When this man said, “We’re having the family for dinner,” he wasn’t kidding.
STRIKING APPEARANCE
The Windigo is a mythological creature that is legend among people of the First Nations from the Rockies to Quebec. The beast also goes by Wihtikow, Witigo, Witiko, Windigo, Weendigo, Windago, Windiga, and Wee-Tee-Go. It supposedly feasts on human flesh, and the more it eats, the hungrier it gets.
Ethnohistorian Nathan Carlson in Edmonton has described the creature as “an owl-eyed monster with large claws, matted hair, a naked emaciated body and a heart made of solid ice.” Other stories paint Windigo as a lanky, 15-foot tall phantasm, complete with glowing eyes, long, yellowed canine teeth, and a hyper-extended tongue. Some say the monster is hairless, covered with jaundiced skin, and has stag-like horns. The creature often looks starved or has the rotting-corpse look that comes from losing parts of the skin to frostbite. Despite the rotting, a Windigo is very fast and strong with very large feet.
To make the horror of the Windigo even worse, the creature was thought to have been a human who transformed into the beast. The spirit of the Windigo could supposedly possess people and make them into wide-eyed, violent flesh eaters.
POSSESSED BY THE WINDIGO
Swift Runner, a Cree trapper in Alaska, wandered into the mission in St. Albert in the spring of 1879, claiming that he was the only one of his family to survive the harsh winter. However, the priests grew suspicious of him, as he looked well nourished and weighed over 200 pounds. At night, he screamed in his sleep. They reported him to the police, who escorted Swift Runner back to his family campground in Edmonton only to make the horrific discovery.
He murdered and ate eight members of his family. He was sentenced to death, but even up to the moment he was hanged Swift Runner insisted that he was possessed by an evil spirit that made him butcher and eat his family.
Other cases of Windigo possession in Canada have involved the person begging to be killed so they would do no harm to their families. Eyewitness reports describe the possessed as having swollen bodies and enlarged lips and mouths. The mental condition gained the named of “Windigo psychosis.”
The Edmonton Sun published a story about an incident in 1887 where Marie Courtereille, 40, died from ax blows from her husband and son. Testimony at the trial said that Courtereille had begged her family to kill her because she thought she was possessed by a Windigo and would eat her family. She roared like an animal and attacked her husband. The woman was tied down and watched around the clock until her husband and son decided to kill her. The community supported the family’s decision.
Jack Fiddler may be the most famous Windigo hunter. Fiddler, a Cree Indian, and his brother killed 14 people, all of which he claimed were Windigos. In 1907, he was arrested for killing his brother Joseph’s daughter-in-law.
CHENOOS
The Wabanaki tribe of the Maritimes and Quebec believed in evil, man-eating ice giants called Chenoos. A Chenoo was similar to a Windigo. It was once a human being who either became possessed by an evil spirit or committed a terrible crime (especially cannibalism or withholding food from a starving person). This turned the person’s heart to ice. In a few legends, a human who has become a Chenoo has been successfully rescued. Usually, however, once transformed into a Chenoo, the person can escape only through death.
PRACTICAL ADVICE
Windigos are notoriously hard to kill. By one account, Windigos have few weaknesses, and only a weapon of iron, steel or silver can kill one. One method involves shattering the creature’s ice heart with a silver stake and then dismembering the body with a silver axe.
If you find yourself alone and very hungry in Canada, get something to eat fast and resist any forces that might be changing you into a Windigo.
Car license plates in Ontario were made of leather in 1903.