Encounters with the Witikow in Northern Manitoba

In 1989, American anthropologist Robert A. Brightman published his book Acaoohkiwina and Acimowina: Traditional Narratives of the Rock Cree Indians – a collection of interviews with Cree elders from the remote settlement of Granville Lake, Manitoba, located deep in the boreal forest more than 730 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg. Scattered amid colourful myths and legends featuring the cultural heroes of Cree tradition are bleaker second-hand reports describing encounters with the Witikow that occurred within living memory.

The Witikow, or Wendigo, is the most dreaded of the monsters to haunt the smoky narratives of Cree mythology. According to the Rock Cree, a branch of the Woodland Cree from whom Brightman drew his stories, the Witikow is a human being cursed by the north wind or the spirit of the ice with a ceaseless overwhelming hunger for human flesh. It possesses superhuman strength and has a heart made of ice, which renders it nearly impossible to kill. It roams the northern wilderness in search of human prey, its skin a pale corpselike grey, its lips ragged and bloody, the monster having long since chewed them off in its hopeless bid for satiation.

One of Brightman’s informants described a swimming Witikow which approached a group of canoe-going women who had stopped to rest on the shores of a lake in northern Manitoba, its long hair floating behind it as it glided through the water. Its arrival was presaged by cold wind and gathering storm clouds. Fortunately, the unwanted visitor was driven away by a powerful medicine woman who was also encamped on the beach at that time – a hideous hermit whom the neighbouring Cree feared and respected.

The Wendigo of the Barrens

Another informant, an elder named Albert Umferville, related a story told to him by an old trapper who hailed from Moose Lake, Manitoba, just east of Le Pas. “Anyway,” Umferville began, “the story starts out with this trapper and his family way up north, out there in the barrens. Of course, in the barrens, there’s hardly any trees. So anyway, they were there this one night and they heard someone prowling around outside their tent. And the dogs were very scared. They wanted to come in. And every once in a while they’d hear something squeal. That was the dogs. Pretty soon there was scratching at the door.

“The man said, ‘We’d better not let him in. I know who it is. It’s the witikow. It’s eating up our dogs out there.’ So they were pretty scared. So come morning, they packed all their stuff and they started off. They started going south. And in the evening they made an igloo out of snow.

“The same thing happened that night. They heard something prowling around. But they didn’t have no dogs that night because they were all eaten up. They were travelling by foot on snowshoes. So the old man, he loaded his rifle and sat by the door all night long. He could hear [that witikow] walking round and round outside. The next morning, he went away.”

Umferville went on to explain how the man led his family south to the treeline, certain that the witikow was hot on his trail. There, he came upon large drifts of snow, in which he decided to construct a burrow. In order to confuse the witikow, the trapper hollowed out his shelter at the end of a long tortuous tunnel.

“So this witikow,” Umferville continued, “it came there that night, and they could hear it walking up there on top of the drift. And he had a long stick that he was poking into the drift, trying to find where those people were. Couldn’t find them.”

The following day, the family, weak from terror, exertion, and lack of sleep, continued into the stunted forest until they came upon an abandoned cabin. The man barricaded his family inside the log structure and sealed the entrances, hammering boards over the door and windows.

That night, the Witikow found the cabin and prowled about it until dawn. In the morning, when it became clear that the cannibal would not leave, the trapper ordered his wife to boil a pot of water. “And then he opened the door,” the storyteller continued, “and there was the witikow standing out there. All he could see was his teeth. Lips were all chewed away.”

Umferville described how the trapper lured the monster inside with the promise of food, and killed him by plunging his head into the pot of boiling water. “So after he killed the witikow,” the storyteller continued, “he cut lots of dry wood and he made a big fire and threw the body on top of the woodpile. Every time he threw it on there, water would come out of the body of the witikow and drown the fire out, and he’d have to make it all over again. And he worked all day, all night, all day. And toward evening, there was only one little bit of a bone left. So he had to cut more wood, and he burnt all the bone until there was nothing but just ashes. And that’s how they got away.”

