Native legend has it that an evil spirit haunts the forests of northern Canada, consumed by an insatiable craving for human flesh. This boreal demon, which manifests physically as a gaunt cadaverous giant, roams the wilderness in search of human prey, invading the psyches of the vulnerable and imbuing them with its own man-eating compulsions. Known to the Canadian Cree and Anishinaabe as the Wendigo, Windigo, or Witiko, this monster has been blamed for a handful of bizarre cannibalistic killing sprees which pepper the dark history of the northern woods.
In this piece, we explore three true Wendigo stories from northern Alberta.
The Wendigo of Trout Lake, Alberta
In a previous piece, we touched on the true tale of a Wendigo execution which took place at a remote Hudson’s Bay Company post northeast of Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta, witnessed by Orcadian-Scot factor Francis Beatton and retold by HBC inspector Philip H. Godsell in an article for the June 1946 issue of the Alberta Folklore Quarterly. Primary sources on this chilling event, which paint a much fuller picture than Godsell’s brief recital, were diligently collected by Alberta Metis historian Nathan D. Carlson, who presented them in his article for the summer 2009 issue of Ethnohistory, and in his nauseatingly progressive contribution to Sarah Carter’s 2011 book Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands.
The story begins in November 1895, when a Saulteaux medicine man made an alarming prediction on the shores of Moose Lake – a body of water known today as Calling Lake, which lies near the edge of the boreal forest about 85 kilometres east of Lesser Slave Lake. This prophecy was recorded by Bishop Richard Young, an English-born Anglican missionary who presided over the Church of England’s Athabasca diocese from his chancery in Athabasca Landing.
In a letter penned to his benefactor, the Church Missionary Society, in early 1896, Bishop Young wrote, “We had heard last November at the Landing of a Soto Indian who was practicing medicine with the usual accompaniments of drumming and pretended [communication] with the spirits at one of these lakes called Moose Lake. He foretold that a Wetegoo would arise who would destroy every one who did not join his religion and come and place themselves under his protection. Many families appear to have done so. The hunters dare not go out to their hunting grounds with their families. The Indians have a great terror of these so called Wetigoos, or cannibals. They believe that after eating human flesh their heart becomes a lump of ice and no one alive is safe from them. Absurd as all this sounds to us, it is a real terror to the untutored Indian.”
This disturbing portent caused many Cree families throughout what is now northern Alberta to either barricade themselves in their cabins or abandon their homes and flee to Moose Lake. One family which refused to succumb to panic was the household of Felix and Catherine Auger, a Metis couple well-liked and respected by local HBC fur traders, who lived with their three children in a cabin at the settlement of Wabasca, located about ninety kilometres northeast of Lesser Slave Lake. The Augers had recently joined the congregation of Reverend Charles Weaver, an Anglican missionary newly arrived at Wabasca. With their ancestral fears perhaps dampened by their Christian faith, the Metis family may not have heeded the shaman’s warnings as sharply as their fearful neighbours. They too, however, felt the need to leave the deserted settlement; Catherine was heavily pregnant with her fourth child, and hoped to have friends and family nearby when she delivered the baby. Instead of retreating to southeasterly Moose Lake, the Augers decided to head in the opposite direction, returning to their home settlement at Trout Lake, about 65 kilometres to the northwest.
On the second night of the three-day journey to Trout Lake, Felix Auger began to exhibit alarming behavior. Catherine later described the experience to family friend John McLeod, who related her testimony to the Edmonton Bulletin. “On the second night out,” McLeod told the press, “he acted strangely, saying that some strange animals were about to attack him. During the remainder of the trip, he acted strangely at intervals, and at such times the woman, for her own safety, induced him to go ahead. They reached… Trout Lake safely, and [were] there for twenty days, his fits of insanity becoming more frequent.”
Catherine elaborated on the experience to Reverend George Holmes, who headed an Anglican mission at the western end of Great Slave Lake, who would later become a bishop in the Church of England. Holmes relayed her testimony to his superior, Bishop Young, who elaborated on it in another letter to the Church Missionary Society written in early 1896.
