Wendigo: Cannibalism in Native American Folklore

Wendigo anthropophagiteism in aboriginal Ameri rat Folklore Connor D professie EN156-01 Mythology Professor Quinn 30March13 Lurking in the deep woods of the Northern United St takes and Southern Canada lies a shadowy and fear some(prenominal) Native American monster, the Wendigo. The Wendigo is by far virtuoso of the some mysterious and feargond monsters in not moreover in the Algonquian folklore which it is attri saveed to, merely also new(prenominal) indigenous populations all(a) oer the domain of a function.Although this pecker goes by m all names in the Native American Tribes, including Wechuge (Athapaskan Beaver), Windigo (Algonkian), Witiko (Sekani), Wittikow (Cree), Wintuc (Lenape), Wintiko (Objibwa), and otherwise(a)s, it is represented in the folklore of gentle universey cultures. For the sake of simplicity, the term Wendigo (Woodland Cree) will be personad byout this paper. Native Americans lived in consistency with the land around them, and their legends an d stories showed the necessity to pull through that harmony, and the consequences of failing to do such.The story and idea behind the Wendigo is no excommunication to this organism an unnatural and dysfunctional part of life. This paper will surveil and analyze the role of the Wendigo in Native American legend as well as the effect that it had on, not only the Natives Americans, that those who came into tint and studied the tribes. The Wendigo harmonize to legend, a Wendigo is n all a man nor non- compassionate, but earlier some social occasion in amidst.A fully changeed Wendigo is intimately often expound as a giant creature standing between octonary and thirty feet tall, possessing incredible strength and speed, sizable claws and a body that looks akin a skeleton with ash-toned skin. How forever, in any stage of transformation, it is most easily identified by its ravenous and continuous thirst for human mush (Atwood 84). A Wendigos hunger is believed to be so insat i subject that one of first things it exacts is its own lips (Carlson 359). For Native Americans, en forecloseing a Wendigo, whether by accident or on purpose, could e the last mistake you ever make. You cannot outrun or outwit a Wendigo and according to most stories, you ar unable to disgorge or plead with the creature due to the position it has lost the energy for human speech after a wide period of isolation (Atwood 84). However, that does not mean they argon intelligent. The amount of quantify they have played out alone in forced isolation has made them the perfect hunter. They do not pursue their victims with inchoate frenzy but rather use superior cunning and an advanced knowledge of their games desires and weaknesses.They hunt commonwealth with the heathen strategy and intelligence that people use to hunt animals (Ridington 110). Their hunting skills argon only amplified by their utmost(a) elusiveness and ability to get in in the harshest of climates. They are th e epitome of everything to be afraid of in the woods. The original Wendigos can be found in the Pawnee creation myth, as the creatures that came before the Pawnee and were destroyed by the Creator Tirdwa. The men of the present era were not the original inhabitants of the earth.They were preceded by another carry people of great size and strength. These were so swift of foot, and so plyful, that they could easily run down and kill the buffalo The race of giants had no respect for the Ruler. On the contrary, they derided and insulted him in every way possible. When the lie rose, or when it thundered and rained, they would defy him. They had great confidence in their own powers, and believed that they were able to cope with the Creator. As they increased in numbers they grew more defiant, and at length became so bad that Tirdwa determined to destroy them.This he move to do at first by shooting the lightning at them but the bolts glanced aside from their bodies without injuring t hem. When he found that they could not be killed by that means, he sent a great rain, which destroyed them by drowning (Grinnell 122). According to legend, a few of these giants managed to escape the flood and the Wendigos managed to survive. As the Creator made the sensitive species of man, the original Pawnee, these giants shrunk back into the wilderness, emerging only occasionally to feed on the unsuspecting human.There are two kinds of Wendigos, Non- humankind and Human. The first human Wendigo is sometimes give tongue to to have been a man who, driven mad by hunger and snow blindness, mistook his family for a group of beavers, killed and ate them (Smith 68). Human Wendigos do not always take on the traditional depict appearance unless they are exposed to the severe isolation required to drive the person mad. virtually human Wendigos mostly retain their human features, and instead only sleep with the desire for loneliness and a zest for human grade.Also common to stories, both(prenominal) in legend and those recorded by persons studying native tribes, was the smell that a person transforming into a Wendigo had lost permanent control over their own actions and that the only possible solution is ending (Ridington 108). Many people, fearing that they would pose harm to their family, begged for death rather than face a full transformation. Human Wendigos, although powerful, can be killed by dismemberment and the burning the remains to retain the monstrous olfactory sensation from ever returning to the earth (Atwood 85).In the majority of stories that publication in the death of a Wendigo, that Wendigo was at one time a human. Other traditional cures involved the wasting disease of copious amounts of hot nastiness from sources such as bear round, melted deer tallow, and sturgeon oil (Atwood 85). Non-Human Wendigos are seen as the original Wendigos that were around before the first humans. These creatures are considered to be much more powerful than their human counterparts, and were able to inhabit and lash out the dreams of their victims. These creatures rarely appear in legends, but rather are unholy for the actions of a have person.Killing a non-human Wendigo was not easy and stories