Wendigo


 * For the Marvel Comics character, see Wendigo (comics). For the 2001 horror film, see Wendigo (film)

The Wendigo (also Windigo, Windago, Windiga, Witiko, and numerous other variants) is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess humans, appearing in Algonquian mythology. Humans who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk, and the legend appears to reinforce this practice as taboo.

Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound disorder which involves an intense craving for human flesh and the fear that one will turn into a cannibal. This once occurred frequently among Algonquian Indian cultures, though has declined with the Native American urbanization.

Recently the Wendigo has also become a horror entity of contemporary literature and film, much like the vampire, werewolf, or zombie, although these fictional depictions often bear little resemblance to the original mythology.

In Algonquian mythology
The Wendigo is part of the traditional belief systems of various Algonquian-speaking tribes in the northern United States and Canada, most notably the Ojibwa/Saulteaux, the Cree, and the Innu/Naskapi/Montagnais. Though descriptions varied somewhat, common to all these cultures was the conception of Wendigos as malevolent, anti-social, and cannibalistic supernatural beings (manitous) of great spiritual power. They were strongly associated with the Winter, the North, and coldness, as well as with famine and starvation. Basil Johnston, an Ojibwa teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives one description of how Wendigos were viewed:

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.

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; the Wendigo myth thus served as a method of encouraging cooperation and moderation.

Among the Ojibwa, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, and Innu/Naskapi/Montagnais, 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, they would grow larger, in proportion to the meal they had just eaten, so that they could never be full. Wendigos were thus simultaneously constantly gorging themselves and emaciated from starvation.

Human Wendigos
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, alternately, become possessed by the 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 famine cannibalism, consuming the body of another human in order to keep from starving to death during a time of extreme hardship.

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.

Wendigo ceremony
Among the Assiniboine, the Cree and the Ojibwa, a satirical ceremonial dance was originally performed during times of famine to reinforce the seriousness of the Wendigo taboo. The ceremonial dance, known as a wiindigookaanzhimowin in Ojibwe and today performed as part of the last day activities of the Sun dance, involves wearing of a mask and dancing about the drum backwards. The last known Wendigo Ceremony conducted in the United States was at Windigo Lake of Star Island of Cass Lake, located within the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.

Windigo Psychosis
"Windigo Psychosis" (also spelled many other ways, including "Wendigo Psychosis" and "Witiko Psychosis") refers to a culture-bound syndrome, in which sufferers developed an insatiable desire to eat human flesh even when other food sources were readily available, often as a result of prior famine cannibalism. Such individuals generally recognized these symptoms as meaning that they were turning into Wendigos, and often requested to be executed before they could harm others. The most common response when someone began suffering from Windigo Psychosis was curing attempts by traditional native healers or Western doctors. In the unusual cases when these attempts failed, and the Wendigo began either to threaten those around them or to act violently or anti-socially, they were then generally executed. Cases of Windigo Psychosis, though real, were relatively rare, and it was even rarer for them to actually culminate in the execution of the sufferer.

One of the more famous cases of Windigo Psychosis involved a Plains Cree trapper from Alberta, Swift Runner. During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Within just 25 miles of emergency food supplies at a Hudson Bay Company post, Swift Runner butchered and ate his wife and five remaining children. He eventually confessed, and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan. That he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies, and that he killed all those present, reveal that Swift Runner's was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather a man suffering from Windigo Psychosis and becoming a homicidal cannibal.

Fascination with Windigo Psychosis among Western ethnographers, psychologists, and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historicity of this phenomenon. Some researchers argued that Windigo Psychosis was essentially a fabrication, the result of naive anthropologists taking stories related to them at face value. Others, however, pointed to a number of credible eyewitness accounts, both by Algonquians and by Westerners, as proof that Windigo Psychosis was a factual historical phenomenon.

The frequency of Windigo Psychosis cases decreased sharply in the 20th century as boreal Algonquian people came in to greater and greater contact with Western ideologies and more sedentary, less rural lifestyles. While there is substantive evidence to suggest that Windigo Psychosis did exist, a number of questions concerning the condition remain unanswered.

References in popular culture
Recently, Wendigos have become something of a stock fantasy horror character, along the lines of werewolves and vampires, usually bearing very little resemblance to the Algonquian spirit. They appear as characters in a number of computer and video games, including Final Fantasy, Digimon has a Wendigomon, and the Warcraft Universe, as well as role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. "Wendigo" is also a fictional character in Marvel Comics universe.

While Wendigos have been referenced in literature for many decades (including as one of the principal monsters in Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary, though most notably in Algernon Blackwood's 1910 horror story The Wendigo, which introduced the legend to horror fiction), recently the Wendigo mythology has been referenced quite often in movies and television, including the movies Wendigo, Ravenous and Ginger Snaps Back and in episodes of the television series Supernatural , Blood Ties and Charmed (see Wendigo (Supernatural) and The Wendigo).