Feature Story
True Tales of the Suquamish Sasquatch
At first, he thought it might be a bear, but as it ran, it knocked down trees like they were twigs. When the creature turned and looked at him, Mills realized he was seeing something different. Something far larger, far more mysterious.
“I didn’t know what it was at first,” Mills recalls. “But later, after seeing it again and again, I knew I had encountered Sasquatch.”
Mills, a Suquamish Tribal Elder and longtime forestry manager before his retirement in 2017, has had more than 40 such encounters during his decades of working in the forests around Suquamish lands.
Mills is not alone. In fact, countless people in the Suquamish community have their own Sasquatch stories. From strange noises in the woods to brief but unforgettable sightings, these experiences form part of the local lore. While some dismiss these accounts as tall tales, for others, including many Suquamish tribal members, these encounters are as real as the towering cedar trees of the Pacific Northwest.
Ian Lawrence, another Suquamish tribal member, had his own sighting during a childhood hiking trip near Dosewallips. Lawrence recalls being about 11 or 12 years old when he and a group of fellow students were hiking toward Lake Constance.
At one point, the group stopped to rest on a large boulder. From their elevated position, they had a clear view across to another part of the mountainside, where Lawrence noticed something strange.
“There was this large creature, some distance away, swinging its arms,” Lawrence remembers. “We could only see it from the hips up because of a rock in the way, but it was upright, and it wasn’t moving like a bear. It was definitely something I’ve never seen before or since.”
Lawrence acknowledges childhood memories can play their own tricks. “You start to wonder if you maybe just imagined it all.” But he recently ran into a friend who was also on that trip and casually asked if he remembered the hike.
“Oh, you mean the time we saw Sasquatch!?” replied his friend. Their memories of the big beast were identical.
An Unexpected Encounter
While Sasquatch is often associated with remote mountain and forest areas, sightings aren’t limited to the deep backcountry. Many people in the Suquamish area have reported encounters in more familiar surroundings.
Take Totten Road, for example, the site of many Suquamish Sasquatch sightings just off the busy thoroughfare connecting Bainbridge Island and Poulsbo.
About ten years ago, after a Suquamish Citizen Advisory Council meeting, Tom Curley, the Suquamish Tribe’s GIS and mapping expert, made a casual joke about Sasquatch. He didn’t expect much of a response, but Gail Petranek quickly grew serious and told her own story.
One dark, rainy night, Petranek was driving her Ford Excursion down Totten Road when something appeared in her headlights. At first, she thought it was a bear, walking on all fours. However, as the creature crossed the road, she realized it wasn’t a bear at all. Its back was level with the hood of her massive SUV, and it had long, stringy hair. Most striking was its face — longer than a bear’s, but without the snout.
The encounter left her frozen in her vehicle. As the creature disappeared into the woods, another car pulled up behind her. Petranek stepped out in the rain to ask the driver what they had seen. The woman in the car was visibly shaken, saying she didn’t know what she saw, but she was getting out of there as fast as she could. Later, when Curley showed Petranek some of David Mills’ sketches of Sasquatch, she took one look and said, “That’s it!”
Perhaps appropriately, a wooded lane off Totten Road not far from that and other sightings, was recently named Zugwuh, a rendition of the Lushootseed word for monster.
Mills: A Life in the Woods
If some might explain away Sasquatch sightings as more likely just bears – which often walk on their hind legs – Mills’ career put him in a unique position to know the difference.
Bear encounters were often a daily occurrence when Mills was out in the field. “Sometimes I’d see three or even four bears in a single day. I know what bears look like and smell like and act like. I know what it’s like to be between an angry momma bear and her cubs,” says Mills. “No, these encounters with Sasquatch, they were entirely different.”
Over the years, Mills carefully recorded his Sasquatch sightings in his foresters’ logbooks, often adding sketches and other notes.
A Closer Look
It was an early morning, and Mills was near Doe Kag Wats, a remote and heavily forested beach area sacred to the Suquamish people, where many of his sightings had occurred. He began to hear strange voices in the distance, so he ventured further into the woods, only to find himself witnessing something remarkable — a group of five Sasquatch.
“I saw two big males sitting side by side,” Mills recalls. “They were so close together, it almost looked like they were joined at the hip.” These males were massive — standing at least seven feet tall — with thick, muscular bodies covered in dark, shaggy hair. They weren’t alone. With them was an elderly female, also around seven feet tall, whose distinctive feature was her long, sagging breasts that swayed as she moved.
What struck Mills most about the female was how she interacted with the younger Sasquatch, who looked to be just a few years old. “The youth stood by her side, noticeably smaller but still upright,” with dark fur and a posture that hinted at its toddler-like age.
The group’s behavior was calm but focused. Mills observed the elder female wringing her hands nervously, while the two males seemed irritated by her movements, grunting as if to quiet her. “The males kept grunting at her, almost like they were telling her to stop making so much noise,” he recalls. Despite their size and power, there was a clear family dynamic at play.
As Mills watched, the family moved steadily away, crossing a small clearing before disappearing into the dense forest. He took in every detail he could during those moments, describing their fur as long and coarse, with shades of brown and black. Their faces were human-like but distinct, with pronounced brows, wide noses, and dark eyes that hinted at intelligence.
Their arms were long, swinging slightly as they walked, and their movements, though deliberate, were graceful for creatures of such size. Mills says he’s able to estimate their height and weight based on his years of experience hunting elk. He believes the males in this group weighed between 500 and 700 pounds, with thick, muscular frames similar in size to large grizzly bears.
Their towering height and bulk were unmistakable, especially as they moved with surprising agility. Mills couldn’t help but notice their incredible strength, recalling times he saw them easily lift large logs and push through thick brush as if it were nothing.
Tell-tale signs
In addition to their physical appearance, one thing Mills consistently associates with his Sasquatch encounters is the strong, unpleasant odor that seems to accompany the creatures. “They have this really bad smell, like a mix of body odor and something rotten,” he says. “You can smell it long before you see them.” That smell, along with an overwhelming sense of unease, has become a telltale sign for Mills whenever a sighting is near.
Mills has also heard Sasquatch communicate in a unique language. Their vocalizations, often a mix of low grunts and what sounded like gibberish, resembled a kind of primitive speech. “It’s almost like hearing someone pray in tongues,” Mills says.
In all his encounters with Sasquatch, Mills has noted variations in their appearance—some are tall and muscular, others more stocky or thin—but this family group remains one of the most complete sightings he has ever experienced. It wasn’t just a fleeting glimpse. He had seen them as they were: a family, a unit, living in the forest as naturally as any other animal.
Respect for the Unknown
He knows to the skeptics it can all sound a little crazy. But Mills hopes his experiences and encounters help people approach the idea of Sasquatch with an open mind and, if nothing else, bring some respect for the unknown. “I’m not out to convince anyone who doesn’t believe,” Mills says plainly. “I’m just telling people what I’ve seen out there.”
Mills believes that Sasquatch are not animals to be hunted or even feared but a species that has lived alongside humans for generations, choosing to remain elusive. “They’re just another species that refuses to be recognized,” he explains. “They want to live their own lives, doing what they’ve done for thousands of years, and we need to let them do that.”
He emphasizes the importance of protecting the natural environment where Sasquatch and other animals live. For Mills, it’s not about proving their existence but respecting the land and the creatures that inhabit it. “We’ve already taken so much from them, so let’s just try to respect them and their space.”
By Jon Anderson
Suquamish News Staff Writer