“At their last camp before reaching Trout Lake,” Young wrote, “her husband, who appeared quite well and ate his supper, suddenly said to her, ‘See, look at that! It is coming to me!’ He cowered under his blanket and from that moment was a lunatic. He told her that one of the children looked to him like a spring moose and he wanted to kill and eat it. She sat up all night, not daring to lie down lest he should kill the children or her… Fancy the poor woman alone in the solitude of those dreary woods this all that terrible night!… Next day, she proposed that he should go ahead while she drove the dogs. He consented for a while and then suddenly stopped, saying that something stopped him and could not let him go on. She had then to go ahead.”
Catherine and her terrified children reached Trout Lake on January 3rd, 1896. Felix arrived shortly thereafter and made his way to the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, managed by Frank Beatton. The Orkneyman described this eerie experience in his journal, referring to Felix by his Cree name, Napanin. “Man arrived here today from Wapuskow Lake,” he wrote, “who seemed to me to be crazy. I saw him coming and went to meet him at the door. As soon as he came in, he told us… that last night he camped about 15 miles from here. I know the place, it is about that distance. He told us that after he had made camp, [he] was about to lie down. He was not asleep, he said, but he saw the devil come to him, and from that he was crazy. He said that he must eat his child there. But his wife took away the child. She then took hold of him and he told her to try and pray for him, and perhaps God would spare him to see this place. He said it was told him that he must eat them. He told us all what he saw and did. He said his son appeared to him like a young moose, and he wanted to eat him. I did not listen to all he had to say, as I thought he was starving and I was busy getting him something to eat, but he ate very little. He seemed to be getting a little better, and then he told us that he knew someone put medicine on him, and that was the reason he was going to be a cannibal. Then he began to cry at the thought of it. The man’s name is Napanin. The man’s father lives here at the end of the lake. The Indians are all terribly frightened. All the Indians think someone had done something to him with medicine. Yakwemoo is a great medicine man, and that is why they put him here. The same night they were singing over him and the drums were beating. I expect they will try to drum the devil out of him. I hear that he told the Indians that he had to kill and eat them. He says he sees the devil often since then.”
For nineteen days, the Cree of Trout Lake tried to exorcise the demon that had taken hold of Felix Auger, praying, singing, drumming, and treating him in a sweat lodge. They even attempted to pour boiling bear grease down his throat, hoping that it might melt the ice that they feared was forming inside him. None of these remedies appeared to have any effect. The afflicted man continued to deteriorate, stammering that his heart was turning to ice, and that he would soon become a Wendigo.
Beatton described the man’s chilling transformation in his journal. Disturbingly, and probably unbeknownst to the hard-bitten Orkneyman, the uncanny characteristics which Auger developed accord perfectly with traditional Roman Catholic markers for demonic possession, namely the knowledge of occult information, superhuman strength, and the unaccountable ability to speak in foreign tongues. The latter feat was referenced in Philip Godsell’s recounting of Beatton’s tale, which the HBC inspector dismissed as deluded ravings.
“Jan. 6,” Beatton wrote in his journal. “I went to see the sick man today. He is a pitiful looking devil. They had him with about 6 blankets and still he was nearly freezing. I can do nothing for him.
“Sunday 12. I went to see him today. He looks worse than ever. I gave him a dose of castor oil. He says his heart is freezing. He is always saying that he is going to be a cannibal. The Indians are terribly frightened. He told them that two men would arrive from Lesser Slave Lake in a few days, that is, the devil told him so.
“Jan. 15. The two men arrived as the crazy Indians said. After they start back, said you must look out for me for I think I shall kill some of you. He wants them to kill him all the time before he gets worse.
“Jan. 19. The sick man’s father came to see me today. He said his son was getting worse. He said he thought they would have to kill him or he would kill them all. I pity the old man, he was very frightened, and he was crying most of the time he was in here. I believe they will finish him yet.
