Hello, everybody. I am Donna Copus. I'm of Shawnee descent. My native name is Wabi, a Yapia, Tamponia, which means white wolf woman. My dad, I grew up, my dad's a hunter, a trapper. He dug roots. Of course, I lived on a big 300-acre farm

with everything there. We call, we don't call the Bigfoot. We call them the watchers because they watch over us. This is a very sacred thing for us. To us, they're part of our family.

They're very important. We grow up being, you know, I grew up being taught that they're here to

protect us. And the first time that I saw one, I was six years old. I was digging roots with my dad.

There was a county fair in town and I wanted to go to the fair and dad's rules was you had to make so much your own money, even though I was six.

That was just my dad.

And we were, been digging yellow root patch that day and after a while, he stood up and my dad wore

bib overhauls and he chewed tobacco. So he took his tobacco out of his top of his bibs, walked over to a

stump that was close by, and he laid his tobacco on there. And then he always called me Duky. He never called me by Donna. He called me Duky. And he said, come on, it's time to go. Of course, I'm grumbling. You know, I don't want to leave. I'm digging my toe into dirt. And it's like, no, we need to go. And so we had two 100-pound feed sacks.

They're the old burlap feed sacks because you have to separate the roots.

Roots goos in one, tops in the other because they're sold separate.

And so we start walking away.

And of course, again, I'm kind of like pulling his hand.

I don't want to go.

You know, I want to finish.

And he's like, no, come on.

And as I look back, um, beside where I'm digging, probably not more than 30 feet from

where I was digging, this massive, huge black figure stood up, eight foot tall, at least

eight foot tall.

And it took that tobacco off of the stump and, um, eight foot tall, at least eight foot tall.

And it took that tobacco off of the stump.

And, of course, I'm scared.

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