All those names and not one set of bones or a skeleton huh? Native Americans believed in a lot of stupid shit. They were highly spiritualistic and believed in all sorts of cryptids. In addition to Bigfoot they also believed in Deer Women, Skin Walkers, Altie, and Thunderbirds.
What's up with this shit where we give ancient people more credibility when they claim something? What makes some Native American hunter who comes back to the tribe and claims to have seen something totally crazy like Bigfoot more credibility than some uneducated redneck hick going hunting today and claiming to have seen Bigfoot? Native Americans could have claimed to see a lot of things and they did. They also saw tree spirits and fairies.
That's how folklore works. People get isolated in the wilderness and their lizard brain starts making up wild things. I've been out for a period of time before in deep sauce woods and I get how it happens. Especially being alone your mind plays tricks on you. There were times when I was positive I was looking at a person who was watching me, but I'd hit them with some glass and see that it's just a weird tree or negative space and I'm just imagining shit. Combine that with a lack of an education and previous generations passing on stories of cryptids and that's how you get Bigfoot sightings.
How did these sightings start? Well at one point in history Bigfoot was probably a term for various species of the Homo genus that lived alongside early Homo Sapiens. Evolution isn't a start and stop process. It's a long period of change that's gradual and blurred. Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Homo Antecessor, Homo Neanderthalensis. There are probably a dozen different species that evolved alongside each other in early man's development. I'm sure all those people told stories of those hairy apes that live in the woods and how you should leave them alone. Over time stories grew and evolved themselves to become more fantastical and supernatural. That 5' tall animal becomes 9' tall with no effort.
Does that not seem like a pretty decent reason for why there are so many stories around the world of the same thing? They're just the campfire stories of ancient mankind referring to stories of ape species that their ancestors who were beginning to develop language and tribes might have seen around them. And just over a long time the tales have been spread partially because there's some ancient truth to them and partially because it's entertaining.
