Native Grandfather Recounts Lifelong Forest People Encounters

So I just stumbled across this gem of a video over on YouTube from a channel called The Round Table Of Knowledge, and let me tell you, this one is packed with some seriously compelling stuff. The host, Steve, is diving into a pile of viewer-submitted emails and experiences, and one story in particular stopped me in my tracks. A man who goes by Hawk reached out with a story passed down from his grandfather, who was born in Montana near the Canadian border in the late 1800s. His grandfather was of Shoshone and Flathead (Salish Kootenai) heritage, and his family eventually relocated to a reservation in Wyoming. After being taken to a government school as a child, the grandfather ran away and headed back north to Canada, where he worked as a water boy on a logging crew before eventually returning to the res. Now here's where it gets really interesting. Hawk's grandfather spent his life in the mountains and had plenty of stories about the "forest people" — a term many Indigenous tribes use for Sasquatch. Hawk struggled with whether to share these stories since his grandfather never explicitly gave permission, but feeling his own time was running short, he decided to pass the stories along. The tale he shared is absolutely wild. One late spring day, his grandfather was making his way down a steep, loose shale mountainside when he heard a ruckus below — roars and yelling. He recognized one roar as a bear and scrambled down to investigate. When he reached the drop-off, he couldn't stop his slide and went over the edge, landing right in the middle of a fight between a big sow black bear and a forest person. The bear had the forest person gripped by the left arm, pulling backward while sweeping at it with its right paw. The forest person was side-stepping, trying to avoid the paw strikes. Hawk's grandfather stood up, trying to figure out which way to run, when he noticed two bear cubs blocking his path. He kicked at them, one bit back, and started making a racket — which caused the mama bear to release the forest person and charge at him instead. Armed with an old single-shot "brush gun" — a short, crude rifle that Hawk says he still owns — the grandfather fired into the bear's face at about four feet away. The shot took out both of the bear's eyes, and the bear began rolling around pawing at its face. That's when the forest person ran over and started beating the bear in the head with a large rock while the grandfather held down one of the bear's back legs to keep it still. After the bear was finished, the forest person stepped over the sow's back, holding it down with his left hand while continuing to strike it with the rock in his right. Hawk's grandfather, sitting on his backside holding the bear's leg for dear life, described the moment he realized he was looking up at, well, the back end of a forest person who was bent over finishing the job. Then something remarkable happened. The forest person stood up straight, threw his head back, and just stared at the sky. The grandfather didn't move. In the blink of an eye, the forest person had moved about ten feet away and was standing there looking at him. Then, according to the story, the forest person smiled and began chuckling. The grandfather smiled and laughed back. The forest person then crouched down and began rubbing dirt into his badly bitten arm and the scratch marks on his left thigh and leg from the bear's paws. The grandfather noticed he was also bleeding from a cub bite on his ankle, so he cut some fat from the sow and rubbed it on his own wound. He then walked over and showed the forest person how to use the bear fat on his wounds, which the forest person did before licking all the grease off his hands. They sat together in the shade for a while, just looking at each other. The video cuts off right as the forest person approaches the tree where the cubs had climbed, but the implication is clear — this was the beginning of a friendship between the grandfather and the forest person. Stories like this one align with what many Indigenous traditions have long held — that Sasquatch are not animals or beasts, but intelligent beings with their own cultures, families, and even a sense of humor. The detail about rubbing dirt and bear fat into wounds is particularly fascinating because it mirrors traditional Indigenous medicine practices, and the idea that a forest person would learn this technique from a human suggests a level of intelligence and adaptability that goes far beyond what mainstream science typically attributes to unknown primates. The video also includes other submitted experiences and photos, which Steve mentions at the top of the show. If you're into reading firsthand accounts from people who claim contact with these beings, this is definitely worth checking out. Hawk's story alone is worth the watch, but there appear to be multiple submissions covered throughout the episode. Head over to YouTube and search for The Round Table Of Knowledge to find this one. Trust me, you'll want to hear the rest of Hawk's grandfather's story and see what other experiences were shared.