“Jan. 20. Francois came here and asked me if I would read some prayers for the sick man. I went with him. I found a great change come over him. He looked very crazy and I asked him if he know me and he said yes. I read a few prayers out of the prayer book. He seemed to be getting worse all the time. He does not look like a human being. He seems to be terribly swollen in the body and face. I do not know how this will end. The sight of him is enough to frighten any person. The poor Indians slept very little here for the last 19 days. Since he arrived they have been watching him all the time… I am going to go and sit with the crazy man tonight and see how he is.
“Jan 21. Francois came for me last night and I went with him. I told him we ought to take some ropes with us and tie him if we could. The man seemed to be getting worse. He told them to kill him or he would kill us all. The Indians are terribly frightened. When I told them that we would tie him, they said it was no use as no ropes could hold a Cannibal. The sound of him was terrible. He was calling like a wild bull. We tied him with the ropes and I left them to come and get more rope, but could not find any that was of use.
“I went back again about 3… in the morning. When I got back, the lines were breaking that was on his arms. The Indians asked me what we should do. They said that when he got up he would kill us all. I told them if they was to do anything, to do it, as I had no more lines to tie him with. The father of the sick man got up and told his brother that he saw that they could do nothing for his son. He was getting worse all the time, and was too strong for us. He said what was true; that we could do nothing with him, and that he could kill us all. He told them, ‘I give him to you to do what you want to do with him.’ Only he said, ‘I do not want to see them hit him,’ and went out.
“Now the [medicine man] Yakwemoo was the only man they thought could kill him. But Yakwemoo did not want to do it. He wanted me to do it. I told him that I would not do it… At last, Yakwemoo said, ‘You all want me to do this. I will try.’ He then took the axe. I went to the door. I, now knowing how it was, seemed terribly frightened. I came back again. He had already struck him on the head once with an axe. He struck him again, and the man was going to rise. Yakwemoo said that he would yet get up, that he could not kill him. I told him to try and put him out of suffering. He hit him again and the man did not move… I do believe that he would have killed them at last, as I know they were all too frightened to defend themselves, they would have sat and looked at him. They did not have the heart to get up and try and hold him or help to tie him up. I had no ropes, only cod lines and that was what I tied him with.”
The Cree proceeded to decapitate Auger’s corpse and pin his body to the earthen floor of the cabin with wooden stakes, fearful that it might rise and kill them. That accomplished, they set fire to the cabin, consigning the Wendigo’s body to the flames.
According to Reverend Weaver in an August 11th, 1896 letter to Hayter Reed, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Woodland Cree of what is now northern Alberta regarded the ordeal at Trout Lake as fulfillment of the Moose Lake medicine man’s prophecy.
The Wendigo of Bald Hill
In 1897, one year after the death of Felix Auger, word reached San Francisco that gold had been struck in the watershed of an obscure tributary of the Yukon River called the Klondike. Almost overnight, thousands of ‘Stampeders,’ or impromptu prospectors, were making their ways towards the northern goldfields by various routes. Most gold seekers took steamers from San Francisco or Seattle to Alaska’s Lynn Canal, before making grueling treks up the Chilkoot or White Pass Trails to the watershed of the Yukon River. Others took the miserable Ashcroft Trail north up the interior of British Columbia, braving bear-infested forests and mosquito-ridden muskeg. Others still made the arduous ‘all-Canadian’ overland journey from Edmonton, which took them through the rugged wilderness of northern Alberta – a region dominated by the Dunne-za or ‘Beaver Indians’, the Woodland Cree, and the Chipewyan Dene.
Although Stampeder traffic along the all-Canadian route was relatively light, it brought white adventurers unacquainted with life on the northern frontier into contact with natives whose experiences with the paleface had hitherto been relegated to Hudson’s Bay Company employees, Oblate missionaries, transient geologists, and a handful of North-West Mounted Police officers. Predictably, some of these interactions bred contention. An Indian dog with a heedless interest in a prospector’s provisions might be shot, and its owner denied compensation. Carefully laid bear traps might be sprung and discarded if they obstructed a good trail. Had such offenses been perpetrated on a more warlike people lacking long-standing rapport with the region’s scanty white populace, they would have undoubtedly led to bloodshed.