Johnny Bighetty’s Stories

Of all of Brightman’s informants to detail second-hand encounters with the Witikow, an elder named Johnny Bighetty stands out as an exceptionally gifted and prolific storyteller. Bighetty recalled how his great-grandfather was one of the gifted few, of which each Cree camp had at least one, who could sense the approach of a distant Witikow. On one such terrifying occasion, the old man slipped into a trancelike state and sent his spirit out above the trees in order to ascertain the monster’s location. That accomplished, he re-entered the trance to beseech the assistance of his guardian spirits, or pawakanak, which subsequently flew into camp on the air. Bighetty recalled that these spirits made a peculiar noise when they arrived, sounding “like the radio when the reception is no good and four channels are coming in at once.” When the spirits were hovering above the camp, Bighetty’s great grandfather walked outside, allowing the spirits to physically pick him up and carry him over the trees to the Witikow’s location. At the old man’s request, the pawakanak redirected the Witikow away from the village, saving the people from almost-certain destruction. The spirits then carried Bighetty’s great-grandfather to a lake near the village and dropped him off, leaving him to find his way back home. His landing left visible marks in the snow which Bighetty likened to those made by Cessna bush planes and willow ptarmigans. The old man walked back to the village and collapsed on his arrival, utterly exhausted and barely clinging to consciousness.

Misil the Wendigo Killer

Later in his book, Brightman included a nearly identical story told by elder Salazie Linklater regarding a spiritually powerful Cree trapper named Misil, or Michel Dumas, who was said to possess many guardian spirits. In Linklater’s story, Misil, while trapping beaver deep in the bush, had the uncanny presentiment that his family was being menaced by some terrible danger. With the aid of his guardian spirits, he flew over the trees to his family’s camp. There, his sons told him that, while gathering firewood, they had spotted something watching them from concealment in the trees. Perceiving that the unseen observers were a pair of witikowak – a man and a woman – Misil once again called on his spirit guardians for assistance. After a long delay, which Misil later learned was attributed to his baptism, the spirits answered the summons and drew the trapper vertically into the air. They then did the same to both witikowak and dropped them from a great height, killing them.

“When the pawakanak returned Misil to the ground,” Linklater said in Cree, “he was so weak that he was almost dead.” After reviving their father in a sweat lodge, the trapper’s sons, at his request, built an enormous pyre and cremated the bodies of the witikowak. “Those witikowak were filled with ice,” Linklater explained, “and the water from the melting ice extinguished the fire. It was necessary for them to rebuilt the fire twice more before the bodies were finally burned. It was necessary to burn the bodies because otherwise the witikowak would return to life.”

A Close Call

The story of his great-grandfather’s battle with the witikow was not the only family yarn that John Bighetty related. Later, the elder described a close call that his maternal grandfather had while out in the bush with his family, tending his trapline.

“They were at a camp by the shore of the river,” he said. “One day, while he’s checking his traps, the old man has a feeling that something is watching him or looking at his family. He had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. He hurried back to the camp and told his wife to break up the camp and get the kids into the canoe. This was in the springtime and there were narrow channels of water along the shore. They packed everything up real quick and loaded into the canoes and paddled away from the shore.

“There in the bush along the shore, the old man could just see someone pacing along with them, keeping up as they paddled, keeping pace with the canoe. So he said, ‘We won’t go on shore.’ So they continued to paddle as far as they could but then they finally came to the portage where they’d have to carry the canoe over to get to more open water. The witikow was right there at the portage, waiting for them to come up onto the land.”

Bighetty explained how his grandfather began praying to his guardian spirit, which instructed him to shoot the upcoming rapids as fast as he could, telling him that it would open up a channel for him through the river ice just long enough for him and his family to make it through to the other side. Bighetty did as instructed and successfully navigated the chute. That accomplished, he paddled to the opposite shore and urged his family to run for their lives.

