Brant McGregor’s Encounter
In the summer of 1995, in the storied waters of the St. Lawrence River, a Mohawk fisherman and his grandfather came face to face with a monster that their people had spoken of for generations – an enormous horned serpent said to dwell in frigid depths of Lake Ontario and its adjoining waterways. This chilling encounter breathes modern life into an ancient legend which happens to be bolstered by a rich yet little-known catalogue of historic reports, giving definite form to the murk of mythology and completing a disturbing chain which unites ancestral nightmares with the waking present.
I received this fascinating first-hand report in the spring of 2024 from a man named Brant McGregor, who lives on southern banks of the St. Lawrence River just southwest of Montreal. Mr. McGregor is a member of the Kahnawake band, a unique branch of the Mohawk First Nation which broke from the powerful Iroquois Confederacy to ally with the French during the bloody Beaver Wars of the 17th Century. In the 1660s, these people established the village of Caughnawaga, from which they took their name, on the southern banks of the St. Lawrence River opposite Montreal’s Lachine seigneury – a settlement which exists today as the Kahnawake First Nations Reserve.
On May 2nd, 2024, a son of this singular First Nation reached out to me to tell the following story.
“I’m from the Mohawk reservation on the south shore of the St. Lawrence seaway called Kahnawake,” the storyteller wrote. “We have a very long history of stories of giant water ‘serpents’ in our river.”
McGregor proceeded to relate how, one hot summer day in July 1995, he and his grandfather prepared to head out on the St. Lawrence for a day of fishing. Before embarking in the old Mohawk’s 20-foot-long open-top fishing boat, the pair were approached by the storyteller’s grandmother, who solemnly cautioned them to “watch out for giant snakes” – an earnest but unusual entreaty which the two fishermen dismissed as a joke.
“It was a very hot and sunny day,” McGregor continued, “with a light breeze blowing. The water was pretty calm for that area, near the mouth of the Chateauguay River. We were trolling against the current, until we decided to drop anchor thirty feet from shore, in an area us locals call ‘Big Fence.’
“We had been casting our lines out for about fifteen minutes, when I saw an object I thought was a log or tree suddenly burst to the surface. It was like one of those boogie boards people use to float around on in a pool, if you were to hold it underwater, then let it fly up to break the surface.”
McGregor drew his grandfather’s attention towards the strange object, and the two men peered intently at the disturbance.
“As the water settled down,” McGregor continued, “we were able to get a clear look at what had risen from the bottom. It was no log or tree. The creature was about 100 feet away from our boat, and about 30 feet from shore. A huge snake-like head protruded 8 to 10 feet out of the water. The creature was dark brown with black blotches, exactly like a water-logged dead tree or log. It was as thick as a telephone pole around. The head, again, was very snakelike, with two huge black eyes, and two short horn-like spikes coming out the top of its head.
“When it came to the surface, it looked like it was lost or confused. It was looking around left and right, trying to get its bearings, when it stuck out an enormous purple forked tongue, about five feet long. At that moment, it noticed our boat, and it lowered down like a submarine periscope, until we could only see the head and nostrils and horns above water. It swam rapidly toward our small boat. As we frantically tried to reel up our line and pull up the anchor, it came to within 20 feet of us, and it again rose out of the water and stuck out its long purple tongue. I said to my grandfather, ‘It wants to get in the boat.’ It looked at us with its huge eyes…
“My grandfather at last pulled up the anchor and we made a swift exit. At no time did I see the entire body. However, judging by the size of the head and ‘neck’, I would estimate it was anywhere between 50 to 65 feet long. The monstrous head could have swallowed me in one gulp. I have only told a small group of friends and family about this incident since 1995.”
The Kahnawake Mohawk Legend
Shortly after relating this experience to me, McGregor generously provided me with the traditional Kahnawake Mohawk belief regarding the giant water snake of the St. Lawrence, which he learned from his grandmother. “I was told that these creatures lay eggs on land, not too far into the forest or swamp area,” he wrote. “Also, they are able to travel great distances over land, usually at night to avoid detection. They travel mostly when they are small and harder to notice. I was also told the newly hatched young have a metallic blue colour to them that is bright in the sun.
“[The creature] also has the power to create storms and rough seas. He is like an elemental primal being, very ancient and powerful. He can come into your dreams. I can attest to that. Since my encounter, my dreams have been haunted by this creature. So much so that I had to consult a medicine man for some advice and help. I was told that, because I had seen him, now he knows me, and prowls my dreams, looking for me to enter his watery domain.”
A Hunter Slays a Giant Water Snake
The Mohawk are not the only Iroquois people with traditional stories about giant underwater snakes. Although most Haudenasaunee legends regarding these mysterious creatures specifically describe a monster in Lake Ontario, which stories we will explore more thoroughly in the future, others allude to creatures that make their homes in unspecified lakes and rivers throughout the Laurentian North Woods.
West of traditional Mohawk territory, beyond the ancestral homeland of the Oneida, lies the historic domain of the Onandaga, another Iroquois tribe, which stretches from the southeastern shores of Lake Ontario to the hills of northern Pennsylvania. In her 1883 book Myths of the Iroquois, American anthropologist Erminnie Adele Smith, touted the world’s first female field ethnographer, included an Onondaga legend in which Hi-Nu (sometimes spelled ‘He’no’), the thunder god, asked a human hunter to help him slay a giant water snake.
