Thar be Winjigos

What’s that sound… the rustling in the leaves? Is that a figure up ahead? I keep up pace, but I can never reach it. I holler out for the man to stop… though he fains he never hears me. Then, as swiftly as he appeared… I lose sight of him. Like a ghost upon the highway he is gone. Who was that? Who was that man who walks ahead…

Well, if you were living in the old days of the logging boom and stationed in some dreadful camp above civilization, hauling a load down the Line… it might well have been the Windigo. But just what is the Windigo? There has been much speculation and investigation conducted upon the subject and throughout the ages this infamous creature has plodded its way betwixt the narrative of the Valley story tellers. Yet the mystery still remains and we are no closer to understanding the horrors of such a ‘demon’ than we were in yesteryear. Rightly so I think as mystery breeds fear and fear feeds the legend… and the legend maintains its character. Wish to know of the Windigo? Then read on.

I was lucky growing up as I had a never ending supply of old folks’ tales to keep me entertained. Many from my hometown had once worked the camps and my own father spent much of his career and leisure working and walking the ‘bush’. To understand the Windigo one must first understand the bush and once you understand the bush you need to investigate human psyche. When a fearsome respect and reverent awe for the bush is attained and perceived by mankind, strange things manifest. Fueled by our desire to tell stories to pass away the long desolate and oftentimes lonely winters in the bush, lumberjacks of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds exchanged bits of folklore and soon a robust stew of colourful ingredients became what I will term D’Valley Winjigo.

I call this creature the Winjigo to differentiate it from the many other versions of the creature. There is the Witako, Wendigo, Waindego and so on, each version arising from its own eclectic mix of traditional ingredients.  The being I wish to describe in this post is the expression of that creature as it was known to the people of the Ottawa Valley and more specifically the Shantymen. As such, this version, called Winjigo as the folks up home pronounce the name, is a hodgepodge of Irish, French-Canadian and Anishinabe folklore. ‘He’, I use this pronoun only for the fact that when I hear the stories it is always described as male, yet I know of one case in the body of work of Joan Finnigan where a whole family is turned Winjigo including a young mother.

Unlike the ‘pure’ Native expression which is very much described as a ‘cannibal-corps’, at times with the head of a buck; the Winjigo is most often described as a big man in a fur coat who retains little human faculty and exhibits animalistic traits. On a few occasions he is known to shapeshift into a wolf or even a horse, which further blurs the line between the Winjigo and French-Canadian Loup-garou. So entangled are there two creatures that it seems when the Loups-Garous of France came off the boat and met the Witakos/Wendigos native to this land they seem to have intermixed much as the French, Irish, Scots and Natives did in time as well.

Joan Finnigan had recorded many Winjigo tales in her body of work. Each story was slightly different from another, but the punch line was usually the same: Stay the fuck out of the woods at night when alone! However I must admit that the tale that has always struck me the most is one closer to home, where an elder of our community encountered the Winjigo about 60 miles north of Maniwaki. Here is a quick rendition:

The Man Who Walks Ahead

“About sixty years ago Fred was a young man just back from the Second War and got a job in a camp up about sixty miles north past Maniwaki. Now as I said he was young and this was his first winter in a camp. Luckily he had experience with horses on the farm and so he made for a good young teamster. One evening in January, he had to take a sleigh of logs to the Desert River by late the next morning. It was a bright night, crisp and the moon was shining bright. He took off and was well into three hours of his trip, say eleven o’clock at night when he came upon a man in the distance. It looked like the man was wearing a fur coat, which wasn’t too odd as many of the jobbers wore buffalo hide coats. He tried to catch up the lad, but he never seemed able to do so. The faster he went, the more off in the distance the man became. He didn’t seem to be going very fast at all I tell ya, but poor Fred never got close. At last his team was about to keel, snot and slaver frothing about. So he slowed down, then the man walked off the line. As Fred passed he took a look as there was plenty of room between the stands and the moon was bright… but the man was gone.