“Pretty soon, behind them,” Bighetty said, “they heard the sound of bushes snapping and rustling. Witikow was following close behind them as they ran. My mother told me she remembered being pulled along by her mother, just rushing through the bush, and hearing the old man say, ‘We’ve got to live. We have to run really fast if we want to live.’ And the noises behind them get closer and closer. Suddenly… that witikow comes right up behind them at arm’s length. He grabbed the kids and they screamed. Then that old man turned and reached into his hunting bag and pulled out a moose antler knife that he always carried. He looked right at that witikow and told him, ‘If you’d left us alone, you’d be able to live. But I have to kill you because of what you’ve done to my children by frightening them and trying to kill them.’ And he stabbed that moose antler into the witikow. The witikow begins to die, and the old man cut off the head, the arms, and the legs, and they lay there on the ground still moving back and forth. He only killed it because it was going to harm his family.”

The Wendigo of Watt Lake

Another of Bighetty’s tales is set on the shores of Watt Lake, a small body of water just northwest of Granville Lake, on the southern shores of which Brightman collected his stories. Many years ago, an old woman, whom Bighetty recalled had died sometime in the 1960s, spent the winter trapping at Watt Lake with her brother and another woman. In early spring, before the melt, the trio mushed southeast past Granville Lake to Suwannee Lake, just southeast of the former, to tend their spring trapline. For reasons undisclosed, the two women decided to return to Watt Lake shortly after their arrival in order to retrieve their canoe, which they had left at their winter camp. “As soon as they left,” Bighetty said, “the brother began dreaming that this sister was in trouble. He dreamed that there was a witikow somewhere around Watt Lake waiting for them. So he went out after them.”

When the old women arrived at their old winter camp at Watt Lake, they sensed the presence of some unseen evil in the forest and decided to return to their spring camp with all haste. “They were scared,” Bighetty said, “so they loaded their canoe up on the toboggan in a big hurry and got their dogs and headed back to Suwanee.”

Roughly half-way between Watt Lake and Granville Lake, the travellers encountered the old woman’s brother, who told the pair of his frightening dream. The trio then proceeded southeast, eager to put as much space between themselves and Watt Lake as possible.

No sooner had they set out together than the three travellers heard the unmistakable sound of someone proceeding up the trail behind them. The Witiko, they knew, was following them, and would soon overtake them.

As the trio proceeded allowing a narrowing of the river known as mistasiniy, the brother prayed to his guardian spirit, the Rock, asking it to prevent the Witikow from reaching them. As if in response, a huge rock broke free from the overhanging cliffs behind them, sending a shower of boulders crashing into the valley below. The rockslide formed a barrier across the narrows which obstructed the Witikow’s trail, giving the three travellers the time they needed to escape.

The Wendigo with the Webbed Feet

Bighetty’s last tale described the chilling experience of two trappers, a native named P.B. and a Swede named Bruce Anderson, who ran a trapline together on South Indian Lake, Manitoba, northeast of Granville Lake. “One day,” Bighetty said, “while he’s checking his traps, P.B. starts to feel lonesome. He felt tired. He didn’t feel like working or eating. They say that people begin to feel sad like that when there’s a witikow somewhere going around. So he lifts up his traps and he’s walking home along the shore of the lake and he sees something’s footprints there. And those prints are all webbed across like a fishnet. He was just stiff with fright. It looked like something had been walking there which had mukluks made out of heavy fishnet.”

Terrified, P.B. returned to camp and told Anderson what he had seen. The Swede simply laughed, dismissing his partner’s terror as the product Indian superstition and misidentification, but agreed to examine the strange tracks the next day. The partners headed to the spot the following day and puzzled over the prints, which neither could make heads nor tails of. Just as they were leaving in their canoe, P.B. caught a glimpse of something tall retreating into the bush.

“That night,” Bighetty continued, “all the dogs in their camp were nervous. They howled all night, and the fur on their backs stood up on end.”

The dogs continued their howling the following night, alerted by the presence of something lurking in the woods beyond the camp. Anderson stuck his head out of his tent to see what was causing the commotion and saw a dark figure standing in the bush nearby. He shouted at the figure, which slunk away into the trees.

