Of all the legendary monsters that populate the world’s folklore, few have engendered more controversy than the reptilian humanoid – a creature with the general form of a man or woman endowed with scaly skin, slit pupils, and other attributes shared by the cold-blooded crawlers of the natural world. Such figures feature in a sensational conspiracy theory popularized by British writer David Icke, which this author touched on in a recent 4-hour docuseries too dark to publish on YouTube. The so-called Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp, spotted in a South Carolina wetland throughout the summer of 1988, has been the subject of fierce debate among cryptozoologists. And the Monster of Thetis Lake – an anthropomorphic reptile reportedly seen on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in the summer of 1972 – was ridiculed by professional skeptic Daniel Loxton as “among the silliest ‘true’ monster legends ever created.” Despite hordes of naysayers ready to dismiss the notion of a lizard man as utterly preposterous, the concept of reptilian humanoids recurs in the mythology of both Old and New World cultures, persists in popular fiction with uncommon frequency, and has even been the subject of at least one scientific theory.
There is one specific variety of reptilian humanoid that recurs in the traditional tales of a surprisingly disparate assortment of First Nations. From the Gwich’in Dene of the subarctic to the Nipissing Ojibwa of the Canadian Shield, native peoples across the Great White North have campfire stories about mysterious men and women with serpentine characteristics. In this piece, we will explore the forgotten native legend of the Snake People.
The Gwich’in Snake People
We begin our journey in the frozen forests of northern Yukon Territory, in the historic domain of the Gwich’in – a Dene people historically known as the Kutchin or Loucheaux. This rugged stretch of subarctic Canada is carpeted with hardy taiga capable of withstanding the brutal cold of the boreal winter. Unsurprisingly, this harsh northern biome supports little in the way of cold-blooded creatures, the only known serpent in the territory being the tiny red-sided garter snake.
Despite its dearth of reptilian denizens, Gwich’in Country is said to have once been home to a strange creature with snakelike attributes, the legend of which first appeared in print in French Oblate missionary Father Emile Petitot’s 1886 French-language book Indian Traditions of Northwest Canada. Petitot’s informants called these creatures Dindjie Nah-Taedhet, or ‘Snake Men,’ and described them as being “black, hideous, and with enormous gaping mouths.” One mythological tale which Petitot related intimates that these creatures are the descendants of an evil daughter of the moon and a large, black, nocturnal serpent which dwells in the northern muskeg.
The Blackfoot Rattlesnake Spirit and Suyetupi
Far south of Gwich’in Territory, on the prairies and foothills of what is now southern Alberta, the Blackfoot had snakeman stories of their own. According to the mid-20th Century fieldnotes of American ethnologist Claude Everett Schaeffer, currently housed in Calgary, Alberta’s Glenbow Archives, the Blackfoot believed that the powerful, friendless spirit of the rattlesnake sometimes visits people in their dreams, in which it assumes the form of an anthropomorphic serpent. This dreaded entity has the power to curse its victims with sterility, and medicine men and warriors who had attained the power of this spirit through vision quests could make it impossible for women to conceive.
Comparison of the various legends regarding the naming of the city of Medicine Hat, Alberta, at the eastern edge of traditional Blackfoot territory, begets the unspoken implication that there might be something serpentine about the legendary Suyetupi, or Underwater People of Blackfoot tradition – powerful, dangerous, sinister mermen who lived in the deepest, darkest beds of lakes and rivers, who were said to drown those who trespassed on their territory.
In his 1993 book But Names Will Never Hurt Me, historian Marcel M.C. Dirk expounded upon sixteen Blackfoot and Cree legends which purport to explain how Medicine Hat received its striking appellation. Five of these legends contend that the natives originally named the area for an ancient battle fought between the Blackfoot and the Plains Cree on the South Saskatchewan River, in which a war chief’s headdress, or a shaman’s medicine bonnet, was lost in the current. In four of the legends, a lone Blackfoot warrior encamped on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, near the bend between present-day Police Point and Strathcona Island Parks, was accosted by a giant water snake – the physical manifestation of what the storytellers often called the ‘Great Spirit’. This malevolent being offered to grant the brave a headdress endowed with special powers in exchange for human flesh, typically that of the warrior’s wife. Interestingly, this dark motif also appears in the traditions of the Cree, Ojibwa, and Mi’kmaq. In his 1979 treatise on the Plains Cree, American anthropologist David G. Mandelbaum appears to identify this preternatural entity as the Matchi Manitou, or Evil Spirit, which some have equated with the Devil of Christianity. “His spirit powers were Cougar, Lynx, Snake,” he wrote. “They could grant certain abilities to a man, but exacted the life of his wife or child in payment.” In one of the legends which Dirk reproduced – a version officially endorsed by the Blood Blackfoot Nation, which appears on a didactic sign at Medicine Hat’s iconic Saamis Teepee – the giant snake is replaced by a Suyetupi, apparently insinuating an association between the mermen of Blackfoot tradition and the evil serpentine spirit described in other versions of the legend. We will delve more deeply into the legend of the Suyetupi in a future piece.
