Okefenokee Bigfoot Report from 1829 Turns Deadly

From the Okefenokee swamp comes a bigfoot tale that dates back to 1829. Reportedly five men lost their lives during a vicious attack on their camp. But they did not lose their lives in vain.

"As they explored the very heart of the swamp, they made a startling discovery of gigantic footprints:

...The length of the foot was eighteen, and the breadth nine inches. The monster, from every appearance, must have moved forward in an easy or hesitating gait, his stride, from heel to toe, being a trifle over six feet.

The men, as newspapers of the time noted, "had seen enough." Ending their expedition and retreating out of the swamp, they related to their friends and neighbors what they had seen.

The story excited the curiosity of a party of hunters who lived just across the Florida line. Nine in number, they went into the swamp to find the mysterious giant. They were guided by one of the members of the original party:

..Following, for some days, the direction of their guide, they came at length upon the track first discovered, some vestiges of which were still remaining; pursuing these traces several days longer, they came to a halt on a little eminence, and determined to pitch their camp, and refresh themselves for the day.

The expedition was described in detail in newspaper reports published in February 1829. Those accounts indicated that as the hunters were discharging their guns to reload them with fresh powder for the night, a wild animal charged their camp:

...[T]he next minute he was full in their view, advancing upon them with a terrible look and ferocious mien. Our little band instinctively gathered close in a body and presented their rifles. The huge being, nothing daunted, bounded upon his victims, and in the same instant received the contents of seven rifles.

The fight, however, did not end there:

...[H]e did not fall alone, nor until he had glutted his wrath with the death of five of them, which he effected by wringing the head from the body. - Writhing and exhausted, at length he fell, with his hapless prey beneath his grasp.

As the creature lay dying on the ground, writhing and sometimes roaring, the men who survived the attack gathered around it to make a closer inspection. The creature was found to measure thirteen feet from head to toe, and "his breadth and volume of just proportions."

Immediately fearful that the dying monster's cries might attract others of ts kind, the hunters fled the swamp. The men who died in the battle with the creature were left lying where they had fallen."

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