11/09: Windigo

The Wendigo (also Windigo, Windago, Windiga, Witiko, Wihtikow, and numerous other variants) is a mythical creature appearing in the mythology of the Algonquin people. It is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess humans. Those who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk, and the legend appears to have reinforced this practice as taboo.
- Wikipedia
"It's nuthin' - nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin hittin' the bottle too long - a sort of great animal that lives up yonder," he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in its tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be very good to look at - that's all!"
- "The Wendigo" by by Algernon Blackwood


" The Weendigo 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 Weendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disenterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Weendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption. "
- Basil Johnston, an Ojibwa teacher and scholar from Ontario


The wendigo of Northrend dwell in bone-littered caves and venture out only to hunt. They are ferocious and aggressively defend their lairs, food supply, and young from any perceived threat. Adventurers who do not wish to be added to the wendigo's bone-mounds would be wise to run at the sound of their savage bellows.
- World of Warcraft
"[N]o man can meet with the Wendigo, / No man can face him or see him; / Only his track in the snow is seen, / And lost is the hunter that sees it.... The heart that ne'er quailed on the war-path / Turns to stone at the name of the Wendigo."
- Ernest Thompson Seton, Woodmyth & Fable

"Simpson declares that Defago's face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of those bladder-faces blown up by the hawkers on city streets, that change their expression as they swell. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face and body that had been in air so rarefied that, the weight of atmosphere being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and become - incoherent...."
- "The Wendigo" by by Algernon Blackwood
he would eat a great many more of them if he were not called elsewhere. But that Atchen, would come in his place to devour them, if they made a village, as they had decided to do; that he would come to get them, even up to the French Fort; that he would slaughter the French themselves.
- Paul Le Jeune

For some days afterwards, I wandered through the woods. Unfortunately, I met my wife and children. I said to them that my son had died of starvation but I noticed immediately that they suspected the frightening reality.
- Swift Runner

“On the neck of land a Salteaux Indian was put to death under singular circumstances. Being affected by some sort of madness and spoke to no one, and apparently ate nothing for a month. His tribe took the idea that he was a cannibal, and after wounding him severely they buried him before life was extinct. Many hours later the unhappy wretch was heard moving in his grave, so they dug him up and burned him to ashes.”
- James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk

del.icio.us tags: Windigo, Monster