Another traditional Blackfoot story which this author covered in a previous piece tells of two warriors who killed a rattlesnake they found while returning from a raid by burning it alive in their campfire. One of the warriors, heedless of the remonstrances of his companion, picked some of the serpent’s cooked flesh from the coals and ate it. The following day, the careless warrior began to transform into a giant horned water snake. Recognizing that he was beginning to develop an instinctive compulsion to strike at his companion, the metamorphosed brave bid farewell to his raiding partner and slipped into a large prairie river, that particular section of which was thereafter regarded as cursed by the Blackfoot.
The Stoney Snake People
West of northern Blackfoot territory, on the eastern slopes of Canada’s Rocky Mountains, lies the traditional domain of the Stoney or Nakota Indians – a branch of the Assiniboine tribe, which, in turn, is an offshoot of the Sioux. A 1983 collection of traditional Stoney stories compiled by ethnologist Sebastian Chumak indicates that the Stoney also believed in Snake People. In a tale of two Stoney brother set on the banks of Spirit Island, which this author has covered in a previous piece, one of the two protagonists is tricked by an elderly medicine man and his beautiful daughter, who are later revealed to be preternatural entities called ‘Evil Walkers’ or ‘Snake People.’ These deceptive sorcerers possessed four sacred blue stones through which they wrought transformative and hypnotic magic. In the climax of this mythological drama, the duped protagonist called on the spirits of Malign Lake to transform the beautiful Snake Woman into a pile of brown pebbles.
The Snake Men of Lake Nipissing
East of the prairies, in the rocky forests of the Canadian Shield of what is now northern Ontario, the Ojibwa also have tales of snake men. One story featuring these frightening creatures, told by elder Laurence Commanda sometime prior to his death in 1979, was published in a 2020 collection compiled by folklorist Wayne M. Couchie on the myths and legends of the Lake Nipissing Ojibwa. This legend appears to be set in the early 1700s, in the latter years of the Beaver Wars, when the Iroquois of upstate New York made war on the Algonkian tribes of the Great Lakes. In the midst of that historical struggle, a large band of Iroquois ventured into the Lake Nipissing area, where they split into two groups on account of a disagreement. One of the groups established a village on the wooded mouth of the Sturgeon River, which empties into the lake’s northwestern end, while the other canoed out into the lake and encamped on a small cluster of islands in the east-central part of Lake Nipissing known today as the Manitou Islands.
“For the island band,” Commanda said, “living on the Manitous was alright for most of the summer and autumn months. What little in the way of food that was offered by the islands was more than supplemented by the plentiful fish catches from the lake. But then, winter struck and fishing became very poor. Soon, the little band’s food supplies began to dwindle, and shortly afterwards famine swept through the tiny islands.”
Unwilling to return to the lakeshore, the Iroquois decided to remedy their lamentable situation by turning to witchcraft. Since they did not have any medicine men among their ranks, the natives elected an eleven-year-old girl to obtain medicine powers, pubescent girls supposedly being imbued with some mysterious otherworldly energy. In preparation for her task, the girl was sent to an isolated spot on one of the Manitou Islands, where she was to fast for twenty-two days.
At first, the girl was regularly visited by her sister and brothers. One day, however, her family members failed to appear. Later that same day, the girl heard eerie moaning issuing from the direction of the main camp. Alarmed, she decided to return to see what had happened.
“When she arrived at the camp,” Commanda said, “she went to her families’ lodge and peered in. The little girl’s eyes were met with great shock as she stared at the far corner of the room. There, in the corner, lay her father. The upper part of his body was intact, but the lower half was in the form of a snake. When the little girl’s father saw her, he cried out to her to go to the mouth of the Sturgeon River and tell the other band what she had seen.”
“No one will ever be able to live here because it is cursed,” her father wailed. The stricken man then implored his daughter to leave the islands in haste, fearing that his other children, who had completely transformed into snakes, might devour her.
The girl did as requested and brought the story of her band’s fate to the Iroquois on the Sturgeon River. The next morning, a party of Iroquois braves paddled out into the lake to investigate her claims. When they reached the Manitou Islands, they found their kinsmen’s camp deserted. The only sign of activity were snakelike impressions in the snow, which ran from the village to a certain pond. From the girl’s testimony and the scanty evidence to be found on the islands, the warriors deduced that the villagers had caught a cursed sturgeon in the pond and eaten it, initiating their transformation into snakes, “which are long, narrow, and scaly, like surgeon.”
Sources
Indian Traditions of Northwest Canada (1886), by Father Emile Petitot
Glenbow Archive, Claude E. Schaeffer Fonds
The Plains Cree: An Ethnographic, Historical, and Comparative Study (1979), by David G. Mandelbaum
But Names Will Never Hurt Me (1993), by Marcel M.C. Dirk
The Stonies of Alberta: An Illustrated Heritage of Genesis, Myths, Legends, Folklore, and Wisdom of the Yahey Wichastabi (1983), by Sebastian Chumak
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