celebrated the intrepidity of those who acted as bait in Wendigo traps. Algonquians often had great battles and had to employ the garter of shamans (Podruchny 690). It is important to note that non-human Wendigos are considered by Native Americans to be Other initiationly, and on the same degree as the liven up that inhabit the spirit mankind alongside the Creator. Origins and Folklore The earliest reference to Wendigo occurs as an entry in the Powhatan mental lexicon appended to Stracheys Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania.The original word was wintekowa, meaning owl in Algonquian. For many natives, in particular member of the Cree Nation, Owl calls were precursors of the deaths of individual(a)s, and thus owls were seen as the sign of a flood tide Wendigo. Owls, like Wendigos, are formidable predators and possess large glistening eye, and therefore became synonymous with the same (Brightman 341). The word Wendigo itself is derived from the Cree word wihtikowiw, meaning he eats greedily, which may explain the reason why ost believed to be Wendigos were isolated from the community before they consumed everything the community had. Native American Tribes lived in harmony with the land and the creatures around them. All tribes believed that upsetting the natural arrangement of the world would cause severe disarray and eventually would lead to the destruction of the world. To counter this, hunters and gatherers would take only what they needed, waste nothing, and praise the creator for allowing them to be applaudable to take such.Animals were held in high regard, not only for their gifts of solid food, clothing, and other materials, but also for the powers endowed upon them by the creator. Eating the sort of an animal was utter to transmit to persons, under appropriate circumstances, desired attributes of the species. For example, raw moose linage is verbalize to impart onto the hunter a kind of invisibility sex act to the perceptions of game animals, thus allowing the hunter greater luck in the happy hunting of animals due to his increased stealthy abilities (Brightman 364).Like the flesh of any other animal, human flesh was believed to possess a Great touch power that is acquired through consumption of the tissue or organs. Eating human flesh would exacerbate the powers already present in the human consumer endowing the Wendigo physical and spectral abilities to overcome and eat human prey. In essence, a humans abilities were multiplied and would eventually cause them to expand out of control and transform the person into a Wendigo (Brightman 364).The Wendigo often appears in stories in legends, but remote most other mythical creatures, its purpose was less to te ach deterrent example values, and more to impart upon members of a community the consequences from straying from the natural order of life and defiance of the rules of the community. There are three kinds of stories in which a Wendigo is a part of. The first kind of story, involves a Wendigo which may be presented as a manifestation of the environment the spirit is a spirit of place. In these stories, meeting up with a Wendigo carries no more honorable weight than meeting up with a bear.If you get eaten, about all that can be said of you is that you ought to have been less unlucky (Atwood 86). In the second kind of story, a Wendigo appears as a warning or as a message to the protagonist. In these stories, if you get eaten by a Wendigo, the audience doesnt feel sorry for you, because it was your own fault for getting eaten. These stories served to send the message that if you behaved and followed the rules like you were supposed to, such a thing would neer happen to you (Atwood 8 6).The third kind of story the Wendigo is a disperse of the protagonists psyche, and represents part of their subconscious that is made public to teach a lesson. In these stories, human beingnesss who have become a Wendigo have not actually change, but in fact worried so much that the creature they have feared or dreamed about splits off from the rest of their personality, destroys it, and becomes manifested through the persons body (Atwood 86). These were used to teach lessons in regards to gluttony, loneliness, and other behaviors seen by natives to be unnatural and destructive.Wendigo stories express the danger and isolation of existent in the subarctic wilderness as well as taboos against cannibalism (Ferrara 77). The Wendigo was seen as the personification of winter, hunger, spiritual selfishness, and isolation (Atwood 85). Winter is a time of scarcity in both food and warmth, and was considered by the natives to be one of the most necessary times for a community to band together to survive the harshness. A scarcity of materials would give rise to hunger forcing people to either share what they had with each other for the good of the group, or hoard what they had for their own sakes.The survival to hoard, and act of selfishness, was seen as an act of defiance not only against a group, but the Creator himself. The penalty for such a choice was being ostracized and isolated from the remainder of the community, and in some cases, death. Transformation According to lore, there are four recorded ways to be transformed into a Wendigo, either human or non-human. Most methods of transformation complicate large amounts of stress or pain, both mental and physical, and a long transformation period that may not occur all at once.In order to become a non-human Wendigo, one must either be born a Wendigo, or be eaten by a Wendigo. Although an individual Wendigo may once have been a man or a woman, once fully transformed they no longer have any evidence of gender (Atwood 84). Because of this, there is no recorded lore of Wendigos ever giving birth to new Wendigos, other than the Pawnee origins legend in regards to Wendigos inhabiting the world before man. Because of this, most non-human Wendigos are said to be the originals that have survived for hundreds of years. The other method is to be eaten by a Wendigo and have our now evil spirit enter the otherworld. A person suffering this quite a little becomes the Native equivalent of a Demon and possesses humans