were locally interested, and that the center of the activity was the Northwest coast, where amongst 178 other indigenous, global and regional names, the reported animal is often called Sasquatch. All our presumptions were wrong. The Ye’iitsoh presentations and lectures turned out to be the most highly attended academic event ever sponsored by the campus. Over two days, an estimated 411 people from five states showed up, and the enthusiasm and awareness of the phenomena exceeded all expectations. Day 1 included scientific presentations on hominid evolution, and the possibility that we as humans are not the “sole
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February 2021
