Wendigo (folklore)

The wendigo, or windigo, is a creature from Native North American folklore that is said to have an overwhelming desire to feed on human flesh. Legends of the wendigo are found primarily among the native peoples of the Great Lakes region. The creature is most often depicted as a cold, emaciated giant with large claws. It roams the remote woodlands searching for food. Among some cultures, the wendigo is an evil spirit that can possess a human; in others, a human transforms into a wendigo when he or she is consumed by greed. In some instances, transformation occurs when a person engages in cannibalism. The creature's name has also been attached to a controversial mental illness characterized by an intense craving to eat human flesh.

Background

The legend of the wendigo is believed to have originated among the Algonquin people, an indigenous culture from the Ottawa Valley region of Ontario and western Quebec, Canada. The Algonquin were traditionally a hunting and fishing society. The people lived in cone-shaped dwellings constructed out of birchbark. The Algonquin were closely related to several other cultures of the region, including the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe—a people commonly referred to as the Chippewa in the United States. The Algonquin and these related cultural groups are collectively known as the Anishinaabe.

The Anishinaabe and other indigenous North American peoples adhere to a religious belief that souls, or spirits, exist in the natural objects, people, and animals of the world around them. In the Algonquin language, these spiritual forces are called manitou, meaning "spirit" or "supernatural being." Manitou may be good, evil, or indifferent to the needs of humans. The benevolent creator deity, or Great Spirit, of the Algonquin is referred to as Kitchi-Manitou.

Overview

The wendigo is considered a manitou whose name very loosely translates to "evil spirit that devours mankind." The most common pronunciation of the name is WEN-dih-goh; however, pronunciations vary by language. The Algonquin, for example, pronounce the creature's name as WEE-jih-goh. A similar evil spirit in the legends of the Abenaki people is called kee-wakw. The Cree have a beast they call witiko, while the Iroquois call it stonecoat.

Some native folklore claims the wendigo was once a human warrior who made a bargain with an evil being to obtain great fighting skills to defeat his enemies. He was transformed into a fearsome creature and achieved his victory and protected his tribe. However, the people grew fearful of the warrior and banished him to the forest, where he became the cannibalistic wendigo.

Depictions of the wendigo vary by culture, but they are most often described as giant beasts about 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall with glowing eyes, yellow dog-like teeth, and long tongues. They sport long, razor-sharp claws on their hands and feet, and they are sometimes pictured as having antlers. Wendigos are said to be malnourished to the point of emaciation and carry with them the smell of death. Some accounts claim the wendigo's body grows as it consumes human flesh. As a result, its hunger grows as well so that it is never satisfied and constantly starving.

In some myths, the wendigo is said to stalk its prey through the forest, baiting and tormenting it before going in for the kill. In other tales, the wendigo can possess a human, transforming the person into a cannibalistic beast. In some versions, the wendigo may be covered in ice or have a heart of ice. This frozen heart was sometimes said to be the human who transformed into the beast. To defeat this type of wendigo, the human at its core must first be killed. In some folklore, killing a wendigo could free the trapped human. But in most tales, the only release for those possessed by a wendigo was death.

A variation of the legend holds that a wendigo would possess or punish a human who displayed extreme greed and reward those who practiced moderation. Another common version states that a human may be transformed into a wendigo if he or she tastes human flesh. In the cold, remote forests of the Great Lakes region, where starvation during winter was a very real danger, the myth of the wendigo may have been created as a warning against resorting to cannibalism.

The wendigo was a part of the rich folklore of the region, and tales of the beast intrigued both the early settlers and native peoples of the northern woods. Reports of wendigo sightings were common up until the early twentieth century, and they often accompanied strange deaths. In 1907, a Cree man named Jack Fiddler was arrested in the murder of a Cree woman. Fiddler said the woman was about to transform into a wendigo and his actions prevented her from preying on other members of the tribe. Fiddler also claimed to have hunted and killed fourteen other wendigos in his lifetime. He committed suicide before he could be brought to trial.

During one harsh winter in the 1870s, a Cree trapper named Swift Runner killed and ate his family, despite being just miles from a nearby supply post. Swift Runner's account and similar stories have led to the belief in a mental illness called wendigo psychosis, a condition categorized by cannibalistic delusions and a desire to eat human flesh. The disorder is thought to be culturally specific, as it only affects the native people of the Great Lakes. Some experts argue that enough evidence exists to support claims that wendigo psychosis is real, while others maintain the illness is a fabrication.

The wendigo was first introduced to a wider cultural audience by English writer Algernon Blackwood with his 1910 novella The Wendigo. The story recounts an encounter a group of hunters has with a wendigo in the Minnesota wilderness. In horror writer Stephen King's 1983 novel Pet Sematary, the wendigo is an evil force responsible for bringing the dead back to life. The wendigo has also been used as a character in Marvel Comics and as an adversary in several video games.

Bibliography

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Black, Meredith Jean. "Algonquin." Canadian Encyclopedia, 26 Oct. 2016, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/algonquin/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2018.

Dillion, Grace L. "Windigo." Portland State University, web.pdx.edu/~dillong/Windigo%20(Dillon).pdf. Accessed 21 Jan. 2018.

Dove, Laurie L. "How Wendigoes Work." HowStuffWorks, science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/wendigoes.htm. Accessed 22 Jan. 2018.

Koger, Grove. "Wendigo." American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore, edited by Christopher R. Fee and Jeffrey B. Webb, ABC-CLIO, 2016, pp. 1035–36.

"Legendary Native American Figures: Windigo (Wendigo, Windego)." Native Languages of the Americas, www.native-languages.org/windigo.htm. Accessed 21 Jan. 2018.

Rivkin, Jennifer. Searching for the Wendigo. Rosen Publishing Group, 2015.

Taylor, Troy. "The Wendigo: The North Woods of Minnesota." Prairie Ghosts, 2002, www.prairieghosts.com/wendigo.html. Accessed 21 Jan. 2018.