In order to maintain harmony in the region and prepare the area’s natives for life alongside their new neighbours, the Dominion government decided to open negotiations for what would become Treaty 8 with the chiefs of the boreal forest. In exchange for legal land entitlement, regular financial assistance, and the annual provision of equipment for farming, hunting, and fishing, the chiefs would grant the government permission to open the land for mining, logging, and settlement.
To bring their petition to the sovereigns of that wild frontier, the government organized the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition. This delegation was headed by politician David Laird, who had overseen the negotiations of Treaties 4-7 during his service as Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs in the 1870s. It was supplemented by a contingent of the North-West Mounted Police, which force was recently given the prefix ‘Royal’ by King Edward VII in honour of its service in the Bohr War; French-Canadian Oblate missionary Father Albert Lacombe, who had earned the universal respect of natives throughout his five decades of service across Western Canada; interpreter Pierre d’Eschambault, a veteran trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company; and other state officials.
The man appointed secretary of the treaty commission was a colourful character named Charles Mair, an ardent Canadian nationalist who had made it his life’s mission to immortalize the British-Protestant element of Canadian identity through his poetry. Mair was a co-founder of the ‘Canada First’ movement, a political and cultural project which championed Canadian Confederation and the settlement of western Canada. Mair’s crusade to extend the Dominion west onto the prairies had brought him into conflict with Metis revolutionary Louis Riel, who had imprisoned him during his Red River Rebellion of 1869 and sentenced him to hang. Mair escaped the Metis jail before his sentence could be carried out, and later enlisted in the Canadian militia to fight against his old nemesis during the North-West Rebellion of 1885. His literary and martial exploits earned him the epithet the ‘warrior bard’.
In 1908, Mair chronicled the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition in his greatest work of prose, Through the Mackenzie Basin, a publication supplemented by an exposition on the wildlife of Northern Canada written by his friend, HBC trader Roderick MacFarlane, whose chilling 1853 experience on the Mackenzie River we explored in a previous piece. Early in his book, Mair described the execution of a suspected ‘Weeghteko’ on the shores of Lesser Slave Lake, a large body of water which lies in traditional Woodland Cree territory, in the boreal forest of what is now northern Alberta.
“It was expected,” Mair wrote, “that the sergeant of the Mounted Police stationed at the Lake would have set out by boat on the 3rd for Athabasca Landing, taking with him the witnesses in the Weeghteko case – a case not common among the Lesser Slave Lake Indians, but which was said to be on the increase. Ohe Pahayo – ‘The Pheasant’ – had gone mad and threatened to kill and eat people. Of course, this was attributed by his tribe to the Weeghteko, by which he was believed to be possessed, a cannibal spirit who inhabits the human heart in the form of a lump of ice, which must be got rid of by immersion of the victim in boiling water, or by pouring boiling fat down his throat. This failing, they destroy the man-eater, rip him up to let out the evil spirit, cut off his head, and then pin his four quarters to the ground, all of which was done by his tribe in the case of Pahayo. Napesosus – ‘The Little Man’ – struck the first blow, Moostoos followed, and the poor lunatic was soon dispatched. Arrests were ultimately made, and a boatload of witnesses was about to leave for Athabasca Landing, en route to attend the trial at Edmonton.”
Mair’s story is an imperfect recollection of a disturbing event that took place while he and his fellow commission members were preparing for their ambassadorial expedition. It occurred at a place called Bald Hill, located on the Little Smoky River about 95 kilometres southwest of Lesser Slave Lake. The subject of this tragedy was a Dunne-za trapper named Louis or Louison Moostoos, not to be confused with his Cree namesake, the chief of the Sucker Creek Indian Band, who would play a prominent role in the negotiations for Treaty 8. In the spring of 1899, this unfortunate fell under the spell of the ravenous demon of the north whose name the Cree feared to pronounce.
