The Wendigo also known as Weendigo, Windago, Waindigo, Windiga, Witiko, Wihtikow, and numerous other variants is a mythical creature appearing in the mythology of the Algonquian people. It is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit which can transform into humans, or which could possess humans. It is often described as a large bipedal creature reaching heights up to 15 feet,
glowing eyes, long yellowish canine teeth, and a hyper-extended tongue. Other accounts of the Wendigo say that
the creature has no fur at all and a pale almost dead looking skin.
Basil Johnston, an Ojibwa teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives one description of how Wendigos were viewed
| “ | The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odour of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption. | ” |
At the same time, Wendigos were embodiments of gluttony, greed, and
excess; never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they
were constantly searching for new victims. In some traditions, humans
who became overpowered by greed could turn into Wendigos.
Among the Ojibwa, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, Naskapi and
Innu, Wendigos were said to be giants, many times larger than human
beings (a characteristic absent from the Wendigo myth in the other
Algonquian cultures).Whenever a Wendigo ate another person, it would grow larger, in
proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so that it could never be
full. Wendigos were therefore simultaneously constantly gorging themselves and emaciated from starvation.
All cultures in which the Wendigo myth appeared shared the belief
that human beings could turn into Wendigos if they ever resorted to
cannibalism or, alternatively, become possessed by the demonic spirit of a Wendigo,
often in a dream. Once transformed, a person would become violent and
obsessed with eating human flesh. The most frequent cause of
transformation into a Wendigo was if a person had resorted to
cannibalism, consuming the body of another human in order to keep from
starving to death during a time of extreme hardship or famine.
Among northern Algonquian cultures, cannibalism, even to save one's own life, was viewed as a serious taboo; the proper response to famine was suicide or resignation to death.
On one level, the Wendigo myth thus worked as a deterrent and a warning
against resorting to cannibalism; those who did would become Wendigo
monsters themselves.
According to Native American mythology the Wendigo was once a great
warrior. When he faced an enemy he could not defeat the Wendigo could
give his soul and life in exchange for the power needed to defeat the
enemy and save his tribe. However, once the threat was eliminated the
Wendigo was forced to leave his tribe and wonder the countryside for
eternity. The Wendigo is further more cursed with a taste for human
flesh. The first accounts of the Wendigo myth by explorers and
missionaries date back to the 17th century. They describe it rather
generically as a werewolf, devil or cannibal. Different origins of the
Wendigo are described in various forms of the myth, besides a warrior
giving his soul to save his village other versions of the myth state
that a hunter may become a Wendigo when encountering it in the forest at
night. When the cannibalistic
element of the myth is expressed, it is said that anyone who eats the
flesh of a human will be transformed into a Wendigo.
In 1907, the same year that Algernon Blackwood wrote a short story
entitled The Wendigo, a Cree man named Jack Fiddler claimed to have
killed 14 of theses Monsters during the course of his lifetime. This
story generated international attention when Mr. Fiddler, who at the
time was 87 years old, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of
a Cree woman, whom he claimed was on the verge of transforming into a
Wendigo. It was said that neither Jack, nor his son Joseph, hesitated in
pleading guilty to the murder, however both insisted that their actions
averted what could have quickly become a greater tragedy should the
woman have been allowed to transform. Thats what we call truly bizarre!!!