“A hunter in the woods was once caught in a thunder shower,” Smith wrote, “when he heard a voice calling upon him to follow. This he did until he found himself in the clouds, the height of many trees from the ground. Beings which seemed to be men surrounded him, with one among them who seemed to be their chief. He was told to look below and tell whether he could see a huge water serpent. Replying that he could not, the old man anointed his eyes, after which he could see the monster in the depths below him. They then ordered one of their number to try and kill this enemy to the human race. Upon his failing, the hunter was told to accomplish the feat. He accordingly drew his bow and killed the foe. He was then conducted back to the place where he had sought shelter from the storm, which had now ceased.
“This was man’s first acquaintance with the Thunder God and his assistants, and by it he learned that they were friendly toward the human race, and protected it from dragons, serpents, and other enemies.”
The Maiden and the Great Horned Serpent
Another Iroquois nation with traditional stories about horned water snakes is the Seneca, whose ancestral homeland lies south of Lake Ontario, beyond the territory of their easterly kinsmen, the Cayuga. American anthropologist Arthur Caswell Parker, a New Yorker of Seneca descent, included several such stories in his 1923 book Seneca Myths and Folk Tales. One of these stories incorporates two strangely-universal motifs common to native folklore across the continent, namely the enmity between thunder beings and great horned water snakes, and the latter’s penchant for seducing native women and carrying them off to their watery abodes.
“Horned Snake,” Parker began, “Gas’hais’dowane, has several names among which are Doona’gaes and Djondi’gwado. He is a monster serpent of the underwaters, and his head is adorned with antlers of great spread, though he is also said to have monster horns shaped like a buffalo’s. He is capable of transforming himself to the appearance of a man, and as such delights in luring maidens to his abode. In a few instances, he appears as the gallant rescuer of women marooned on bewitched islands. Like other monsters, he has a brood of his kind, he having females as well. These sometimes lure men under water and seek to transform them by inducing them to put on the garments they wear. Horned Snake is hated by the Thunderer, who spares no energy to kill him before he can dive.”
Parker went on to relate an old Seneca story about a maiden who entertained two rival suitors, one of them He’no the ‘Thunderer,’ and the other a mysterious handsome stranger with strange clothes and a crafty look. The maiden succumbed to the wiles of the newcomer and agreed to become his wife. One night, she absconded with him, accompanying him to his strange, dimly-lit lodge, located in an underwater cave in a lakeside cliff. The walls of this lacustrine lair were lined with strange-looking garments, from among which the stranger urged the girl to choose one that pleased her.
“For a long time,” Parker wrote, “the girl looked at the things in the lodge, but she was afraid to put on anything, for everything had such a fishy smell. There was one dress, however, that attracted the girl, and she was tempted to put it on. It was very long and had a train. It was covered all over with decorations that looked like small porcupine quills flattened out. There was a hood fastened to it, and to the hood was fastened long branching antlers. She looked at this dress longingly, but hung it up again with a sigh, for it smelled like fish and she was afraid.”
The girl informed her new husband of her inclination, and of her misgivings. The mysterious husband approved of her choice and expressed his desire for her to wear the antlered dress when he returned from his next hunting trip.
“The next day,” Parker continued, “the husband went away, again promising soon to return. Again, the girl busied herself with looking at the trophies hanging in the lodge. She noticed that there were many suits like the one she had admired. Carefully, she examined each, and then it dawned upon her that these garments were the clothing of great serpents. She was horrified at the discovery and resolved to escape. As she went to the door, she was swept back by a wave. She tried the back door, but was forced into the lodge again by the water. Finally mustering all her courage, she ran out of the door and jumped upward. She knew that she had been in a house under water. Soon, she came to the surface, but it was dark and there were thunder clouds in the sky. A great storm was coming up.
“Then she heard a great splashing, and through the water she saw a monster serpent plowing his way toward her. Its eyes were fiercely blazing and there were horns upon its head. As it came toward her, she scrambled in dismay up the dark slippery rocks to escape it. As the lightning flashed, she looked sharply at the creature and saw that its eyes were those of her husband. She noticed in particular a certain mark on his eyes that had before strangely fascinated her. Then she realized that this was her husband, and that he was a great horned serpent.
She screamed and sought to scale the cliff with redoubled vigor, but the monster was upon her with a great hiss. His huge bulk coiled to embrace her, when there was a terrific peal of thunder, a blinding flash, and the serpent fell dead, stricken by one of Hi’no’s arrows.”
Hi’no the Thunderer picked the girl up and carried her to her father’s lodge, telling her that he had been searching for her, but had been thwarted by the great horned serpent’s powerful magic. He then asked the girl whether she had tried on any of the snake man’s strange garments, telling her that to do so would have substantially transformed her from a woman to a serpent, and was pleased to learn that she had heeded her instincts to resist the temptation. Hi’no then purified the woman in a sweat lodge, in which she gave birth to two young snakes. That accomplished, the Thunderer married the widow, and gave her fellow tribesmen scales from the back of the horned serpent, which would protect them from the monster’s predations as long as they kept them in their medicine bundles.
