In traditional lore they are often human-like in appearance akin to a yeti or sasquatch while modern takes have tended towards giving the Wendigo more noticeable animal traits such as antlers and hooves. See Also: Wendigo. Superpower Wiki Explore. New Blogs User-Made Powers.
Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Wendigo Physiology. This strange being is said to live alone in the forest and feeds on human flesh.
The Algonquian tribes called the wendigo the "spirit of lonely places," and they blamed many unsolved disappearances at the turn of the 20th century on wendigo attacks. 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. One of the most widely reported cases of a windigo spirit possessing a human is that of Swift Runner, a Native American who murdered and ate his entire family in the winter of He claimed to be possessed by a windigo at the time of the murders and was hanged for his crime.
Although his case is one of the most well-known. Therefore, Wendigos were portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and emancipated from starvation. As they continued to survive this way, feeding day after day on their own kind and never able to satiate their hunger, their bodies would begin to decay and transform into something less than human.
Basil Johnston, and Obiwi teacher from Ontario, provides us with this description:. 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 […. Alternatively, a person could become possessed by the spirit of a Wendigo, becoming violent and cannibalistic. Some tribes believed all it took was to be excessively selfish and greedy. Either way, the fear of the Wendigo was a strong deterrent against cannibalism and a great proponent of tribal unity. The taboo against such Wendigo-esque actions was so great that a ceremony was created in order to reinforce it.
The ceremony, known as wiindigookaanzhimowin, was performed during times of famine, and involved wearing masks and dancing backwards around a drum. Tags: algonquin , mythology , wendigo.
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