Skookum Report from the 1800’s

One of the early white settlers, Elijah L. Wade worked mostly on the Quinalt Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. He religiously kept a diary and there is a very casual entry from February of 1878, in which he talks about tracking a skookum with his dogs, but being unable to catch up and shoot it. The area where this took place is now the town of Montesano. He says in his journal:

Wednesday Feb 27. 1878
I trimmed fruit trees all day. Put up the cattle & fead alone – with difficulty. Took my gun & went into the hills in the PM. The dogs got after a skukum but I could not overtake it.

The entry is quite nonchalant and perplexed his grandchildren, who write in his biography:

Grandfather’s diary frequently mentions having gone hunting that day, killing pheasants, quail, geese or ducks, and sometimes writing that he had gotten no game. Once he got on the trail of a ‘skookum’ but could not bag it. We have never been able to figure out what he meant by a skookum.

Two years ago, the entry was found again by John Pickering, Wade’s great grandson and (coincidentally) a sasquatch researcher.