Earlier that winter, a group of about thirty Woodland Cree congregated at Bald Hill for a season of trapping. Among their number were the trapper Moostoos, his Cree wife, Julie, and their four children, who hailed from northwesterly Sturgeon Lake.
In late winter, several of the band members fell ill with some mysterious malady. Among them was Moostoos, who began to exhibit symptoms of a spiritual disease far more distressing than the bodily ailment affecting his companions. According to American anthropologist Louis Marano in his 1981 dissertation on the Wendigo phenomenon, Moostoos became consumed by the thought of killing and eating his friends and family, and begged his compatriots to kill him before he became too dangerous. “How would it do if I should eat the little ones,” he pleaded, “and especially their noses?”
The progression of Moostoos’s disease took an alarming turn on March 27th, 1899, when he began to levitate inside his cabin, performing a preternatural stunt which has been observed by Catholic priests during the rite of exorcism. The trapper’s terrified kinsmen threw a blanket over his floating form and whipped his face with a knotted cord until blood seeped through the wool.
A Cree woman named Eliza Entominahoo, who bore witness to this tragedy, described the event from the witness box of the Fort Saskatchewan courthouse on August 10th, 1899. Her testimony was reprinted in Albertan historian David W. Leonard’s 1995 book Delayed Frontier.
“He was in a shack,” Eliza said. “I was in the shack when he first took sick. All at once, Moostoos told the people he was going to kill them all at once at night. Entominahoo was in the shack, also Kunuksoos, Entominahoo’s wife and Kunuksoos’ wife were there… Moostoos was moving all the time and a lot were holding him down. He was laying down at first. Napesoosits was one and [Chuckachuck, his brother-in-law] was another who was holding Moostoos. I was holding one leg. Myeesquatis was holding the other leg and we were praying…
“Moostoos was trying to kill Napesoosus, and Pay-i-uu struck him. I saw Pay-i-uu come into the shack while we were holding Moostoos. After Pay-i-uu struck Moostoos, I walked out of the shack and into another one. Pay-i-uu struck Moostoos with an axe… Moostoos said, ‘You will all die tonight unless you kill me first.’ That’s all I heard him say. Pay-i-uu struck at Moostoos in the direction of the head.”
Napesoosus and Chuckachuck assisted Pay-i-uu with his grisly task, hacking at the sick man with their own tomahawks until he ceased to move. Fearing that he might rise at any moment and carry out his terrible threat, the men bound the Wendigo’s legs with trap chains, pinned his body to the earth with a stake driven through the chest, disemboweled him, and beheaded him. In an effort to melt the ice they feared had formed inside him, the natives poured hot tea into the wound in his chest. Then they kept a ceaseless vigil over the corpse to ensure that it would not move without their knowing.
News of the execution quickly reached the Royal North-West Mounted Police post at Lesser Slave Lake, prompting Corporal Charles Phillips to investigate. Accompanied by a constable named Warren and a Cree interpreter named Plante, Corporal Phillips set out for Bald Hill. On the trail, he encountered Napesoosus, Etominahoo, Chuck-a-chuck, and other natives who were on their way to report the event to him, apparently heedless of the trouble they had brought upon themselves. After listening to their harrowing tale, the officer arrested Napesoosus and detained Chuckachuck as a witness.
The party proceeded to Bald Hill, where Corporal Phillips examined Moostoos’s body. When he was satisfied that he had gleaned all the information he could from the crime scene, he buried the mutilated corpse near the shack. He returned briefly to the outpost at Lesser Slave Lake, where Pay-i-uu was discovered and arrested, before taking his prisoners to Fort Saskatchewan for trial.