The Horned Snake Rescues a Marooned Wife
Later in his book, Parker included another Seneca story featuring a beautiful young wife who inspired jealousy in her three sisters. One day, the sisters brought the woman to an island in a lake on the pretext of picking huckleberries. While the young wife was busy harvesting, the three sisters quietly slipped back into the canoe and returned to their village, leaving the subject of their envy marooned on the island.
When the wife discovered her sisters’ deception, she sat down on the beach and cried herself to sleep. That night, she was awakened by the hushed whispers of a council of what appeared to be elemental spirits, who huddled together in a ring nearby, arguing amongst themselves over which of them would rescue the marooned damsel. A tall slender being with a clear ringing voice was selected for the task.
The following morning, the wife awoke to the voice of a great serpent calling out to her from the water, its head adorned with a pair of curved horns akin to that of the buffalo. The monster declared that it had come to rescue her, and advised her take a seat upon its head so that it could convey her to shore. The wife did as requested, bringing a dozen willow branches with her, at the creature’s insistence, with which to whip the monster if it travelled too slowly. “With an undulating motion,” Parker wrote, “his long glistening body moved through the ripples, but the wife sat high and not a drop of water spattered upon her.
“As her mysterious rescuer journeyed his way,” the anthropologist continued, “he told her that he must hasten with all speed as he belonged to the race of underwater people whom the mighty He’no hates. Even now, the scouts (small black clouds) might have spied him and be scudding through the sky bringing after them a host of thunder clouds. Nor was his an ide surmise, for scarcely had he spoken when a small black cloud appeared and sped with great rapidity toward them. Instantly, the wind commenced to blow, and the great serpent called back to his charge, ‘Whip me, Oh whip me! He’no has discovered us and is driving onward his warriors!’”
A terrible thunderstorm soon fell upon the woman and her monstrous rescuer. Terrified of the lightning bolts that flashed ever nearer, the great horned serpent abandoned his charge and dove to the depths of the lake, leaving the woman to flounder in the water. Fortunately, the wife managed to swim to the rest of the way to shore, where she was reunited with her husband. When the story of her plight became known, her three betrayers were banished from the village.
Abenaki Tradition
According to Canadian anthropologist Gordon M. Day in his 1978 contribution to the Handbook of North American Indians, the Iroquois shared their belief in giant horned water snakes with their easterly enemies, the Western Abenaki, who lived along both banks of the St. Lawrence River, between the Richelieu River and Trois Rivieres. Like the Iroquois, the Abenaki generally regarded these creatures as malevolent.
The Water Horse of the Moisie River
Native peoples were not the only residents of the Laurentian Valley with tales of giant serpents in the St. Lawrence. For as long as they have sailed that great Canadian waterway, French colonists and their French-Canadian descendants have had their own stories about a remarkably similar creature – an enormous aquatic horse-headed serpent. Gallic reports of this riparian reptile accord perfectly with the Old World legend of the hippocampus, or sea horse, regional variations of which exist across Europe and the Middle East.
French reports of a monster in the St. Lawrence date back as early as 1535, during Breton explorer Jacques Cartier’s second voyage to Canada on behalf of King Francis I of France. Guided by two St. Lawrence Iroquois princes whom they had kidnapped on the Gaspe Peninsula the previous year, Cartier and his sailors became the first white men to explore the great waterway that would become the heart of French Canada. On August 20th, 1535, the explorers embarked in their jollyboats and made a brief excursion up the Moisie River, a tributary of the St. Lawrence formerly known as the Chisedek (sometimes spelled ‘Chischedec’), which empties into the northern St. Lawrence Delta near present-day Sept-Iles, Quebec, just northwest of Anticosti Island.
“Up this river,” Cartier wrote in the relation of his second voyage, “were several fish in appearance like horses, which go on land at night but in the day-time remain in the water, as our two Indians informed us. We saw a great number of these fish up this river.”
Cartier alluded to these creatures several more times in his writings, repeatedly referring to them as “chevaux de mer,” or ‘sea horses’ – a term evoking the hippocampi of Old World lore. Although some writers have identified these mysterious amphibians as walruses, this classification is called into question by an illustration in a mysterious hand-written document known today as the Codex Canadensis. Originally supposed to have been penned around the turn of the 18th Century by Charles Becart de Granville et de Fonville, a celebrated cartographer from Quebec City, this document is now believed to have been composed by Father Louis Nicolas, a French Jesuit missionary celebrated for his contributions to the field of natural history, and criticized for his fiery temper. On page 40 of his manuscript, Nicolas drew an image of a creature with the head of a horse and the tail of a fish, to which he added the French caption, “Sea horse seen in the meadows along the River Chisedek, which flows into the St. Lawrence River.”
The Adhothuys of the Saguenay River
Later in his relation of his second voyage, Jacques Cartier described another unusual discovery that he and his men made on September 2nd, 1535, at the mouth of the Saguenay River – a tributary of the St. Lawrence characterized by imposing fjord-like cliffs, which the Iroquois claimed led to a fabulous kingdom rich in gold and precious stones. His description of this discovery, as it appears in a 1580 English translation of his writings, reads (when spelled in modern English):
“The next morning, we hoisted sail and went thence, sailing further on, where we had notice of a certain kind of fish never tofore of any man seen or known. They are about the bigness of a porpoise, yet nothing like them, of body very well proportioned, headed like Greyhounds, altogether as white as snow, without any spot, within which river there is a great quantity of them. They do live altogether between the sea and the freshwater. These of the country call them Adhothuys. They told us that they be very savory and good to be eaten. Moreover, they affirm none to be found elsewhere but in that river.”
Most academics who have commented upon this passage have identified the Adhothuys as “white whales,” or beluga whales, which live in the brackish waters of the St. Lawrence Delta. This interpretation, while geographically accurate, betrays either total disregard for Cartier’s description or an utter ignorance of beluga anatomy, as belugas bear undeniable resemblance to porpoises, and have bulbous heads antithetical to the slender crania of greyhounds.
Early Newspaper Reports
On July 3rd, 1608, more than seven decades after Cartier’s second voyage to Canada, French explorer Samuel de Champlain established the settlement of Quebec near the site of Charlesbourg-Royal, an abandoned colony which Cartier had established in 1541 near an old Iroquois village that he had visited during his exploration of the St. Lawrence. Over the succeeding decades, French adventurers would establish the settlements of Trois-Rivieres and Montreal further upriver, forming the colony of Canada, the jewel of New France.
For a century and a half, the little Laurentian colony maintained its precarious existence in the face of much larger foes, repelling incursions of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy during the Beaver Wars of the 17th Century, and withstanding the assaults of the English throughout the continent’s four great intercolonial wars. The British conquered New France in 1760, during the Seven Years’ War, ushering in a new era of Anglo-Saxon rule in Canada. All throughout, the St. Lawrence River served as the stage on which this multigenerational drama unfolded, being the backdrop against which habitants tilled their narrow seigneuries; the aquatic highway on which furs, munitions, passengers and mail were regularly trafficked; and the battlefield on which the fate of the continent was decided. If any of the farmers, priests, soldiers or sailors who traversed the waters of Le Grand Fleuve during the 17th and 18th Centuries left written records of their encounters with giant water snakes, this author is unaware of them.
It wasn’t until the early 19th Century that run-ins with the river’s mysterious serpentine inmate began to circulate by way of the press. The earliest journalistic reference to a giant serpent in the St. Lawrence Valley that this author was able to unearth is neither a sea serpent story, nor a true tale. Filed away in the Gary Mangiacopra Archives is an old newspaper clipping, apparently acquired by the New Hampshire Historical Society, taken from the July 29th, 1826 issue of the Portsmouth Journal. “A late Montreal paper,” the article began, “gives an account of a snake, first seen by a woman and some children, and afterwards by several men, which, when twisted round a tree 30 feet in height, reached from the bottom to the top of it, and appeared… to be as big round as a common water pail. A horse, six or seven neat cattle, and some sheep, are missing from the neighborhood (a place called Jean Baptiste) and of course he is charged with having carried them all off for his own eating. The Montreal editor does not seem to doubt the truth of the story, as his information is derived from the owner of the ground in which his snakeship was seen, corroborated by half a dozen men, who had looked on while he glided through grass and over plowed land, to hide himself in a wood. We should be very loth to have such gentry lurking around our premises.”
Exactly three weeks later, the same publication threw cold water on its own story by stating that the report was a hoax perpetrated by a farmer from the village of L’Assomption, just down the St. Lawrence from Montreal, “who had accidentally discovered an extensive plat of strawberries on his land,” and concocted the snake story in order to deter his neighbours from availing themselves of it.
The American Sea Serpent in Lake Ontario
The St. Lawrence serpent’s first real newspaper debut is more properly a story describing a monster in Lake Ontario – a creature which features heavily in the legends of the Huron and the Seneca, with which the St. Lawrence water snake is inextricable intertwined. On July 15th, 1835, a Kingston newspaper printed the report of Captain Abijah Kellog of Sackets Harbour, New York, who claimed to have encountered something unusual during a routine voyage from Rochester, New York, to Kingston, Upper Canada – now Kingston, Ontario.
At about seven o’clock in the evening, while completing the last leg of his journey across Lake Ontario, Captain Kellogg spied something strange from the deck of his schooner Polythemus – a straight pole-like object lying still in the water, which he first took to be the severed mast of a sailing ship. “Observing it more attentively,” the article explained, “he was surprised and alarmed to see it in motion, and steering towards the schooner. Singing out to his hands to take care of themselves, he put the schooner up to the wind, lashed the helm a lee, and ran up the main rigging, waiting for the monster to approach. The serpent, for it was no other than an immense snake, neared the vessel fast, and passed immediately under the stern, taking no notice whatever of the schooner or those on board, but affording to everybody an ample opportunity to observe and note his monstrous dimensions. In length, he was about 175 feet, of a dark blue color, spotted with brown; towards either end he tapered off, but about the middle, his body was of the circumference of a flour barrel; his head was peculiarly small, and could not well be distinguished but from the direction in which he moved. He swam with an undulating movement, keeping the best part of his body under water, but occasionally shewing his entire length. He was in sight full fifteen minutes, and when last seen, was making the best of his way down the St. Lawrence. On board the schooner were two young men, the vessel’s crew, together with three passengers, who are all willing to be qualified to the truth of what has been here stated.”
Large Serpent in the St. Lawrence
More than two decades elapsed before the monster serpent of the St. Lawrence returned to Canadian headlines. On May 28th, 1857, the Kingston Whig-Standard ran with a story describing the sighting of an “enormous water serpent” about three miles up the St. Lawrence from the city of Brockville, Canada – now Brockville, Ontario – the latter lying about seventy kilometres northeast of Kingston. Two witnesses, Mr. L. Parker and Mr. D. Ladd, had their boating excursion cut short by the appearance of 30-foot-long snake. The frightening creature, which was lightly coloured, reared six feet out of the water and charged at the boaters, spurring them into a mad dash for shore. The incident was corroborated by crew members of the schooner Protection, who witnessed the event from a distance.
Serpent of the St. Lawrence Delta
The next chronological sighting of the swimming serpent of the St. Lawrence was referenced in the 1937 French-language book Legendes et Recits de la Cote-Nord du Saint-Laurent, or Legends and Tales of the North Shore of the St. Lawrence. This publication was written by Elioza Fafard-Lacasse, whose family manned the Pointe-des-Monts lighthouse on the northern shores of the St. Lawrence Delta throughout the latter half of the 19th Century. With the exception of the blue behemoth reported by Captain Kellog, the monstrous creature which Elioza described differs considerably from the 30-foot-long serpent repeatedly seen further upriver, strongly implying that the water snakes seen in the upper St. Lawrence and the colossi reported in the Gulf constitute separate phenomena.
“A sea monster was reportedly seen by Monsieur Pierre Comeau,” Elioza wrote, referring to the brother of a famous trapper from the southwesterly village of Godbout, Quebec. “It appeared to him one day while he was hunting, opposite the lighthouse, close enough for him to fire his weapon at it. The monster did not move. He noticed that it resembled a snake in the way it undulated on the surface of the water. Its head, which it held raised, had an enormous mouth, its body was the size of an ox, and its length, according to the witness, was about eighty feet. Surprised that the gunshot had not disturbed the snake, Monsieur Comeau, seized with fear, decided it would be safer to move away.”
Comeau himself, at the urging of a Roman Catholic priest named Father Victor Amedee Huard, wrote down his recollection of the incident. This first-hand account was published in the November 1895 issue of the Canadian Naturalist, and republished in Father Huard’s 1897 French-language book Labrador et Anticosti. The sight of his encounter was a spot on the St. Lawrence called Les Islets-Caribou, located roughly halfway between Godbout and Sept-Iles.
“On December 19th, 1884,” Comeau wrote in French, “a man named David Picard and his son reported to me that they had seen a fish about a hundred feet long and about four feet wide. We thought it was a joke and no one paid any attention to it, until in 1885, during the same month, the same David Picard, accompanied by a man named Thomas Jourdain, saw the same monster again, but still too far away to give a very accurate description. That same winter, on the 26th of January, to my great satisfaction, I was able to convince myself of the truth of these reports. I saw this monster at a distance of 300 yards. It was standing in a pool of water surrounded by ice, sleeping on the water, appearing to warm itself in the sun, for the weather was exceptionally fine for the season. About 40 feet of the animal floated on the surface of the water, and probably much more was not visible. Here is the position in which I saw this extraordinary fish, seeing neither head nor tail, but only these two lumps.
“I examined it there for a couple of hours, regretting greatly that I could not approach it because of the ice, which I could not pass through, being in a small boat of a dozen feet: a vessel used in winter, in the ice, for hunting seals, or sea wolves, as they are called here. In February of the same year, I saw it again, and several others saw it too. It was leaping out of the water straight up into the air, its head rising about fifty feet high, leaving the water for who knows how long. It made four leaps in this manner, rising straight out of the water and falling flat on the surface. In March, several of us saw it. Finally, on April 14th, the last time I saw it, it appeared to be sleeping on the water in the same position where I saw it the first time. The weather was fine, calm, and mild, very favourable for my plan, so I decided to approach it and fire a few shots at it. We set off in two boats, but when we were 300 yards away, the people in the boat accompanying me were seized with fear and turned back. I approached it at a distance of thirty feet without it moving. When I got there, the animal began to submerge itself, tail first, until only part of its head remained above the water, that is, the upper jaw, its mouth open at least ten feet high; I did not see the lower jaw. What I found most monstrous and horrible was the eye, which seemed to me to be enormous and so malicious as to make one tremble. I was about to fire when it took a threatening position and, without giving an inch, stood with its mouth open, seemingly waiting to see what we were going to do. I then thought it would be more prudent not to attack it, as I was not equipped for such a hunt. We moved away and it disappeared, never to be seen again. The skin was black in colour, with hard-looking scales. The tail was like a whale’s, flat in the direction of the water.
“That is the detail I can give you to the best of my knowledge. Please excuse the scribble and the description, which is accurate but insufficient. Pierre Z. Comeau.”
This story was partly corroborated by Elioza’s uncle, E. Fafard, in a later newspaper interview. This uncle, however, identified the witness as Pierre’s brother, Napoleon Alexander Comeau, a fishery overseer for Dominion government. “Mr. Alex Comeau,” he said, “a Dominion Government fishery inspector, has seen it many times. Once he got near enough to take a shot at it, but he got frightened and ran away.” Barring the possibility that both brothers had a similar experience, this identification is called into question not only by Pierre’s testimony, but also by “Alex” Comeau himself, who neglected to mention the incident in his 1909 book Life and Sport on the North Shore, a reminiscence on his hunting adventures on the northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
“This monster was reportedly seen again on many occasions and in different places along the coast,” Elioza continued in her book. “However, no one ever had the courage to try to capture or kill it. It is reported that during the time of Monsieur Wallace, the first keeper of the Pointe-des-Monts lighthouse, an entire family disappeared a few yards from the lighthouse, at a place called Anse a la Morue. As this family was travelling in a bark canoe, it was assumed that they had been attacked and devoured by the monster in question.
“Accidents of this kind were very common on the North Shore, since all transportation was by water, either by canoe or rowboat. For example, Madame Mead, whom we already know, had a married son named ‘Thuz.’ One evening in the autumn of 1872, he set out in a canoe with his wife and a friend to spend the night at the nearest neighbour’s house, a few miles away. They never returned, and their bodies were never found, which further reinforced the belief in the existence of this sea monster.”
Elioza’s uncle, E. Fafard, elaborated on the monster in a later interview, excerpts of which were published in the January 26th, 1912 issue of the Toronto Star. “I was born and raised at Pointe de Monts,” he said, “and lived here for many years, and I have seen the sea serpent many times. Every twelve or fifteen years it comes up out of the water and stays around for a week or so at a time.
“For over forty-five years, the lighthouse has been in our family, and my father and I have repeatedly watched the serpent apparently sunning itself on the surface of the water, having come up through the thin ice or between the floating blocks…
“It appeared to be about a hundred feet in length, each of three or four undulations being about twenty feet apart. The monster had a terrible appearance, being about fifty feet in girth.”
Fafard went on to explain that the monster seen by residents of the so-called ‘North Shore’ only ever appeared in winter, revealing another discrepancy between the creature of the Gulf and the summer-loving serpent spotted further upriver.
Monster of the Thousand Islands
In 1880, a flurry of sightings were reported in Montreal and at the mouth of the Richelieu River. The river’s mysterious inhabitant was spotted again in the summer of 1887, generating excitement in the village of Tadoussac, Quebec, at the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Jacques Cartier had spotted the greyhound-headed Adhothuys three hundred and fifty two years earlier. The following summer, it appeared several times in a vast archipelago at the head of the St. Lawrence known as the Thousand Islands. “Early in June,” declared an article in the July 25th, 1888 issue of the Kingston Whig-Standard, “some men, who were out in a sail boat near Kingston, saw what they believed to be a serpent abut thirty feet long.” Another article published in the August 9th issue of Kingston’s Weekly British Whig elaborated on this sighting, dating it to June 10th, setting it near Simcoe Island just south of Kingston, and identifying the witnesses as “Charles Staley and four others who were out sailing,” the Staleys being well-known and respected farmers.
Nearly two months later, in late July, a New York fisherman named C.W. Sikes had an unnerving experience in the narrow channel between Round Island and the New York shore, the former lying just northeast of the village of Clayton. While rowing his boat near a shoreline marsh, Sikes saw something large and black moving rapidly along the surface of the water. “At first, he thought it was a duck or some other species of water bird,” explained the July 25th article, “but, nothing of the sort. It was, as he believes, the head of a water serpent of enormous size. The head was at least eight inches across the top and stuck out of the water a foot or more. The head went under when the boat was about forty yards from it. As it disappeared, the water was ruffled by the serpent’s tail at least thirty feet from the spot. The serpent did not reappear, but the men who saw it believe it has not left that part of the river. They give it as their opinion that the serpent was at least six inches in diameter, and thirty feet long. Since they reported their discovery, all the young ladies on the islands refuse to go out in anything but steam yachts having high gunwales, and skiff owners are taking a rest.”
About a week later, on August 4th, 1888, the creature was spotted again near Milton Island, just off the southeastern outskirts of Kingston. The witnesses were 18-year-old locals Charles Hora and Henry Cartwright, the latter being son of Canadian politician Sir Richard Cartwright. Henry Cartwright described the experience to the press, saying, “On Saturday evening, Charles Hora and myself went out in a canoe toward Milton Island, about six miles down from here. The weather was pleasant and the air quiet. At about eight o’clock – it was yet quite light – I was sitting in the bow of the canoe. I first saw what I thought was another canoe, with three persons in it, as there were three lumps projecting out of the water, and peering only indistinctly, concluded that three persons were sitting in the canoe. We were paddling along about ten feet from shore, and as the object was some distance ahead we thought we would chase it. It suddenly turned around and was making from shore toward us. It came up within twenty feet of the bow of the canoe, when we saw it was no canoe. We sat in wonder, thinking someone was playing a scare on us. The dog in our canoe barked wildly at the animal, and we concluded it must be the sea serpent recently seen which we had heard so much about.
