European settlers reported them from the beginning—the hairy people called shumacki or sasquatch. Mostly they left humans alone, but there were some ugly encounters. On the Arkansas River in the winter of 1822, a hooting and growling band of shumacki pelted settlers’ cabins with stones and drove them from the territory. In 1870, workers with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad captured a juvenile and sold it to a carnival, which held it on display until it died, wheezing and pustuled, of smallpox. As late as last year, a shadowy figure stepped from a ditch near Lynnwood, Washington to leer at a stranded motorist. But the most brutal meeting in history happened on the Beaver River in 1882 during a spell of . . . Wet Weather.