Napesoosus and Pay-i-uu were tried for manslaughter, and the former was found guilty with a recommendation for mercy. After sentencing Napesoosus to two months of hard labour, the presiding judge, Justice Charles Rouleau, gave the following statement to the natives in the courtroom:
“We do not believe in your Wehtigo superstition. If an Indian is insane, it means he is sick, and there is no reason why you should kill him. The white man has medicine men who will cure him or take care of him, and if any more Indians turn Wehtigo, you are to tie them up, take care of them, and bring them to some settlement or police post where they will be taken charge of. The sentence you got this time is a short one, but if such a thing occurs again, the penalty will not be so light. The arm of the law is long, and if you or your people break the law, the arm will reach out for you and gather you in, even though you be at the north pole.”
The Weeghteko of the House River
In his commentary on the case, Charles Mair wrote, “There can be no doubt that such slayings are effected to safeguard the tribe. Indians have no asylums, and in order to get a dangerous lunatic out of the way, can only kill him. There would therefore be no hangings. But, now that the Indians and ourselves were coming under treaty obligations, it was necessary that an end should be put to such proceedings.
“Yet the reader must not be too severe upon the Indian for his treatment of the Weeghteko. He attributes the disease to the evil spirit, acts accordingly, and slays the victim. But an old author, Mrs. Jameson, tells us that in her day in Upper Canada, lunatics were allowed to stray into the forest to roam uncared for, and perish there, or were thrust into common jails. One at Niagara, she says, was chained up for four years.
“Aside from such cases of madness, which have often resulted in the killing and eating of children, etc., and which arouse the most superstitious horror in the minds of all Indians, the ‘savages’ of this region are the most inoffensive imaginable. They have always made a good living by hunting and trapping and fishing, and I believe when the time comes they will adapt themselves much more readily and intelligently to farming and stock-raising than did the Indians to the south. The region is well suited to both industries, and will undoubtedly attract white settlers in due time.”
Later in his book, Mair briefly alluded to another case of suspected ‘Weeghteko’ possession which took place on the House River, a tributary of the Athabasca River which enters the latter about 87 kilometres southwest of Fort McMurray. “Here,” the poet wrote, “there is a low-lying, desolate-looking, but memorable ‘Point,’ neighboured by a concave sweep of bank…” Mair may have been referring to a bend at the river’s mouth now home to the House River Indian Cemetery.
“The Point itself is tragic ground,” he continued, “showing now but a few deserted cabins and some Indian graves – one of which had a white paling around it, the others being covered with gray cotton – which looked like little tents in the distance. These were the graves of an Indian and his wife and four children, who had pitched through from Lac la Biche to hunt, and who all died together of diphtheria in this lonely spot. But here, too, many years ago, a priest was murdered and eaten by a weeghteko, an Iroquois from Caughnawaga. The lunatic afterwards took an Indian girl into the depths of the forest, and, after cohabiting with her for some time, killed and devoured her. Upon the fact becoming known, and being pursued by her tribe, he fled to the scene of his horrible banquet, and there took his own life. Having rowed across the river for better tracking, as we crawled painfully along, the melancholy Point with its lonely graves, deserted cabins and cannibal legend receded into eerie distance and wrapped itself once more in congenial solitude.”
The stories of Felix Auger, Louison Moostoos, and the cannibal of the House River are but a few of the many true Wendigo stories to come out of Canada’s northern woods, stretching from the early 20th Century to the flickering haze of prehistory. In a future piece, we will explore older campfire legends of the Wendigo from the boreal forest.
Source
“Reviving Witiko (Windigo): An Ethnohistory of ‘Cannibal Monsters’ in the Athabasca District of Northern Alberta, 1878-1910,” by Nathan D. Carlson in the Summer 2009 issue of Ethnohistory
Recollecting: The Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands (2011), by Sarah Carter
“Richard Young,” by Michael Owen, in Volume 13 of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1994)
“Charles Mair,” by David Latham, in Volume 15 of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (2005)
Through the Mackenzie Basin: A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 (1908), by Charles Mair and Roderick Ross MacFarlane
Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909 (1995), by David Leonard
Windigo Psychosis: The Anatomy of an Emic-etic Confusion (1981), by Louis Marano
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