Musings on Sasquatch in Mormon Folklore

Thus Spake Bigfoot

As within any long-standing organization or subculture, a plethora of specific folklore exists within Mormonism. But because of Mormonism's exact and important origins in time and place, some of its folkloric tales seem to be overpacked little gems fabulously bursting with psychic illumination for the larger culture. A Bigfoot encounter in 1938 by a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve, David W. Patten is such a story, and may hold a key to an ancient pancultural mystery.

In the early 1820's, a teenage Joseph Smith experienced the "First Vision" in the sacred grove in Palmyra, New York, and the egg that would be Mormonism was fertilized. On a macrocosmic American scale, there was great division regarding religion, and much of the strife centered right in this same area in New York State. A couple decades later, this same region would become an epicenter for other antebellum socio-cultural upheavals and Great Beginnings, such as the women's right movement, and abolition.

The path and migration of Mormonism perfectly mirrors the larger ensuing mass American exodus. Moroni's presentation of the gold plates mirrors the gold rush, and the Mormon pioneering efforts to the promised land of the great West are akin to The Louis and Clark expedition and Westward expansion. The persecution and martyrdom by one's own countrymen that Mormons faced had its similarities within similar dynamics as seen in the Civil War and the Indian battles.

In this assertion that Mormonism is a perfect cultural hologram, it stands to reason that specific events and issues within may hold poignant information and reflections for and about the larger culture. In 1938 Tennessee, high ranking church leader David W. Patten has a rather outrageous encounter with a creature; below is Elder Patten's well-documented experience, as originally recalled and narrated by Abraham O. Smoot: