October 29, 2013 • 35 mins
Wendigo: What are we to make of this evil spirit of Algonquin folklore, said to transform unfortunate travelers into cannibalistic monsters? Have true accounts of "wendigo psychosis" actually occurred in the Canadian wilds? Join Robert and Julie as they explore the mythic, anthropological and scientific dimensions of this fearsome legend.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
January six, eighteen ninety six. I went to see the
sick man today and he's a pitiful looking devil. They
had him with about six blankets and he still was
nearly freezing. I can do nothing for him. January twelve.
I went to see him today and he looks worse
than ever. I gave him a dose of castor oil,
but he he says his heart is freezing. He keeps
insisting he'll become a cannibal. He wants the Algonquins to
kill him before he gets worse. January Francois came here
(00:25):
and asked me if I would read some prayers for
the sick man. He doesn't look like a human being.
He seems to be terribly swollen in the body and face.
The sight of him is enough to frighten any person.
The poor Algonquin slept very little here for the last
nineteen days since he arrived. They have been watching him
all the time. I don't know how this will end.
January one Friendzois, came from me last night and I
(00:45):
went with him. I told him we ought to take
some rope with us and tie him up if we could.
The sound of him was terrible. It was like the
calling of a wild animal. We tied him with the
ropes and I left to find some more, but but
he couldn't find any, and when I got back, the
cords around his arms were already breaking. The Gonquins asked
what we shouldn't do. They said that when he got up,
he would kill all of us. I told them to
do what they had to do is I had no
(01:06):
more ropes which to bind him. Welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And that was the
(01:29):
account of Francis work beaten uh the Orkney HBC clerk
at the Trout Lake Outpost the winter of eight during
the alleged Windigo possession of napatan Auger. Edited slightly for
clarity's sake, but otherwise exactly what's in the history books.
And we wanted to bring that bit to your attention
(01:50):
because what we're talking about is a creature or a
possession that has to deal with cannibalism. Yeah, and even
though the creature itself is obviously a creature of myth,
we've talked before about the power of myth, the power
of paranormal scripts within a culture, as well as the
real life incidences that have allegedly occurred because of or
(02:11):
alongside the Wind to Go belief. Because if the oral
account of this particular Wind to Go possession story, as
collected by the University of Alberta's Nathan D. Carlson, holds true,
then the Algonquin tribes people gave Napappen boiling bear grease
an attempt to cure him after this, uh this account
that I read, and then when that didn't work, they
executed him with an axe, cutting off his head and
(02:33):
bearing it separate from his body. Now, there are various problems,
of course, with any account of cannibalism, just just cannibalism alone,
much less when you start involving supernatural uh in material
as well. Yeah, and that's the thing about Window that's
so interesting is it really highlights this issue of cannibalism.
And we've talked about this before. It's very hard to
(02:55):
really pin down cannibalism what has actually happened with humans
for sure, Actually in nature it's very easy to explain,
right because they are not ashamed of it, they're not
ashamed and and they have a purpose, a real clear
purpose their cannibalism. And you have um, the sexual cannibalism
in orb spiders, right, that helps in terms of sexual
(03:16):
reproduction fitness. And then in tiger sharks you have siblicide. Right,
you have a tiger that eats excuse me, a tiger
shark that eats a sibling because it's an easy source
of energy. Yeah, it's it's just pure economics. It's a
harsh world. Sometimes you have to reabsorb energy back into
the the winning prospects, and that's just how it goes.
(03:38):
But of course in human culture the economics may still
hold true, but we have all of these layers of
of moral concerns of society and culture. They just complicate
the equation. Well, I mean, when you say the economics,
you're talking about survival cannibalism. In other words, you're just
at the end of your rope and you may be
with someone who could provide you with a bit of energy,
(04:00):
or perhaps there is even a body who that has
recently passed that someone uses. And we have many accounts
of this survival cannibalism in history. There a count that
are proven and then there are accounts that are sort
of forever being argued about, such as the Dolmar party,
where that some saying well, maybe they didn't resort to
survival cannibalism, whithers say yes, some say well the bones,
(04:22):
there's no bone evidence that they did, and others say, well,
well they wouldn't know on the bones, they would have
eaten the soft flesh, and of course that wouldn't the
evidence of that wouldn't survive. And then you know how
many people are going to come back from a chaotic
trip to the mountains and be like, WHOA, I only
survived because I ate my friend Caleb. Right, it's just
probably something that you're going to admit at cocktail parties, right, Um, so, yeah,
(04:45):
you've got the survival cannibalism. And then, just to complicate
things a little bit further, we have these accounts of
cultural rituals which may or may not be symbolic cannibalism, right,
They may actually have occurred or occurred in different ways
that we don't think is cannibal as Dick. Yeah, well,
I mean you always have the the outsider viewing some
sort of cannab supposedly cannibalistic ceremony or hearing about it.
(05:08):
You're having Westerners observed or hear about a ritual that
that from the people that they view as primitive, and
so you know, it's hard to tack down the actual
truth of the matter. Yeah. Actually, if you want to
look at a good example of this and someone who
actually furthered this idea of cannibalism, you can look to
Columbus who encountered the Arawak people in Hispaniola during the
(05:28):
fifteenth century and they warned him of another tribe, the
carab that eight people, which it appears this other tribe
never existed. So this has been really hard for anthropologists
to go through and to try to figure out. But
as far as I can tell, this other tribe just
wasn't a reality. So it may have just been for
them this story about another tribe just kind of a boogeyman,
(05:50):
a boogeyman right telling the night there's another tribe out
there and they're so bad they eat people. You don't
want to be like that and you don't want them
to come for you, right, Or maybe they just wanted,
you know, Columbus to hang around and they were like,
how we need to get him to stay here with
us and not go exploring. So in addition, Columbus may
have mistaken the ritual of keeping a loved one's bones
(06:11):
around the house. So that's what the Arrow act people did,
and he may have mistaken that for evidence of cannibalism.
And of course the whole thing is ridiculous too when
you realize that Columbus h comes bearing his his Catholic faith,
and of course Catholicism, like a lot of Christianity, is
rich in this symbol symbolic consumption of Christ's blood and flesh,
(06:34):
which even though you're not actually consuming blood and flesh, uh,
it is, it is symbolic cannibalism at heart, right, which
we see in so many other cultures. The problem, of course,
is that Columbus was the authority on all matters for
and at that point, so people are like, so where'd
you go, what'd you see? What you experience? And then
(06:54):
whatever he said became sort of the gospel. Yeah, And
that's one of the problems you have throughout history too.
I mean, going back to plenty of the Elder and
all these guys where you just have certain voices and
there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of
discussion about the matter. But you know, this guy said
that there are cannibals living in Africa and that remains
sort of the voice of truth for a matter of centuries.
So that's why The Wind to Go is such an
(07:16):
interesting thing to look at, because it really gets at
the heart of the taboo of cannibalism, but also the
psychology of the ways in which we behave when we
have these folk tales as stand ins for for what
becomes a reality. Yeah, so I want you to imagine
a dark, gaunt giant that haunts the woods, clad only
(07:36):
in matted hair, and it's peering attitude from the wild depths,
with blood red eyes as wild as sinister and sinister
as those of an owl, with claws that are curl
and muscles that are coiled with the strength of a bear,
and its teeth are eager, and its foul tongue is
longing for the taste of human flesh that sounds cuddly. Yeah. Yeah, Now,
(07:56):
this is something that is This creature is known to
different north around in tribal groups. Um. And when we're
talking about the geography here, we're talking about French Canadian
territory UM and the Algonquins. Are they figure in this
quite a bit as well as a couple of the
other tribes. Yeah, the Algonquins as one of the most
populous and widespread North American native language groups, and uh,
(08:20):
at different times it composed like a whole bunch of
different tribes. You know, they did a lot of different
tribes that would spoke the Algonquin tongue, and there was
a lot of shared beliefs among them, and they they
thrived in the harsh world of northern North America, a
land of vast unforgiving wilderness, brutal winners, particularly during the
Little Ice Age era in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries,
(08:43):
which correlates exactly with a lot of this exploration by
French Canadians who met up with these different tribes. And
we'll talk about this more, but they began to um
actually adopt some of these folk tales of the Wendico
and also wanted to mention that it goes by Whittakao
Witigo Wikio and Weendigo long Ago Windigo Witigo and we
(09:08):
ti Goigo. It sounds like a corporation, Yes, secretly is
based on cannibalism. It's right we tigo, you can we
tigo to um. And the cool thing about this is
that the windogo really sort of describes two different things
at play here. One is the beast that you described
who lives in that forest waiting to feast on a human.
(09:31):
The other is a cannibalistic spirit that can possess a human. Yeah,
and that spirit kind of walks the barrier between the
world and the world of the spirits. And of course
that's a very important area in the tales and the
belief systems in the world view of the the first
people of North America. Yeah, and if you look at
the Algonquins, they they really focus on these spirits as
(09:55):
uh as a sort of cautionary tale to people during
these very harsh winters not to turn to cannibalism, because
they're saying that if you eat the flesh of another, well,
your soul is now susceptible to the wind to go. Yeah.
There there were a number of causes, a number of
things that could turn you into a window go. Most
of them are are based in diet and food and
and hunger. Um. So you might be cursed by a
(10:17):
sorcerer always a possibility, you know, it'll happen if you
are yourself, if you yourself are a sorcerer, you might
seek the transformation in yourself. Always an option, all right.
You might trigger the change if you fast too long
or feast too heavily, So a little too much food,
a little too little food, you're gonna potentially open yourself
up to the window goes caress. But most importantly are
(10:39):
all of all as you mentioned, if you if you
were forced to consume human flesh, or if you're tripped
into doing so, even in a dream, then the window
go can reach out to you, touch your soul and
bring on this steady and horrible change, And then you
might feel ice in your hearts. Yeah, because that's uh,
that's that's the big thing right there. Um. They're number
(11:00):
of symptoms. According to the Algonquin Reports catalog by Nathan D. Carlson,
the symptoms include stupor, catatonia, depression, paranoia, and orexia or
the inability to hold down food, nausea, vomiting, emaciation, glazed eyes,
bodily or facial swelling, violent shouting, hallucinations of family members
as food animals, particularly as beavers, and finally, this unstoppable
(11:24):
urge to consume human flesh. Yeah, there was one account
that reading in a separate book where like a mother
was was potentially turning into a window go and she
was telling her she's matter or children. She's saying, you
all look like beavers to me. Now wow, But but
it's that. But the big thing that, like the major
symptoms and the ultimate symptoms are the unstoppable urge to
(11:45):
consume human flesh. And this chill in your in your torso,
in your heart as your heart becomes this lump of ice,
that's right, as the transformation occurs. Let's take a quick
break and when we get back, we'll talk about psychosis.
(12:08):
All right, we're back. We're just talking about the symptoms
in the folk tales of the of the Wind to
Go and uh, and how your heart may seem to
become this lump of of of ice and you have
this irresistible urge to consume human flesh. Now, there were
a few cures curative measures that were also related in
the folk tales. But I think it's interesting for you
(12:28):
talking about the curative measures, is that people took this
folklore and then they began to exhibit these symptoms, and
this is what that psychosis is in these cases of
people actually coming down with not actually turning into these
sort of werewolf like creatures, but actually comminating some dastardly acts. Yeah, because,
(12:49):
on one hand, as h as Nathan D. Carlson points
out in his excellent article reviewing Wittico and Ethno History
of Cannibal Monsters and the Athabaska District of Northern Alberta
nineteen ten um, this was not just a you know,
folk tale that was told. This was something in which
there was a lot of belief. There was a lot
(13:10):
of fear, he says, quote in the collective belief systems
of pre twenty one century algonquins. Contrary to the opinions
of some modern academics, as discussed below, the Wittigo condition
was not a legendary fabrication. For example, in early eighteen
ninety six, Richard Young, the Anglican Bishop of the Athabaska District,
wrote the following in a letter journal to the Evangelical
(13:30):
Fathers in the Church Missionary Society. Quote, the Indians have
a great terror of these so called windigoose or cannibals.
They believe that after eating human flesh, their heart becomes
a lump of ice and no one alive is safer
them assert as all of this sounds to us, it
is a real terror to the untutored Indian. So there's
a little obviously there's a bit of xenophobia and UH
(13:50):
and and racism and in that uh, that particular portrayal,
but but still it underlines that this was this was
serious medicine. And if you're in a situation where you
have been forced to resort to survival cannibalism, and then
it's known, or even if it's known only to you
and you return with shame, perhaps they other members of
(14:12):
your your group know that this occurred, and before you
know what, you're ostracized, and maybe you feel and there
are a number of these symptoms, like if there's a
whole list of possible symptoms, and if you begin if
you experience one of them or feel like you experience
one of them, uh, combined with the guilt that you feel,
then how long before you begin manifesting this this paranoid
(14:33):
idea you were transforming. Yeah, let's set the scene for
this too. Or we're talking about these sort of starvation
winters that would occur and in this part of the world, um,
particularly as you said, during that period from the sempent
century to the nineteenth century. And you know, you have
people who would sort of collectively get together as families
during that time and band together and try to survive.
(14:54):
But there is still a huge amount of isolation. So
you might be with five, six, seven of your fa
only members. Um, you know, out in the middle of
nowhere with this wind whistling or this wind howling. And
when you look at these algonquin Um depictions, the wind
is a huge force here. So I don't have you
(15:15):
ever been like on the mountain before, and and um,
there's just huge amounts of wind coming in at your structure.
If you're in a tent or in a cabin, yeah, yeah,
it's just if you're you're out in the open, it's
just whipping by. It's all you can hear in your ears.
And if you're in a structure or even you know,
in the shelter of a tree or or or some stone,
and it's just whistling by, and it's and it varies,
(15:36):
it's it's this changing tone almost the song. Yeah. And yeah,
I remember when I was in Costa Rica, Monteverde and
I was I spent a couple of nights in a
cabin on the top of the mountain there, and the
first night I was like, oh, this is beautiful. It's gorgeous.
The second night I was like, it's this is awful.
I cannot get any sleep. The wind is howling. The
third night I started to feel like I was going crazy.
(15:57):
So imagine months of this going on. I want to say,
if you resort to cannibalism and Monteverdi, that's on. You
don't try and pin that on a wind to go. Well,
that's the thing, right, So I go out with a friend.
We're gonna go try to trap something. You know, maybe
he breaks his leg. You know, things aren't looking good forms,
so off them and I have a little bit of
his meat. And then as we as you said, come
(16:19):
back to camp or to your cabin, and you feel
in the shame for it. Um. Now, I didn't want
to point out that Kevin Vulcan a professor of psychology.
He's often called on as a behavioral expert on TV shows,
and they're like, he categorizes it as an extreme form
of cabin fever. So again, you've got harsh environmental factors there.
You're with a couple of people and things can go awry.
(16:41):
You're with a bunch of people that you love but
are also maybe driving in a little crazy yeah. And
uh and because that's one of the common tropes of
the window go story is you have like a mom
or a dad or even both that go nuts and
start eating the kids. And then you know, you eat
one kid, then you eat the second, and then and
then it just could out a hand. Yeah, Vulgan says,
it becomes a compulsion. So there you are in your cabin,
(17:04):
the wind howling for months on end, and you began
to really think that you are the winding go right,
it's it's taken hold of you. You're feeling icing in
your heart and uh, your your child is starting to
look like a drumstick yeah or beaver beaver. Yeah. All right,
we're gonna continue talking talking about that particular strain, but
just to go back presented cures that that we're explored
(17:26):
for for the wind to go situation, Carlson relates to
several from different sources, but they include drinking high wines
by the fire, which sounds rather pleasant. I would say
that should be your first stop on any attempt to
treat a suspected wind to go situation. Next the hit
the consumption of heated or even boiling animal flats fats.
(17:49):
So you have some some moose meat, bear meat, what
have you. You heat to heat the fat up, get
it nice and boiling, and then you drink it. Now,
both of these methods drinking by the fire, drinking hot
animal fat. The idea is that it would help uh
burn away the ice that is formed in the heart.
That's the key to the window go There was another
tail that I believe Carlson related in which there was
(18:11):
a group of window goes and they were they were
just a you know, complete terror and you know, eat
everyone in sight. And they were particularly hard to deal
with because, on one hand, window goes were said to
be bulletproof, you know, or bullets didn't affect them, and
the only way to to really kill them was to
deal with that icy heart. But these window goes had
taken their icy hearts out and store them elsewhere so
(18:32):
that they were they weren't not susceptible to that. Yeah. So,
um so those are some options. Also, you could of
course get a spirit medium to use a shaking tent ritual,
which is a special tint in which spirits could be summoned.
But if these didn't work, the only thing to do
was to tie the window go down and hack it
to pieces with an axe bearing the pieces so as
to keep it from becoming whole again and killing everyone inside. Now,
(18:55):
someone by the name of Jack Fiddler, an Okay CREA member,
actually took that the kind of became the van helsing
for his community of window Goes. He claimed to have
slaid fourteen people who were possessed, and he was in
prison when he murdered a woman who he says was
on the verge of turning into a windinga. So just
(19:17):
you know, there were people out there that we're trying
to actually, you know, stop it before it started what
they really thought was going to be a possession. And
of course we have so many different examples of people
who actually did this to their families, who actually ate
their families. So you can see why someone like Jack
Fiddler might really take this to heart as his cause,
(19:39):
his his reason for being. Yeah, and now, of course
one of the of course, the problems we mentioned with
cannibalism and cannibism stories, so the window Goes stories were
we're told enough around the campfire and by a bi
bi Algonquin tribes people who really love stories and told stories.
And the nature of stories that are told as is
that you you take on stories as your own that
(20:01):
are other people's. You you prop up a story by
saying you were there when you weren't. All of these
things happened. The fish gets a little larger with each telling, etcetera.
And then you have the French Canadian voyagers, the travelers
who are who are who are meeting these people trading
stories with them, and of course they're early into telling
stories as well. Uh So we can't take every story
(20:22):
to heart, but some of them are are are actually
really well found at For instance, uh the swift Runner kids, Now,
this was a Cree trapper who serially murdered and consumed
the bodies of his wife and five children. And this
was near Athabaska Landing Trading Post in the north the
Central Um in north central Alberta in the Winner of
eighteen seventy eight, and um, all the murders except the
(20:44):
last one, we're more of a clear case of starvation cannibalism.
But then the last one, well, I'll just read you
what he had to say, when when he was interviewed,
he said, at that that moment, the window go suddenly
took possession of my soul, and in order to live longer,
far from people, and to put out of the way
the only witness to my crime, I seized my gun
and killed the last of my children, and aid him
(21:05):
as that I had done the others. Some weeks later
I was taken by the police, sentenced to death, and
in three days I am to be hanged. And indeed
this is where it gets a little a little extra
historical importance added to this is that, according to Carlson,
uh swift Runner was the first person hanged by the Mounties,
the Mounted Police UH, which which gives this Uh swift
(21:26):
Runner winding. Okay, so a unique position in the history
of Canadian jurisprudence. So the thing about this is that
we don't know that it's actually a psychosis. In fact,
academics have seen it, or they've talked about as a
cultural balanced psychosis, but they've also called it UM perhaps
a culturally localized manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia, because we see
(21:47):
some mental illness UM in this area. And then a
correlate of scapegoating. And then also in Nathan D. Carlson's
paper Reviving Whittico, he says that it could have been
a culturally mediated performance. So in some ways, again it
was taking to heart this, uh, this story and performing
it in a way. Uh. Perhaps that person didn't actually
(22:11):
want the taste of flesh, but they were caught up
in the moment, in these long winters and the sort
of disease that would settle in with this, and maybe
they began to display these historyonics. Yeah. And then also
there there are situations where you can well imagine one
using the wind to go idea and wind to go
(22:31):
stigma for personal gain, like, for instance, here at work,
so we all have new desks. Um, louder Milk Alson.
Louder Milk has a particularly nice desk. It's like right
next to the window. It's pretty good. So I can
imagine that if ladder Milk were to be accused of
being a wind to go, um, you know, someone might say, well, hey,
I kind of want louder Milks desk, So I'm gonna
(22:53):
jump in on that bandwagon and try to to push
that that idea among my my fellow a coworker. And
then you originally reached the point where there's nothing left
to do but chopped her into pieces, and then lo
and behold, I'm setting in her new desk. Okay, so
you're the one who started the rumor about not going
into the bathroom alone when ladder Milk was using yes
and about what she's really been bringing in her launch pail. Okay.
(23:15):
The second thing, someone I want to mention is that
some of us might apply a little magical thinking to
that space and think that they wouldn't want to inhabit
it for fear of being possessed by the Wind to
Go as well. Yeah, exactly, I just want to point
that out. Okay, but maybe I'm strong enough to set there.
It's my my thing. I'm just gonna keep my desk
far away from me just in case though. Okay, Well,
fair enough, all right, we're gonna do another break, and
(23:37):
when we come back, we're gonna keep discussing the Wind
to Go myth and uh and some of the really
interesting cultural aspects of it. All Right, we're back. We're
still talking about the Wind to Go myth of the
Algonquin people. And of course it's uh. It's been picked
(23:58):
up over the years we're gonna talk a little bit
about how it was picked up by the French Canadians.
But of course even in modern culture you see it
to show up in in different forms of media. For instance, Uh,
Stephen King's novel Pet Cemetery has a wind to Go
in it that uh I remember is working pretty well. Um.
The movie Ravenous uh is uh it also features the
wind to Go myth pretty strongly, kind of kind of
(24:20):
taking it and combining with Western vampire uh folk folklore
to create kind of I think an interesting Animal's been
a while since I've seen it, but as a really
awesome soundtrack by Damon Auburn of Blur and Guerillas and
minimalist composer Michael Nyman. And uh, let's see, there was
Larry Fresden's film Windigo, which was like an indie horror film.
(24:40):
It was pretty interesting. And the TV show Hannibal has
sort of dream hallucination sequences in which a wind to
Go character appears. That that I thought was pretty effective
and one of the pieces of media that may have
started at all in terms of mass consumption. Uh, sorry
about that pun is Algernon Blackwood's nineteen o seven shorts
read the Wind to Go, you know, and I like
(25:01):
Ultra and on Blackwood. I have enjoyed his writing in
the past, but I started to reread his Wind to
Go story and I have to say I didn't like it.
I didn't feel like it was really very wind to
go e. You know, it was just he kind of
took the name Win to Go and some a certain
amount of the feeling for it. But then I don't know,
I thought I thought it felt kind of felt like
it fell flat a bit. Well though, you you could
(25:23):
say that at that point Blackwood didn't have this sort
of vast stores of information about the Wind to Go
to pull from. You couldn't go to the Wikipedia or
listen to our podcast. No, no, you probably had a
French Canadian friend who was like, let me tell you
about this crazy thing that happened to a friend of
a friend of a friend of mines. Right, And when
someone tells you a story like, especially when it's from
a different culture, what can you do but combine the
(25:47):
scraps that you were given. It may or may not
make sense from from your own cultural standpoint. You combine
it with the ideas that you already have in your
own culture. And you end up with sort of a
new animal, a new myth emerges from this synthesis of ideas. Yeah,
so let's let's sort of do some time traveling here
to say, the Lake Superior region in Canada eighteen fifties.
(26:09):
You probably would hear a French Canadian really complaining about
this really harsh winter and saying that they were so
hungry and there were so little resources that they actually
boiled their moccasins in eighth them. I mean these are
true accounts, and um and then and but then also
of the story that is so popular that you end
up telling it even if you didn't necessarily experience it, right,
(26:29):
And then of course one thing leads to another. You
start talking about canibalism, right because you say, oh, man,
if I ate my my Momkasons from just two seconds
away from from you, buddy, right, and the conversation gets
really awkward. Yes, this was This was all excellently discussed
in Werewolves and Windy Goes Narratives of cannibal Monsters in
French Canadian uh voyageer oral tradition by Caroline Protruction of
(26:54):
York University, where she she really goes into what happens
when the French Canadian voyagers encounter the algonquins and start
swapping tails. Yeah, because you have to again sort of
imagine this this time period. There are missionaries, fur traders, colonists,
the voyagers all going through and meeting different tribes and
(27:16):
then hearing about these atrocities. Now, if you are someone
who is French Canadian, you might be familiar with some
other folklore from Europe, like say werewolf, So it wouldn't
be too crazy because you may have a belief system
that supports that. Yeah, because the werewolf myth of course
is that on certain nights because of the moon, you know,
(27:37):
maybe some curses are in play as well. But a
man transforms into a wolf or a wolf like being
and then goes out and eats things, including human flesh,
and then the next morning he's like, well, what do
I What had happened? What did I do? What horrible
things happened to me? What kind of monster did I become? Right?
And then you've got the whole like, man, I was
boiling my my moccasins, and you have all these other accounts.
(27:58):
In fact, I wanted to bring up Jamestown. So Tino
nine um that that colony had such a harsh winter
that we know that they engaged not in just eating
say dogs, cats and horses. But recently this year, the
bones of a fourteen year old girl were excavated, and
um Douglas Owsley, he's the Smithsonian forensic anthropologist who analyzed
(28:20):
the bones, says, given, given these bones in a trash pit,
all cut up and chopped up, it's clear that this
body was dismembered for consumption. So in the same way,
if you have these this folklore from Europe and you
know about werewolves, you know that people can be transformed
into them, and you also have these folk tales standing
in for moral code, then as a European who is
(28:43):
in this territory, this Algonquian territory, you probably would say, wow,
we gotta watch out here. Yeah, because I mean, the
werewolf myth ultimately revolves around the idea, you know what
happens if I give in to my besteal nature? What
if my my beasteal nature overcomes me? What have I
given to the economic sensibility of cannibalism, for instance, despite
(29:05):
all of my human moral standing. And so there's a
there's there's a lot of of comparisons to be made
between the werewolf myth and the Wind to Go myth,
And you can definitely see where the werewolf myth would
help you understand the Wind to Go myth, even though
the Wind to Go myth is totally about human human
flesh being consumed, totally about cannibalism, whereas cannibalism is just
sort of one aspect of the werewolf myth. Yes, patruct
(29:28):
actually says and as you say her find paper that
what we can learn from this is that the cannibal
monster stories that for yousers told each other revealed many
aspects of their lives and cosmology, such as starvation, mental illness,
and metamorphoses because in a way they were undergoing a
transformation themselves. Yeah, they started out as Westerners in a
strange world. They travel out into this just I mean,
(29:50):
it's kind of hard to imagine. There's some books have
really done a great job of of portraying this excursion
into the wilds of some of this territory. I think
of like Northwoest path Sage. I also think of Black Robe,
excellent book. Um, you go into this just rich, wild
world where there are no Westerners there, they are these
these foreign peoples that you can only partially understand, that
(30:12):
have a totally different world view than you do. And
and then you start and you're in dealing with with
limited resources, you're suddenly you find yourself starving or you're
you're ill, and then what are you to make up
of all that? And then over time you have the
Westerners assimilating more and more with the native cultures to
the point where they're they're taking uh, they're taking Algonquin brides,
(30:32):
They're they're they're they're becoming their own communities with this
shared mythos that has been weaved together from both the
Algonquin traditions and the the European traditions that they imported.
And yet xenophobia exists. And that's where it becomes really interesting,
because the Windigo is really a stand in for this otherness.
(30:54):
As you said, these are people in a new land
with new experiences, and everything is the other, including the
Algonquin at some point in other tribes. So uh, you know,
with the Winding carries this idea that you're you're engaging
in this other world, the supernatural world. You know, I
can't in thinking about the Windo go I keep coming
back to some material that we came across in our
(31:16):
episode on the Problem of Hell, where we talked about
the the old gods that that society has had, the
hunter gatherer gods, the horned gods that were more chaotic,
that were that that dealt thematically with the scarcity of
food and the the uncertainty of tomorrow's meal and the
meal after that and the in and in doing so
(31:37):
you can see where that you can see why the
wind to Go is really the ultimate evil spirit of
the Algonquins, because it represents the uncertainty of food, and
it represents the likelihood at even at times of starvation
and in falling, what it would take to fall below
the barrier, the threshold for um civilization, you know, because
(31:59):
I feel like a lot of our stories deal with that.
Like we watched the show like Breaking Bad, and we
see that these cars to see a character that's falling
throughout the entire show, and at what point does he
fall below the threshold? And you see these other characters
that you know, addicts and whatnot, and you you look
at them and you think there's a character who's fallen
below the threshold. Woe as would be me if I
were to to to fall that low as well, and
(32:21):
uh in in a society like that, like that is
the base mark cannibalism. You've fallen below the moral standing
that defines that protects the culture well right, And it's
a reminder of that time period when that the line
between you know, death and survival, which is just like
that you cross over so quickly. So it would be
(32:42):
tempting to engage in cannibalism if you had to, because
it may be the difference between life and death. Indeed,
product me Up points out that a lot of these stories,
he shared stories of the wind to Go that the
French Canadians shared with the Algunquins, that there were there
were two lessons essentially in all of them, particularly for
the the the French Canadian listener. First of all, the
(33:03):
idea that the native people's are your friend or at
least to be relied upon in the wilds, because a
lot of these stories they end with either you're starving
and uh and some Algonquins come along and they feed
you and then you're you're saved, or the Windigo situation
happens and they're the ones who come with the knowledge
of how to defeat the Wind to Go or they
actually chop it up for you. But then the second lesson,
(33:24):
and this lesson, and she says is a is a
little more subdued. The lesson is that starvation cannibalism is
an option. It's kind of a whisper in the ear
saying and so this is horrible, but if you've got
to do it, you can do it. And if it's
going to get whispered into your ear, you might as
well blame it on the wind, right. Yeah. Um, you
know the thing about this is that anthropologists, when they
(33:46):
began to study this in earnest, found that it pretty
much dried up. All of these these expressions of windigo
possession just evaporated. So again it brings into question whether
or not it was really a psychosis or if maybe
this part of the world was opening up, and um,
there were other influences going on. So there you have it.
(34:08):
The Wind to Go one of my favorite monsters, evil spirits,
and one is just so so rich, just such a
rich creature, a rich mythological idea, and uh and I
love how it it also exists in this meeting of
worlds with these two distinct alien cultures of the French
(34:29):
Canadians and the Algonquins coming together. Yeah, and now I
challenge you guys to go and watch American Werewolf in
London again if you've already seen it or for the
first time, and think about it through that lens, because
it becomes a bit of a different movie, still stellar,
maybe even better actually, And and I would also challenge
anyone to take take the idea with you too, that
(34:50):
the Wind to Go may come to you and your dreams.
So throughout the next week as you dream, uh interpret
your dreams in light of the Wind to Go? Myth
was that was that was there ice? Was there a
chilling wind where there? Who did the beast itself appear
to you in the woods. I'd love to hear about that. Now.
I feel like we should have like a logo with
the wind to Go challenge the challenge alright, So hey,
(35:13):
you want to get in touch with us about any
of that, you know the general ways to do it.
You can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That is our core website. That's the mother ship, that's
where everything winds up eventually. You can also find us
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YouTube account, mind Stuff Show, and uh Julie. If they
(35:34):
want to send us a good old fashioned email, how
can they go about that? Well, after they visit stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com, they can send us
an email at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, does
it How stuff works dot com
January six, eighteen ninety six. I went to see the
sick man today and he's a pitiful looking devil. They
had him with about six blankets and he still was
nearly freezing. I can do nothing for him. January twelve.
I went to see him today and he looks worse
than ever. I gave him a dose of castor oil,
but he he says his heart is freezing. He keeps
insisting he'll become a cannibal. He wants the Algonquins to
kill him before he gets worse. January Francois came here
(00:25):
and asked me if I would read some prayers for
the sick man. He doesn't look like a human being.
He seems to be terribly swollen in the body and face.
The sight of him is enough to frighten any person.
The poor Algonquin slept very little here for the last
nineteen days since he arrived. They have been watching him
all the time. I don't know how this will end.
January one Friendzois, came from me last night and I
(00:45):
went with him. I told him we ought to take
some rope with us and tie him up if we could.
The sound of him was terrible. It was like the
calling of a wild animal. We tied him with the
ropes and I left to find some more, but but
he couldn't find any, and when I got back, the
cords around his arms were already breaking. The Gonquins asked
what we shouldn't do. They said that when he got up,
he would kill all of us. I told them to
do what they had to do is I had no
(01:06):
more ropes which to bind him. Welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And that was the
(01:29):
account of Francis work beaten uh the Orkney HBC clerk
at the Trout Lake Outpost the winter of eight during
the alleged Windigo possession of napatan Auger. Edited slightly for
clarity's sake, but otherwise exactly what's in the history books.
And we wanted to bring that bit to your attention
(01:50):
because what we're talking about is a creature or a
possession that has to deal with cannibalism. Yeah, and even
though the creature itself is obviously a creature of myth,
we've talked before about the power of myth, the power
of paranormal scripts within a culture, as well as the
real life incidences that have allegedly occurred because of or
(02:11):
alongside the Wind to Go belief. Because if the oral
account of this particular Wind to Go possession story, as
collected by the University of Alberta's Nathan D. Carlson, holds true,
then the Algonquin tribes people gave Napappen boiling bear grease
an attempt to cure him after this, uh this account
that I read, and then when that didn't work, they
executed him with an axe, cutting off his head and
(02:33):
bearing it separate from his body. Now, there are various problems,
of course, with any account of cannibalism, just just cannibalism alone,
much less when you start involving supernatural uh in material
as well. Yeah, and that's the thing about Window that's
so interesting is it really highlights this issue of cannibalism.
And we've talked about this before. It's very hard to
(02:55):
really pin down cannibalism what has actually happened with humans
for sure, Actually in nature it's very easy to explain,
right because they are not ashamed of it, they're not
ashamed and and they have a purpose, a real clear
purpose their cannibalism. And you have um, the sexual cannibalism
in orb spiders, right, that helps in terms of sexual
(03:16):
reproduction fitness. And then in tiger sharks you have siblicide. Right,
you have a tiger that eats excuse me, a tiger
shark that eats a sibling because it's an easy source
of energy. Yeah, it's it's just pure economics. It's a
harsh world. Sometimes you have to reabsorb energy back into
the the winning prospects, and that's just how it goes.
(03:38):
But of course in human culture the economics may still
hold true, but we have all of these layers of
of moral concerns of society and culture. They just complicate
the equation. Well, I mean, when you say the economics,
you're talking about survival cannibalism. In other words, you're just
at the end of your rope and you may be
with someone who could provide you with a bit of energy,
(04:00):
or perhaps there is even a body who that has
recently passed that someone uses. And we have many accounts
of this survival cannibalism in history. There a count that
are proven and then there are accounts that are sort
of forever being argued about, such as the Dolmar party,
where that some saying well, maybe they didn't resort to
survival cannibalism, whithers say yes, some say well the bones,
(04:22):
there's no bone evidence that they did, and others say, well,
well they wouldn't know on the bones, they would have
eaten the soft flesh, and of course that wouldn't the
evidence of that wouldn't survive. And then you know how
many people are going to come back from a chaotic
trip to the mountains and be like, WHOA, I only
survived because I ate my friend Caleb. Right, it's just
probably something that you're going to admit at cocktail parties, right, Um, so, yeah,
(04:45):
you've got the survival cannibalism. And then, just to complicate
things a little bit further, we have these accounts of
cultural rituals which may or may not be symbolic cannibalism, right,
They may actually have occurred or occurred in different ways
that we don't think is cannibal as Dick. Yeah, well,
I mean you always have the the outsider viewing some
sort of cannab supposedly cannibalistic ceremony or hearing about it.
(05:08):
You're having Westerners observed or hear about a ritual that
that from the people that they view as primitive, and
so you know, it's hard to tack down the actual
truth of the matter. Yeah. Actually, if you want to
look at a good example of this and someone who
actually furthered this idea of cannibalism, you can look to
Columbus who encountered the Arawak people in Hispaniola during the
(05:28):
fifteenth century and they warned him of another tribe, the
carab that eight people, which it appears this other tribe
never existed. So this has been really hard for anthropologists
to go through and to try to figure out. But
as far as I can tell, this other tribe just
wasn't a reality. So it may have just been for
them this story about another tribe just kind of a boogeyman,
(05:50):
a boogeyman right telling the night there's another tribe out
there and they're so bad they eat people. You don't
want to be like that and you don't want them
to come for you, right, Or maybe they just wanted,
you know, Columbus to hang around and they were like,
how we need to get him to stay here with
us and not go exploring. So in addition, Columbus may
have mistaken the ritual of keeping a loved one's bones
(06:11):
around the house. So that's what the Arrow act people did,
and he may have mistaken that for evidence of cannibalism.
And of course the whole thing is ridiculous too when
you realize that Columbus h comes bearing his his Catholic faith,
and of course Catholicism, like a lot of Christianity, is
rich in this symbol symbolic consumption of Christ's blood and flesh,
(06:34):
which even though you're not actually consuming blood and flesh, uh,
it is, it is symbolic cannibalism at heart, right, which
we see in so many other cultures. The problem, of course,
is that Columbus was the authority on all matters for
and at that point, so people are like, so where'd
you go, what'd you see? What you experience? And then
(06:54):
whatever he said became sort of the gospel. Yeah, And
that's one of the problems you have throughout history too.
I mean, going back to plenty of the Elder and
all these guys where you just have certain voices and
there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of
discussion about the matter. But you know, this guy said
that there are cannibals living in Africa and that remains
sort of the voice of truth for a matter of centuries.
So that's why The Wind to Go is such an
(07:16):
interesting thing to look at, because it really gets at
the heart of the taboo of cannibalism, but also the
psychology of the ways in which we behave when we
have these folk tales as stand ins for for what
becomes a reality. Yeah, so I want you to imagine
a dark, gaunt giant that haunts the woods, clad only
(07:36):
in matted hair, and it's peering attitude from the wild depths,
with blood red eyes as wild as sinister and sinister
as those of an owl, with claws that are curl
and muscles that are coiled with the strength of a bear,
and its teeth are eager, and its foul tongue is
longing for the taste of human flesh that sounds cuddly. Yeah. Yeah, Now,
(07:56):
this is something that is This creature is known to
different north around in tribal groups. Um. And when we're
talking about the geography here, we're talking about French Canadian
territory UM and the Algonquins. Are they figure in this
quite a bit as well as a couple of the
other tribes. Yeah, the Algonquins as one of the most
populous and widespread North American native language groups, and uh,
(08:20):
at different times it composed like a whole bunch of
different tribes. You know, they did a lot of different
tribes that would spoke the Algonquin tongue, and there was
a lot of shared beliefs among them, and they they
thrived in the harsh world of northern North America, a
land of vast unforgiving wilderness, brutal winners, particularly during the
Little Ice Age era in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries,
(08:43):
which correlates exactly with a lot of this exploration by
French Canadians who met up with these different tribes. And
we'll talk about this more, but they began to um
actually adopt some of these folk tales of the Wendico
and also wanted to mention that it goes by Whittakao
Witigo Wikio and Weendigo long Ago Windigo Witigo and we
(09:08):
ti Goigo. It sounds like a corporation, Yes, secretly is
based on cannibalism. It's right we tigo, you can we
tigo to um. And the cool thing about this is
that the windogo really sort of describes two different things
at play here. One is the beast that you described
who lives in that forest waiting to feast on a human.
(09:31):
The other is a cannibalistic spirit that can possess a human. Yeah,
and that spirit kind of walks the barrier between the
world and the world of the spirits. And of course
that's a very important area in the tales and the
belief systems in the world view of the the first
people of North America. Yeah, and if you look at
the Algonquins, they they really focus on these spirits as
(09:55):
uh as a sort of cautionary tale to people during
these very harsh winters not to turn to cannibalism, because
they're saying that if you eat the flesh of another, well,
your soul is now susceptible to the wind to go. Yeah.
There there were a number of causes, a number of
things that could turn you into a window go. Most
of them are are based in diet and food and
and hunger. Um. So you might be cursed by a
(10:17):
sorcerer always a possibility, you know, it'll happen if you
are yourself, if you yourself are a sorcerer, you might
seek the transformation in yourself. Always an option, all right.
You might trigger the change if you fast too long
or feast too heavily, So a little too much food,
a little too little food, you're gonna potentially open yourself
up to the window goes caress. But most importantly are
(10:39):
all of all as you mentioned, if you if you
were forced to consume human flesh, or if you're tripped
into doing so, even in a dream, then the window
go can reach out to you, touch your soul and
bring on this steady and horrible change, And then you
might feel ice in your hearts. Yeah, because that's uh,
that's that's the big thing right there. Um. They're number
(11:00):
of symptoms. According to the Algonquin Reports catalog by Nathan D. Carlson,
the symptoms include stupor, catatonia, depression, paranoia, and orexia or
the inability to hold down food, nausea, vomiting, emaciation, glazed eyes,
bodily or facial swelling, violent shouting, hallucinations of family members
as food animals, particularly as beavers, and finally, this unstoppable
(11:24):
urge to consume human flesh. Yeah, there was one account
that reading in a separate book where like a mother
was was potentially turning into a window go and she
was telling her she's matter or children. She's saying, you
all look like beavers to me. Now wow, But but
it's that. But the big thing that, like the major
symptoms and the ultimate symptoms are the unstoppable urge to
(11:45):
consume human flesh. And this chill in your in your torso,
in your heart as your heart becomes this lump of ice,
that's right, as the transformation occurs. Let's take a quick
break and when we get back, we'll talk about psychosis.
(12:08):
All right, we're back. We're just talking about the symptoms
in the folk tales of the of the Wind to
Go and uh, and how your heart may seem to
become this lump of of of ice and you have
this irresistible urge to consume human flesh. Now, there were
a few cures curative measures that were also related in
the folk tales. But I think it's interesting for you
(12:28):
talking about the curative measures, is that people took this
folklore and then they began to exhibit these symptoms, and
this is what that psychosis is in these cases of
people actually coming down with not actually turning into these
sort of werewolf like creatures, but actually comminating some dastardly acts. Yeah, because,
(12:49):
on one hand, as h as Nathan D. Carlson points
out in his excellent article reviewing Wittico and Ethno History
of Cannibal Monsters and the Athabaska District of Northern Alberta
nineteen ten um, this was not just a you know,
folk tale that was told. This was something in which
there was a lot of belief. There was a lot
(13:10):
of fear, he says, quote in the collective belief systems
of pre twenty one century algonquins. Contrary to the opinions
of some modern academics, as discussed below, the Wittigo condition
was not a legendary fabrication. For example, in early eighteen
ninety six, Richard Young, the Anglican Bishop of the Athabaska District,
wrote the following in a letter journal to the Evangelical
(13:30):
Fathers in the Church Missionary Society. Quote, the Indians have
a great terror of these so called windigoose or cannibals.
They believe that after eating human flesh, their heart becomes
a lump of ice and no one alive is safer
them assert as all of this sounds to us, it
is a real terror to the untutored Indian. So there's
a little obviously there's a bit of xenophobia and UH
(13:50):
and and racism and in that uh, that particular portrayal,
but but still it underlines that this was this was
serious medicine. And if you're in a situation where you
have been forced to resort to survival cannibalism, and then
it's known, or even if it's known only to you
and you return with shame, perhaps they other members of
(14:12):
your your group know that this occurred, and before you
know what, you're ostracized, and maybe you feel and there
are a number of these symptoms, like if there's a
whole list of possible symptoms, and if you begin if
you experience one of them or feel like you experience
one of them, uh, combined with the guilt that you feel,
then how long before you begin manifesting this this paranoid
(14:33):
idea you were transforming. Yeah, let's set the scene for
this too. Or we're talking about these sort of starvation
winters that would occur and in this part of the world, um,
particularly as you said, during that period from the sempent
century to the nineteenth century. And you know, you have
people who would sort of collectively get together as families
during that time and band together and try to survive.
(14:54):
But there is still a huge amount of isolation. So
you might be with five, six, seven of your fa
only members. Um, you know, out in the middle of
nowhere with this wind whistling or this wind howling. And
when you look at these algonquin Um depictions, the wind
is a huge force here. So I don't have you
(15:15):
ever been like on the mountain before, and and um,
there's just huge amounts of wind coming in at your structure.
If you're in a tent or in a cabin, yeah, yeah,
it's just if you're you're out in the open, it's
just whipping by. It's all you can hear in your ears.
And if you're in a structure or even you know,
in the shelter of a tree or or or some stone,
and it's just whistling by, and it's and it varies,
(15:36):
it's it's this changing tone almost the song. Yeah. And yeah,
I remember when I was in Costa Rica, Monteverde and
I was I spent a couple of nights in a
cabin on the top of the mountain there, and the
first night I was like, oh, this is beautiful. It's gorgeous.
The second night I was like, it's this is awful.
I cannot get any sleep. The wind is howling. The
third night I started to feel like I was going crazy.
(15:57):
So imagine months of this going on. I want to say,
if you resort to cannibalism and Monteverdi, that's on. You
don't try and pin that on a wind to go. Well,
that's the thing, right, So I go out with a friend.
We're gonna go try to trap something. You know, maybe
he breaks his leg. You know, things aren't looking good forms,
so off them and I have a little bit of
his meat. And then as we as you said, come
(16:19):
back to camp or to your cabin, and you feel
in the shame for it. Um. Now, I didn't want
to point out that Kevin Vulcan a professor of psychology.
He's often called on as a behavioral expert on TV shows,
and they're like, he categorizes it as an extreme form
of cabin fever. So again, you've got harsh environmental factors there.
You're with a couple of people and things can go awry.
(16:41):
You're with a bunch of people that you love but
are also maybe driving in a little crazy yeah. And
uh and because that's one of the common tropes of
the window go story is you have like a mom
or a dad or even both that go nuts and
start eating the kids. And then you know, you eat
one kid, then you eat the second, and then and
then it just could out a hand. Yeah, Vulgan says,
it becomes a compulsion. So there you are in your cabin,
(17:04):
the wind howling for months on end, and you began
to really think that you are the winding go right,
it's it's taken hold of you. You're feeling icing in
your heart and uh, your your child is starting to
look like a drumstick yeah or beaver beaver. Yeah. All right,
we're gonna continue talking talking about that particular strain, but
just to go back presented cures that that we're explored
(17:26):
for for the wind to go situation, Carlson relates to
several from different sources, but they include drinking high wines
by the fire, which sounds rather pleasant. I would say
that should be your first stop on any attempt to
treat a suspected wind to go situation. Next the hit
the consumption of heated or even boiling animal flats fats.
(17:49):
So you have some some moose meat, bear meat, what
have you. You heat to heat the fat up, get
it nice and boiling, and then you drink it. Now,
both of these methods drinking by the fire, drinking hot
animal fat. The idea is that it would help uh
burn away the ice that is formed in the heart.
That's the key to the window go There was another
tail that I believe Carlson related in which there was
(18:11):
a group of window goes and they were they were
just a you know, complete terror and you know, eat
everyone in sight. And they were particularly hard to deal
with because, on one hand, window goes were said to
be bulletproof, you know, or bullets didn't affect them, and
the only way to to really kill them was to
deal with that icy heart. But these window goes had
taken their icy hearts out and store them elsewhere so
(18:32):
that they were they weren't not susceptible to that. Yeah. So,
um so those are some options. Also, you could of
course get a spirit medium to use a shaking tent ritual,
which is a special tint in which spirits could be summoned.
But if these didn't work, the only thing to do
was to tie the window go down and hack it
to pieces with an axe bearing the pieces so as
to keep it from becoming whole again and killing everyone inside. Now,
(18:55):
someone by the name of Jack Fiddler, an Okay CREA member,
actually took that the kind of became the van helsing
for his community of window Goes. He claimed to have
slaid fourteen people who were possessed, and he was in
prison when he murdered a woman who he says was
on the verge of turning into a windinga. So just
(19:17):
you know, there were people out there that we're trying
to actually, you know, stop it before it started what
they really thought was going to be a possession. And
of course we have so many different examples of people
who actually did this to their families, who actually ate
their families. So you can see why someone like Jack
Fiddler might really take this to heart as his cause,
(19:39):
his his reason for being. Yeah, and now, of course
one of the of course, the problems we mentioned with
cannibalism and cannibism stories, so the window Goes stories were
we're told enough around the campfire and by a bi
bi Algonquin tribes people who really love stories and told stories.
And the nature of stories that are told as is
that you you take on stories as your own that
(20:01):
are other people's. You you prop up a story by
saying you were there when you weren't. All of these
things happened. The fish gets a little larger with each telling, etcetera.
And then you have the French Canadian voyagers, the travelers
who are who are who are meeting these people trading
stories with them, and of course they're early into telling
stories as well. Uh So we can't take every story
(20:22):
to heart, but some of them are are are actually
really well found at For instance, uh the swift Runner kids, Now,
this was a Cree trapper who serially murdered and consumed
the bodies of his wife and five children. And this
was near Athabaska Landing Trading Post in the north the
Central Um in north central Alberta in the Winner of
eighteen seventy eight, and um, all the murders except the
(20:44):
last one, we're more of a clear case of starvation cannibalism.
But then the last one, well, I'll just read you
what he had to say, when when he was interviewed,
he said, at that that moment, the window go suddenly
took possession of my soul, and in order to live longer,
far from people, and to put out of the way
the only witness to my crime, I seized my gun
and killed the last of my children, and aid him
(21:05):
as that I had done the others. Some weeks later
I was taken by the police, sentenced to death, and
in three days I am to be hanged. And indeed
this is where it gets a little a little extra
historical importance added to this is that, according to Carlson,
uh swift Runner was the first person hanged by the Mounties,
the Mounted Police UH, which which gives this Uh swift
(21:26):
Runner winding. Okay, so a unique position in the history
of Canadian jurisprudence. So the thing about this is that
we don't know that it's actually a psychosis. In fact,
academics have seen it, or they've talked about as a
cultural balanced psychosis, but they've also called it UM perhaps
a culturally localized manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia, because we see
(21:47):
some mental illness UM in this area. And then a
correlate of scapegoating. And then also in Nathan D. Carlson's
paper Reviving Whittico, he says that it could have been
a culturally mediated performance. So in some ways, again it
was taking to heart this, uh, this story and performing
it in a way. Uh. Perhaps that person didn't actually
(22:11):
want the taste of flesh, but they were caught up
in the moment, in these long winters and the sort
of disease that would settle in with this, and maybe
they began to display these historyonics. Yeah. And then also
there there are situations where you can well imagine one
using the wind to go idea and wind to go
(22:31):
stigma for personal gain, like, for instance, here at work,
so we all have new desks. Um, louder Milk Alson.
Louder Milk has a particularly nice desk. It's like right
next to the window. It's pretty good. So I can
imagine that if ladder Milk were to be accused of
being a wind to go, um, you know, someone might say, well, hey,
I kind of want louder Milks desk, So I'm gonna
(22:53):
jump in on that bandwagon and try to to push
that that idea among my my fellow a coworker. And
then you originally reached the point where there's nothing left
to do but chopped her into pieces, and then lo
and behold, I'm setting in her new desk. Okay, so
you're the one who started the rumor about not going
into the bathroom alone when ladder Milk was using yes
and about what she's really been bringing in her launch pail. Okay.
(23:15):
The second thing, someone I want to mention is that
some of us might apply a little magical thinking to
that space and think that they wouldn't want to inhabit
it for fear of being possessed by the Wind to
Go as well. Yeah, exactly, I just want to point
that out. Okay, but maybe I'm strong enough to set there.
It's my my thing. I'm just gonna keep my desk
far away from me just in case though. Okay, Well,
fair enough, all right, we're gonna do another break, and
(23:37):
when we come back, we're gonna keep discussing the Wind
to Go myth and uh and some of the really
interesting cultural aspects of it. All Right, we're back. We're
still talking about the Wind to Go myth of the
Algonquin people. And of course it's uh. It's been picked
(23:58):
up over the years we're gonna talk a little bit
about how it was picked up by the French Canadians.
But of course even in modern culture you see it
to show up in in different forms of media. For instance, Uh,
Stephen King's novel Pet Cemetery has a wind to Go
in it that uh I remember is working pretty well. Um.
The movie Ravenous uh is uh it also features the
wind to Go myth pretty strongly, kind of kind of
(24:20):
taking it and combining with Western vampire uh folk folklore
to create kind of I think an interesting Animal's been
a while since I've seen it, but as a really
awesome soundtrack by Damon Auburn of Blur and Guerillas and
minimalist composer Michael Nyman. And uh, let's see, there was
Larry Fresden's film Windigo, which was like an indie horror film.
(24:40):
It was pretty interesting. And the TV show Hannibal has
sort of dream hallucination sequences in which a wind to
Go character appears. That that I thought was pretty effective
and one of the pieces of media that may have
started at all in terms of mass consumption. Uh, sorry
about that pun is Algernon Blackwood's nineteen o seven shorts
read the Wind to Go, you know, and I like
(25:01):
Ultra and on Blackwood. I have enjoyed his writing in
the past, but I started to reread his Wind to
Go story and I have to say I didn't like it.
I didn't feel like it was really very wind to
go e. You know, it was just he kind of
took the name Win to Go and some a certain
amount of the feeling for it. But then I don't know,
I thought I thought it felt kind of felt like
it fell flat a bit. Well though, you you could
(25:23):
say that at that point Blackwood didn't have this sort
of vast stores of information about the Wind to Go
to pull from. You couldn't go to the Wikipedia or
listen to our podcast. No, no, you probably had a
French Canadian friend who was like, let me tell you
about this crazy thing that happened to a friend of
a friend of a friend of mines. Right, And when
someone tells you a story like, especially when it's from
a different culture, what can you do but combine the
(25:47):
scraps that you were given. It may or may not
make sense from from your own cultural standpoint. You combine
it with the ideas that you already have in your
own culture. And you end up with sort of a
new animal, a new myth emerges from this synthesis of ideas. Yeah,
so let's let's sort of do some time traveling here
to say, the Lake Superior region in Canada eighteen fifties.
(26:09):
You probably would hear a French Canadian really complaining about
this really harsh winter and saying that they were so
hungry and there were so little resources that they actually
boiled their moccasins in eighth them. I mean these are
true accounts, and um and then and but then also
of the story that is so popular that you end
up telling it even if you didn't necessarily experience it, right,
(26:29):
And then of course one thing leads to another. You
start talking about canibalism, right because you say, oh, man,
if I ate my my Momkasons from just two seconds
away from from you, buddy, right, and the conversation gets
really awkward. Yes, this was This was all excellently discussed
in Werewolves and Windy Goes Narratives of cannibal Monsters in
French Canadian uh voyageer oral tradition by Caroline Protruction of
(26:54):
York University, where she she really goes into what happens
when the French Canadian voyagers encounter the algonquins and start
swapping tails. Yeah, because you have to again sort of
imagine this this time period. There are missionaries, fur traders, colonists,
the voyagers all going through and meeting different tribes and
(27:16):
then hearing about these atrocities. Now, if you are someone
who is French Canadian, you might be familiar with some
other folklore from Europe, like say werewolf, So it wouldn't
be too crazy because you may have a belief system
that supports that. Yeah, because the werewolf myth of course
is that on certain nights because of the moon, you know,
(27:37):
maybe some curses are in play as well. But a
man transforms into a wolf or a wolf like being
and then goes out and eats things, including human flesh,
and then the next morning he's like, well, what do
I What had happened? What did I do? What horrible
things happened to me? What kind of monster did I become? Right?
And then you've got the whole like, man, I was
boiling my my moccasins, and you have all these other accounts.
(27:58):
In fact, I wanted to bring up Jamestown. So Tino
nine um that that colony had such a harsh winter
that we know that they engaged not in just eating
say dogs, cats and horses. But recently this year, the
bones of a fourteen year old girl were excavated, and
um Douglas Owsley, he's the Smithsonian forensic anthropologist who analyzed
(28:20):
the bones, says, given, given these bones in a trash pit,
all cut up and chopped up, it's clear that this
body was dismembered for consumption. So in the same way,
if you have these this folklore from Europe and you
know about werewolves, you know that people can be transformed
into them, and you also have these folk tales standing
in for moral code, then as a European who is
(28:43):
in this territory, this Algonquian territory, you probably would say, wow,
we gotta watch out here. Yeah, because I mean, the
werewolf myth ultimately revolves around the idea, you know what
happens if I give in to my besteal nature? What
if my my beasteal nature overcomes me? What have I
given to the economic sensibility of cannibalism, for instance, despite
(29:05):
all of my human moral standing. And so there's a
there's there's a lot of of comparisons to be made
between the werewolf myth and the Wind to Go myth,
And you can definitely see where the werewolf myth would
help you understand the Wind to Go myth, even though
the Wind to Go myth is totally about human human
flesh being consumed, totally about cannibalism, whereas cannibalism is just
sort of one aspect of the werewolf myth. Yes, patruct
(29:28):
actually says and as you say her find paper that
what we can learn from this is that the cannibal
monster stories that for yousers told each other revealed many
aspects of their lives and cosmology, such as starvation, mental illness,
and metamorphoses because in a way they were undergoing a
transformation themselves. Yeah, they started out as Westerners in a
strange world. They travel out into this just I mean,
(29:50):
it's kind of hard to imagine. There's some books have
really done a great job of of portraying this excursion
into the wilds of some of this territory. I think
of like Northwoest path Sage. I also think of Black Robe,
excellent book. Um, you go into this just rich, wild
world where there are no Westerners there, they are these
these foreign peoples that you can only partially understand, that
(30:12):
have a totally different world view than you do. And
and then you start and you're in dealing with with
limited resources, you're suddenly you find yourself starving or you're
you're ill, and then what are you to make up
of all that? And then over time you have the
Westerners assimilating more and more with the native cultures to
the point where they're they're taking uh, they're taking Algonquin brides,
(30:32):
They're they're they're they're becoming their own communities with this
shared mythos that has been weaved together from both the
Algonquin traditions and the the European traditions that they imported.
And yet xenophobia exists. And that's where it becomes really interesting,
because the Windigo is really a stand in for this otherness.
(30:54):
As you said, these are people in a new land
with new experiences, and everything is the other, including the
Algonquin at some point in other tribes. So uh, you know,
with the Winding carries this idea that you're you're engaging
in this other world, the supernatural world. You know, I
can't in thinking about the Windo go I keep coming
back to some material that we came across in our
(31:16):
episode on the Problem of Hell, where we talked about
the the old gods that that society has had, the
hunter gatherer gods, the horned gods that were more chaotic,
that were that that dealt thematically with the scarcity of
food and the the uncertainty of tomorrow's meal and the
meal after that and the in and in doing so
(31:37):
you can see where that you can see why the
wind to Go is really the ultimate evil spirit of
the Algonquins, because it represents the uncertainty of food, and
it represents the likelihood at even at times of starvation
and in falling, what it would take to fall below
the barrier, the threshold for um civilization, you know, because
(31:59):
I feel like a lot of our stories deal with that.
Like we watched the show like Breaking Bad, and we
see that these cars to see a character that's falling
throughout the entire show, and at what point does he
fall below the threshold? And you see these other characters
that you know, addicts and whatnot, and you you look
at them and you think there's a character who's fallen
below the threshold. Woe as would be me if I
were to to to fall that low as well, and
(32:21):
uh in in a society like that, like that is
the base mark cannibalism. You've fallen below the moral standing
that defines that protects the culture well right, And it's
a reminder of that time period when that the line
between you know, death and survival, which is just like
that you cross over so quickly. So it would be
(32:42):
tempting to engage in cannibalism if you had to, because
it may be the difference between life and death. Indeed,
product me Up points out that a lot of these stories,
he shared stories of the wind to Go that the
French Canadians shared with the Algunquins, that there were there
were two lessons essentially in all of them, particularly for
the the the French Canadian listener. First of all, the
(33:03):
idea that the native people's are your friend or at
least to be relied upon in the wilds, because a
lot of these stories they end with either you're starving
and uh and some Algonquins come along and they feed
you and then you're you're saved, or the Windigo situation
happens and they're the ones who come with the knowledge
of how to defeat the Wind to Go or they
actually chop it up for you. But then the second lesson,
(33:24):
and this lesson, and she says is a is a
little more subdued. The lesson is that starvation cannibalism is
an option. It's kind of a whisper in the ear
saying and so this is horrible, but if you've got
to do it, you can do it. And if it's
going to get whispered into your ear, you might as
well blame it on the wind, right. Yeah. Um, you
know the thing about this is that anthropologists, when they
(33:46):
began to study this in earnest, found that it pretty
much dried up. All of these these expressions of windigo
possession just evaporated. So again it brings into question whether
or not it was really a psychosis or if maybe
this part of the world was opening up, and um,
there were other influences going on. So there you have it.
(34:08):
The Wind to Go one of my favorite monsters, evil spirits,
and one is just so so rich, just such a
rich creature, a rich mythological idea, and uh and I
love how it it also exists in this meeting of
worlds with these two distinct alien cultures of the French
(34:29):
Canadians and the Algonquins coming together. Yeah, and now I
challenge you guys to go and watch American Werewolf in
London again if you've already seen it or for the
first time, and think about it through that lens, because
it becomes a bit of a different movie, still stellar,
maybe even better actually, And and I would also challenge
anyone to take take the idea with you too, that
(34:50):
the Wind to Go may come to you and your dreams.
So throughout the next week as you dream, uh interpret
your dreams in light of the Wind to Go? Myth
was that was that was there ice? Was there a
chilling wind where there? Who did the beast itself appear
to you in the woods. I'd love to hear about that. Now.
I feel like we should have like a logo with
the wind to Go challenge the challenge alright, So hey,
(35:13):
you want to get in touch with us about any
of that, you know the general ways to do it.
You can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That is our core website. That's the mother ship, that's
where everything winds up eventually. You can also find us
on social media. We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter, We're
on tumbler. Uh, We're on Google Plus. We have a
YouTube account, mind Stuff Show, and uh Julie. If they
(35:34):
want to send us a good old fashioned email, how
can they go about that? Well, after they visit stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com, they can send us
an email at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, does
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