The Journal of Mormon History recently published an investigation into Mormon encounters with Bigfoot. (No, not Sen. Kevin Van Tassell, right, the other, hairier Yeti.)

The article discusses early LDS writings that seem to suggest that Bigfoot (a.k.a Sasquatch) is really Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve who murdered his brother Abel. Killer Cain was cursed to become a fugitive wandering the earth. Sort of like Rocky Anderson.

All kinds of sites, from LDS discussion groups to Bigfoot hunters have weighed in on the possiblities. 10ZenMonkeys reports on it:

It may not be the first controversy tackled by new Mormon President, Thomas S. Monson. But the article's author, Matthew Bowman cites a 1919 manuscript describing Hawaiian missionary E. Wesley Smith "being attacked by a huge, hairy creature, whom Smith drives off in the name of Christ" the night before the mission was dedicated. His brother tells him the attacker must've been Cain.

Much earlier there was the encounter of David W. Patten, a close Joseph Smith associate, with a big hairy guy. At dusk in 1835, Patten saw a tall galoot, covered in hair, lumbering near his mule. As Patten approached the potential convert:

...he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth, but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my sight.

In wasn't until the 1980s that the connection between these stories and Bigfoot was made, says Bowman on the Mormon Mentality blog.

I guess we can expect a bill from Sen. Chris Buttars requiring Bigfoot be taught in public schools as part of evolution.