Wendigo

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

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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.

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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!!!