through dreams and thoughts. Thoughts of the Wendigo are said to drive a person mad with anxiety about becoming a Wendigo, to the point that they give in to the desires to consume other people (Ferrara 79). Native Shamans were notorious in legends for using their ability to communicate with the spirits in order to send one of these creatures into the dreams of another, thus tormenting them with the thought of being transformed.To become a human Wendigo is much worse a fate than a non- human Wendigo. To become such, a human must either consume human flesh, or be bitten by a Wendigo. The reason for the consumption of human flesh is irrelevant, as soon as it passes your lips, you fate is essentially sealed. Legends of this kind of transformation speak of people starving from a pretermit of food, who eventually give in to the desire for food and eat their companions or family members. Like the stories of the Loup Garou or French word for werewolf, a Wendigo bite served as another way for one to be transformed into one of these creatures.However, hostile werewolves, a human was unable to transform back into a human once the transformation had begun (Podruchny 681). Both being bitten and the consumption of human flesh was said to not be instantaneous but rather a lengthy process, signaled by a period of strange emotions and behaviors by the possessed person that served as a series of warnings to others (Ferrara 79). The Wendigo in Reality In 1767, Alexander Henry ob served an Ojibwa man who had killed and eaten four relatives during a food crisis. Henry recorded the actions of the tribe in his journal. The Indians entertain an opinion that the man who has once made human flesh his food will never afterwards be satisfied with any other He ate with relish nothing that was given to him but, indifferent to the food prepared, fixed his eyes continually on the children which were in the Indian lodge, and frequently exclaimed, How fat they are Be this as it may, his behavior was considered, and not less naturally, as marked with the most alarming symptoms and the Indians, apprehensive that he would prey on these children, fixed on putting him to death (Brightman 348). The tribe was so scared of the unnaturalness of the mans actions that they had him killed. Not unlike the Salem enthrall Trials, those venture of being a Wendigo were given little or no chance to withstand themselves. They were immediately outcast from the group and treated like th ey were infected with some sort of disease. In many cases, acts of cannibalism were not actually witnessed, but rather reported by the suspected individual or other persons, or didnt even occur at all. In seventy cases reported, 44 involved an actual act of cannibalism.In 26 cases, or 37 share the potential Wendigo either recovered or was killed to prevent cannibalism (Rohrl 98). Around the time of Freud, psychologists began to analyze the stories and multiple cases regarding the Wendigo. Many noted that the common link between most cases was a psychological weakness and breakdown of the normally cognitive process personality (Ridington 107). From these psychologists, emerged the term Wendigo Psychosis which was used to describe the mental state of persons suspected or convicted of being a Wendigo.People suspected of suffering from this were often described as being Bushed or suffering from Cabin febrility (Atwood 87). For most, in order to reach such a breakdown of sagaciousnes s required large amounts of time spent apart from others, usually in harsh or near fatal conditions. The compulsive desire and craving for human flesh that appears in many of the Wendigo cases may point to a psychotic person breakdown of normal emotions, motivations, and satisfactions in people who kill or are killed as cannibal monsters.However, unlike many other psychotic breakdowns, Wendigo behavior it is believed to be genuine and real by the members of society as well as by the afflicted individual (Ridington 128). More lately however, another possible reason for the actions of those believed to be Wendigos was uncovered, a lack of appropriate diet. Meat, and especially fatty meat, is essential to the diet of the Eskimo and of Northern Athapaskan Indians. Researchers claimed that a fat deficiency could lead to headache, and, in four to eight weeks, in the long run death (Rohrl 100).Was the reason for the actions of some not necessarily motivated by extreme hunger, but rather a lack of proper nutrition? It has been demonstrate that a drop in the blood sugar level can lead to many psychic phenomena, including depressive states, anxiety, and other symptoms that have been lumped together as neuroses (Rohrl 100). The accepted conclusion is that although persons suffering from Wendigo Psychosis have experienced a large amount of mental stress, the fearsome creature itself does not in fact exist.Like many other mythological creatures, the Wendigo was placed in Native American legend to explain things that the natives could not understand at the time, and to enforce the rules of the community. Psychologist Lou Marano ultimately went further in a 1982 article stating that Wendigos had never existed, at to the lowest degree as people overcome by cannibal desires. Instead, he adopt a functionalist interpretation (influenced by scholarship on the Salem Witch trials), arguing that the Wendigo was a phenomenon that allowed Algonquians to kill the marginal, the men tally ill, and the unpopular (Smallman 575).Works Cited Atwood, Margret. Cannibal Lecture. Saturday darkness 110. 9 (1995) 81-90. JSTOR. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. Brightman, Robert A. The Windigo in the Material World. Ethnohistory 35. 4 (1988) 337-79. JSTOR. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. Carlson, Nathan D. reviving Witiko (Windigo) An Ethnohistory of Cannibal Monsters in the Athabasca District of Northern Alberta, 18781910. Ethnohistory 56. 3 (2009) 355-94. JSTOR. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. Ferrara, Nadia, and goof Lanoue. The Self in Northern Canadian Hunting Societies Cannibals and Other Monsters as Agents of Healing. 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