The Monstrefact: Katcheet Ohuskw

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses a murderous monster from Naskapi legend. Plus Benjamin Franklin shows up...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas,
and monsters. In time among the First Nation's Naskapi people

(00:25):
of what is now Labrador, an old tale resonated into
modern times. There was a monstrous giant by the name
of katschet Oshchu. In his most notorious act of rage,
the monster trampled a man and woman to death with
his strange round feet. He cast the woman's unborn child

(00:45):
aside with his long nose, but the couple's daughter raised
the child into a mighty warrior. His name was to
jacob Ish. To Jacobish hunted the monster. He tracked his
strange round foot prints across the wilderness. He fought the
bears sent to kill him by the cowardly cot Chet. Finally,

(01:06):
he confronted his parents killer and pelted him with arrows.
In defeat, the monster said, kill me, cut me into pieces,
eat my head, but keep my ears for your bed.
To Jacobish and his sister did just this. Some of
the discarded pieces of the monster's body became birds and
other animals. The ears were saved for the jacobish's bed,

(01:29):
and the head of the monster well. It emerged from
the cooking pot and tried to follow our hero, but
he heard its chattering teeth and shot it with an arrow.
This tale is related by Mary Chandler Edmondston in a
n paper published in the Journal of the Illinois State

(01:52):
Archaeological Society. Contained several elements found in other folk tales,
such as a flying head and the fragments of a
monster's body becoming different animals. But perhaps you noticed three
other attributes of the monster catchet or school, his round feet,
his long nose, his ears like blankets. Edmonstone's paper was

(02:13):
titled the Mammoth and the Mastodon in the Folklore of
the Indians of North America, serving as a kind of
meta analysis of the time concerning different tales and traditions
among the native peoples of North America that could be
interpreted as describing mastodons and mammoths. These North American relatives
of elopments vanished during the late Pleistocene era, most likely

(02:36):
due to a combination of climate change and human hunting.
Is it possible that memories of human interactions with these
creatures survived in the oral tradition. Edmonston and others have
made the case that it is possible the stories she
writes would have survived because they were simply good stories,
while some of the elements would have evolved over time

(02:56):
influenced by other tales and encounters with living animals ecs
such as bears. Of course, we can never count out
the importance of human creativity in such traditions, but perhaps
the more outlandish physical attributes of the mammoths and mastodons
of old survived as unique counterintuitive elements. Scholars such as

(03:18):
Adrian Mayor, author of two thousand thirteen Fossil Legends of
the First Americans, have also considered the role of skeletal
and fossil remnants in the generation of these stories. Now,
there is one interesting aspect of the Catchette myth and
possibly other linked traditions. The monster we are told eats humans.

(03:39):
Elephants are famously herbivores, and we have reason to believe
mastodons and mammoths were as well. But as we've discussed
on stuff to bow your mind in the past, herbivorous
animals such as cows have been observed to eat meat
on occasion, and as Edmondson pointed out, at least one
account of an elephant killing and eating a human being

(04:01):
was in the books, a ninety case at the Zurich Zoo. Furthermore,
in twenty eleven, a rogue elephant was found to have
human flesh in its stomach after killing seventeen people in India.
In the latter case, however, the animal was allegedly under
durest following the killing of its calf, and the former
case involved a mid twentieth century zoo environment. Still, Edmondson

(04:24):
argues that under just the right circumstances, it was conceivably
possible for a mastodon or mammoth to have consumed human
flesh at some point. A single incident, after all, could
have been enough to enter the cycle of storytelling. But
there's another wrinkle in our tale of man eating elephants,
as reported by Brian Swytek for Wired in twenty twelve,

(04:46):
during the eighteenth century, the specialized molars of the mastodon
caused a certain amount of confusion. We know now that
the pointed cones on these teeth were specially adapted for
eating woody material. But at the time some thought these
teeth found amid masted on bones were those of some
unknown carnivore. British anatomist William Hunter, on the other hand,

(05:08):
went as far as to suggest that the mastodon itself,
dubbed American incognitum, was in fact a ravenous carnivore. Among
his detractors Benjamin Franklin, who advised that these molers quote
might be as useful to grind the small branches of
trees as to chaw flesh. Tune into additional editions of

(05:32):
the Monster Fact each week in September and October. As always,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for

(05:54):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.