What is a wendigo?
In the stories of the Cree, Ojibwe, Innu and other Algonquian-speaking peoples, the wendigo is a spirit of winter and hunger. It is emaciated, ice-cold and insatiable. The more it eats, the hungrier it gets. A person can become a wendigo by eating human flesh in times of need or by being seized by greed.
A warning
The wendigo embodies what a community had the most reason to fear in a hard winter: that individuals would think only of themselves. The stories urge people to share and to show restraint.
The wendigo in court
Several documented cases brought the belief before the courts. In 1879, a Cree man named Swift Runner was executed in Alberta for killing and eating his family during the winter. In the early 20th century, Jack Fiddler, an Oji-Cree leader, was arrested for killing people he believed to be wendigos.
What scholars say
For a long time, scholars spoke of “wendigo psychosis,” a culture-bound mental disorder in which sufferers believe they are turning into a wendigo. In 1982 the anthropologist Lou Marano questioned whether this disorder ever existed in that form. He saw instead cases in which communities accused people of being wendigos and killed them. The antlered figure seen in films and games is a modern invention.
Episode on this topic
- The Wendigo: Legend, Monster or Living Warning? (in German)
- Related: Werewolf
Further reading
- Lou Marano: “Windigo Psychosis: The Anatomy of an Emic-Etic Confusion,” Current Anthropology 23 (1982).