“The monster passed us so close when we stopped that we could see him distinctly, and judged him to be at least fifteen feet long. He was six feet out of water. I am sure it was no seal or fish I ever saw. It looked too snaky. When he disappeared, after remaining in sight four or five minutes and moving very rapidly, we started off lest he might upset the canoe. I will admit that we were considerably frightened. As he disappeared he switched his tail violently, making a loud report. At first we thought we would chase him, but afterwards we thought not.”
The article in which Cartwright’s testimony appeared stated that locals believed the serpent fed on the “carcasses of dead animals thrown along the shore by farmers,” the bones of which were found picked clean shortly thereafter by some mysterious riverside scavenger.
More Encounters in the St. Lawrence
The serpent continued to harass residents of the Thousand Islands in the latter years of the 19th Century, colliding with two young ladies in a rowboat near Navy Bay, just southeast of Kingston, in May 1889, and showing its horse-like head and thirty-foot-long body to witnesses near the village of Alexandria Bay, New York, just downriver of Round Island, in November 1892.
In the summer of 1895, a specimen was supposedly killed and put on display in Montreal, where the interested public could admire it for an admission price of ten cents. On the urging of a professor at McGill University, a police investigation promptly revealed that the subject of the exhibition was a fabrication composed of a cotton sack filled with sawdust, covered with plaster of Paris and black wax, complete with leather fins and eyes of yellow glass. The orchestrators of the hoax fled to the United States before they could be prosecuted.
In the summer of 1902, the river monster appeared to a group of rowboat-going seal hunters in the water off Sept-Iles, Quebec, where Jacques Cartier had seen ‘water horses’ three hundred and sixty-seven years earlier. The hunters, whose number included a physician named Dr. Dobbin and a pulp factory foreman named Maurice Power, described the creature as having a seal-like head, and initially mistook it for their quarry. Upon their approach, however, the animal reared about fifteen feet out of the water, revealing a slimy green serpentine body which they estimated to have a length of between sixty to a hundred feet, covered with scales and encrusted with barnacles. When the serpent advanced on the rowboat with mouth agape and fangs glistening, Power fired his revolver at it, sending it into writhing convulsions that agitated the water. The monster then dove down, swam beneath the rowboat, and surfaced briefly on the other side before retreating to the depths.
20th Century Sightings
The creature continued to appear with casual frequency throughout the 20th Century. In the winter of 1911/1912, it was spotted twice by the father of Elioza Fafard-Lacasse, the keeper of the Pointe-des-Monts Lighthouse.
In June 1934, it was seen by broker Ross Malcolm, Major J.M. Humphries of the Canadian Militia, and insurance broker Henry De Kuyper. “We were crossing the second bridge of the island of Montreal,” Malcolm told the press, “when I noticed something very large on the surface of the river. I called the attention of my friends to the thing, explaining it must be a seal. But then the creature stuck its head away up out of the water and we saw it was no seal.
“‘It’s a sea serpent’ was the conclusion we came to, for it looked exactly like the picture of the sea serpent washed up on the shores of France a month or two ago. [This is a reference to the mysterious unidentified ‘globster’ which washed up on a beach near Cherbourg, France, in the spring of 1934]
“I am not a drinking man and that somewhat trite explanation will not suffice in this case. Indeed none of the party had a drink so that cannot be brought against us, although we probably shall have to take a lot of kidding.”
Two years later, an enormous grey creature was spotted near the rapids of Long Sault, roughly halfway between Montreal and the Thousand Islands. Locals of the nearby villages of Cornwall, Ontario, and Massena, New York, affectionately christened the creature ‘Oscar’. Although many identified the animal as a seal, anomalous in that part of the St. Lawrence, other proposed that it might be the legendary river serpent.
The Legend of Sa’ronkwa’sen
Our last story is a Mohawk legend told by the grandmother of Brant McGregor, whose frightening experience in 1995 marked the beginning of this piece. The legend describes an event that took place sometime in the early 1900s, before the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s, which broke the upper St. Lawrence into a system of locks and canals that allows seagoing vessels to access the Great Lakes. Evoking the old Seneca legend of the maiden who was tempted to don the transformative garment of the water serpent, this story tell of a young boy who succumbed to the magic of the horned snakes and became one of them.
“Before the St. Lawrence [Seaway] was constructed,” McGregor wrote, “Kahnawake had direct access to the river from the north end of our territory. There were docks, wharfs, and beaches, where our people enjoyed the river. There was a young boy, around ten years old, named Sa’ronkwa’sen. He used to love to go down and play by the river all by himself. He was told not to go near the river alone, because it was dangerous.
“His mother warned him about the great maned, bearded, horned serpent that had been seen recently by some local fishermen. This only piqued his interest even more. Now more determined than ever to go to the river and get a glimpse of the creature, he set off by himself one sunny summer morning.
“When he arrived at the river, after a short walk, he noticed some other children throwing rocks into the water off in the distance. It seemed like a good idea, so he began to throw some small stones into the river.
