HAIRY MAN

The sasquatch is an ape-like creature in North American cryptozoology that's thought to be an amalgam of Native American and European folklore. The name reflects this too: it is likely an Anglicized corruption of a Salishan word. The term was first used in 1929 collection of stories by J.W. Burns, an agent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who transliterated it from Halkomelem sasq'ec, which meant "hairy man" or "wild man". Burns published the stories on April Fools' Day, and many took them to be a joke, dismissing them until a revival in the 1950s. The synonym bigfoot (first used in 1963) is a bit more self-explanatory, and the first documented claim of a Sasquatch/Bigfoot sighting was in an 1884 article where it was called "Jacko" and described as "half man and half beast".