“The next day,” the storyteller continued, “P.B. went to set up a little camp further out along their trapline. The old people always said that the witikow would hang around and bother people for three days and then kill and eat them on the fourth day. Well, now it’s the fourth day and P.B. is still feeling sad and scared. No appetite, just dragging himself around. He tried to set up a camp in the bush. And just then, he heard gunshots in the distance. Right away, he felt this great relief, and his appetite came back. He travelled rapidly back to their old camp. There, he found Bruce standing there with his thirty-thirty. He’d killed that witikow as it was coming into their camp. The feet were webbed just like the prints it left. They burned the body.”

The Witikow Son

Perhaps the eeriest Wendigo story to appear in Brightman’s book was an anecdote related by an elder named Cornelius Colomb. According to this story, there was once a half-Chipewyan man from the tiny community of Brochet, Manitoba, on the northern banks of Reindeer Lake in the northwestern corner of the province. This man had a daughter whom he wanted to marry to a Cree from the hamlet of Southend, Saskatchewan, at the opposite end of the lake. When the father of the hopeful bride proposed this match, the Cree from Southend rejected the offer with scorn, telling the suitor that he didn’t want his son to marry an Athabascan dog. The half-Chipewyan responded to this insult with a curse, telling the man from Southend that his own son would eat him the coming winter.

That fall, the man from Southend took his family to Goldsand Lake, Manitoba, roughly halfway between Reindeer Lake and South Indian Lake. There, the man’s son made it his custom to hunt rabbits with his sister every evening. One night, after just such an excursion, the brother and sister returned to camp to find that a bear had taken up residence in their tent. The presence of this ursine marauder seemed to induce a sort of madness in the young hunter. In a sort of frenzy, he killed the bear, dragged its carcass out of the tent, and built a cookfire. Then he drew his hunting knife and sawed of the bear’s head. When the head came free, he tossed it into the fire and watched while the fur singed to powder. Then, heedless of the pleas of his horrified sister, he drew the head from the flames and began to eat the half-cooked meat.

This inexplicable ritual seemed to cause a profound change in the young man. In the ensuing days, he fell ill, refusing to eat, and rejecting sleep. The man’s father knew that his son was turning Witikow, and asked a Cree named Acikwas, whom the storyteller knew personally, to help watch over him at night to prevent him from killing his family.

By November, the boy’s condition had degenerated to such a state that it occupied the older men’s full attention. Day and night, they stood vigil over the melancholy hunter, their trapping forgotten. The boy continued to lie listless in bed, ignoring the food that was brought to him, refusing to speak, and spending the long nights staring into the darkness. The vacancy of his expression eventually proved too much for his guardians, who covered it with a blanket.

One night, the father heard the sound of chewing coming from his son’s tent and went in to investigate. “He was eating his moccasins,” Colomb said. “This guy took his moccasin off and was eating it. Half-gone already. His father took the moccasin and said, ‘Good thing you don’t eat the whole moccasin, it would’ve killed you.’ The sick guy said, ‘I’ll start on you after I’m through eating that thing.’”

Knowing that his son was entering the final stage of his witikow transformation and would soon be too strong to kill, the father roused Acikwas and asked him for a final favour. Together, the two men strangled the boy to death with a rope.

“Ever since,” Colomb concluded, “every time someone camps in that camp where they had the house, they find a bear where that [wihtikow] was sleeping. Bear every winter. So finally nobody bothered going there because there’d be a bear there. They kill it every time, but there’s another one every winter. The bear… he just sleeps right where the guy was sleeping…”

Taken together, these eerie accounts bridge the murky gap between myth and cultural memory, giving pale flesh and icy blood to the misty monster of Cree oral history. To the natives of northern Manitoba, the Witikow was once a very real predator to be feared, avoided, and at times combatted. Despite that the last reported encounters with that boreal terror now lie generations in the past, the forests and lakes of northern Manitoba remain as vast, cold, and desolate as in the days of Brightman’s oldest informants. In that silent, frozen wilderness, it’s easy to entertain the notion that somewhere, an ancient evil lies dormant, waiting patiently for the unwary.

 

Sources

Acaoohkiwina and Acimowina: Traditional Narratives of the Rock Cree Indians (1989), by Robert A. Brightman