“Suddenly, only a stone’s throw’s distance from where Sa’ronkwa’sen was standing, the water began to violently bubble and churn. Then out of the froth emerged a huge maned serpent with a beard and horns. Sa’ronkwa’sen was terror-struck. He could not move a muscle. There he stood, frozen, as the monster slowly approached him. It came to within an arm’s length of the poor boy. It glared at him with its huge eyes, unblinking. Slowly, Sa’ronkwa’sen began to wade into the water towards the giant serpent. He had become hypnotized by the gaze of the beast. He swam up the creature, who turned his great back to the boy, which the boy quickly mounted, climbing up the great brown mane that ran along the back of the creature’s head and twisting his hands into the creature’s hair to get a grip on the beast. At once, the great serpent dove under the water and swam along the surface in an undulating manner. Every time his great head broke the surface, Sa’ronkwa’sen his passenger became visible, tightly grasping the monster’s head and neck with his arms and legs. He was never again seen in Kahnawake, though legend has it he was sighted off the coast of Cornwall Island, Ontario, by some local Ahkwesasne Mohawks.
McGregor’s own 1995 sighting of a huge horned water snake near Montreal links these historic encounters, and the native legends which precede them, to the living present, indicating that the massive undulating denizen of the St. Lawrence, whatever it is, might still be out there. So the next time you find yourself in the Laurentian Valley, keep your eyes peeled. You never know what might float up to the surface.
Sources
Private correspondence between Grant McGregor and Hammerson Peters, May 2nd, 2024
Myths of the Iroquois (1883), by Erminnie Adele Smith
Seneca Myths and Folk Tales (1923), by Arthur Caswell Parker
“Western Abenaki,” by Gordon M. Day, in Volume 15 of the Handbook of North American Indians (1978)
“Explorer Saw Canada’s First Sea Serpents: Queer ‘Fish Story’ Proved Red Herring After Failure to Find North West Passage,” in the August 18th, 1934 issue of the Calgary Herald
A Short and Briefe Narration of the Two Navigations and Discoveries to the Northweast Partes Called Newe France (1580), by Jacques Cartier, translated by John Florio
Monstres de lacs du Quebec: Myths et Troublantes Realites (1982), by Michel Meurger
Nova Francia (1609), by Marc Lescarbot
“Canadian Serpent,” in the July 29th, 1826 issue of the Portsmouth Journal
“Large Snake,” in the August 19th, 1826 issue of the Portsmouth Journal
“Facts and Scraps: The American Sea Serpent in Lake Ontario,” in the July 15th, 1835 issue of the British Whig and General Adviser for Canada West (Kingston, Ontario)
“Rather Fishey: Large Serpent in the St. Lawrence,” in the May 28th, 1857 issue of the Kingston Whig-Standard
Legendes et Recits de la Cote-Nord du Saint-Laurent (1937), by Elioza Fafard-Lacasse
Life and Sport on the North Shore (1909), by Napoleon Alexander Comeau
“With a Big Head: The Sea Serpent Has At Last Appeared down the St. Lawrence River,” in the July 25th, 1888 issue of the Kingston Whig-Standard
Article in the May 30th, 1889 issue of the Kingston Whig-Standard
Article in the December 1st, 1892 issue of the Weekly British Whig
“That Sea-Serpent: Even a Prohibition Certificate of Character Didn’t Save It – Thing of Plaster, Leather and Wax,” in the August 31st, 1895 issue of the Brandford Expositor
“Marvellous Sea Serpent,” in the August 14th, 1902 issue of The Standard (St. Catharines, Ontario)
“That Sly Sea Serpent: Six Truthful Chaps Who Swear They Saw Him: He Had Humps on His Back – Was Fifteen Feet Long and Lashed the Water With His Tail – The Declaration of People of Undoubted Reliability – A Jolly Sea Monster,” in the August 9th, 1888 issue of the Weekly British Whig
“Toronto Man Vows Often He Has Seen Sea Serpent: E. Fafard, Who Was Raised in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Says It Comes Out Every Twelve or Fifteen Years – Feeds Upon Fish Which Congregate in That Vicinity: Hundred Ft. Long and Nearly Fifty Ft. Round,” in the January 26th, 1912 issue of the Toronto Star
“Sea Serpent Story Vouched For: Mr. Wood of Ottawa Says There Was Certainly Something New in the St. Lawrence at Seven Islands. The So-Called Serpent Made After a Row Boat,” in the August 18th, 1902 issue of the Ottawa Journal
“In Cool Places: Notes from Popular Summer Resorts,” in the July 7th, 1887 issue of the Montreal Star
“Ancestor of Ogopogo Was ‘Captured’ in Ontario,” by F.N. Raines in the January 9th, 1927 issue of the Vancouver Sunday Province
“Sea Serpent a Hundred Feet Long Seen Twice in St. Lawrence River: Lighthousekeeper Fafard at Pointe Des Monts. Down in the Gulf, Reports to His Superiors That He Has Seen it Twice,” in the January 25th, 1912 issue of the Toronto Star
“See Big Sea Serpent in St. Lawrence River: None of His Party Had Been Drinking, Declares Broker in Montreal,” in the June 12th, 1934 issue of the Toronto Daily Star
“We Hadn’t Thought of That,” in the May 8th, 1936 issue of the Standard-Freeholder (Cornwall, Ontario)
“Oscar the Sea Serpent Makes His Appearance,” in the May 1st, 1936 issue of the Standard-Freeholder (Cornwall, Ontario)
Labrador et Anticosti: Journal de Voyage, Histoire, Topographie, Pecheurs Canadiens et Acadiens, Indiens Montagnais (1897), by Father Victor Amedee Huard
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