He then made it to the dump site well on time and then booted it back to the camp before nightfall. He got there at around six, making it pretty gray outside. He sat in the cookhouse as the stragglers were just finishing up putting on the feed-bag (chowing). He was quite white when he eventually told someone what he had seen. This old French lad listened to the tale and being a bit squeamish himself he declared that it must have been a loup-garou. But then an old Irish Catholic lad chimed in and to him it was surely the ghost of some poor shantyman. Soon after as the stories were flying, some old Indian called young Fred over. He told him that what he saw was none other than Witako, or as the whiteman called him Winjigo. He said that he had lived in this area all his life and that a whole tribe of Winjigos live in the area… sixteen in all. He said it was lucky that Fred didn’t see his face, as they are deathly looking without lips as they are so hungry that they chew them off. And had he looked back, he would have seen fifteen more behind him as the man who walks ahead, leads the prey.”

I was told that story at a very young age and over the years it has sunken in to me each time I hear or think about it. There are other stories that I have read about the subject, this one coming from an anthology called ‘Les vieux m’on conté’ (The old folks told me) which is a collection of Franco-Ontarian folklore. This is what I remember of two tales that fit together. Here I persent it as one:

Windigo in the Camp:

“Years ago there was an old lad reminiscing about his years in the camps. He was a French lad from Quebec who came to Manitoba in the twenties. It was a frontier then more than ever. He said that he remembered a young lad in one of those camps telling him about a story of when a Windigo came to that camp years before the old lad had gotten there. He said that one night a big brute of a man came into the cookhouse all filthy and stinking. He never said a word, he just sat at the table. The cooky looked him up and down and gave him some salt pork and beans, this he ate in a wink. Many tried to get something out of him, but being at least seven feet tall and about three hundred and fifty pounds of muscle like that of a bear’s, they didn’t push him. Still he said nothing. The cooky was something of a polyglot and rimed off in English, French, Irish, Italian, Greek, Indian and German… still nothing. Being a smart ass and insulted about this brute’s ways, he brought his the trash can full of garbage and filth. The brute looked at him, tore off his leg in a wink and made out the door. The cooky made it, but barely. Blood was tracked out the door and into the snow. So as the young lad told it, someone had remembered that these things were Winjigos and that they sleep in the day with a bloated belly in some cave or den. It was said that they are defenseless in the daylight. So the next morning they tracked the creature and came to its den. That same informer told the rest that they needed to chain him to a cherry tree and then shoot him or else he would not die. So they pulled him out, chained him to a cherry tree and shot him. He then died.

When the young lad finished telling the story, the old lad without missing a beat said “seven feet?” in laughter. For apparently in Quebec, they were at least twelve feet tall and seven hundred pounds. And he said that the mothers brood in a pine tree so that if that tree is felled, the pups are set free. As soon as their feet tough the earth, they grow to maturity and get hungry. The more they eat, the more they starve. The young man then sat there in awe.”

As you can see these tales were similar in many ways and too me I hold them up to my idea of what the Winjigo is. I think it is wise to know that such things live about the countryside. Even my own father gets weirded out in many places that he has fallen trees as he has felt that something was watching him.

 I guess to conclude I wanted to make a few remarks. For one is the general description of the Ottawa Valley Winjigo, ‘he’ or ‘it’ is usually quite tall and large. They don’t use speech in the human form. They cannot die unless under a very peculiar circumstance as highlighted above, being that this is the only description of the killing of one I have found. Even the ancient Algonquin healings are a mystery or those of Jack Fiddler. It is famished. It is active in the bush in winter.

I have also told these stories in public and have gotten mixed reviews. These tales are so primal and close to home that they have left many uneasy. I myself have fell victim to my own story telling as after one such narration, I went off through the woods to where a clearing was, where fireworks would be and had a person walking ahead of me. Now this was in the summer, yet I couldn’t catch up… I called out… no answer and then came to my senses and froze up until someone came from the rear and I walked with them. Still not sure who that was, but maybe that’s the point, like Shroedinger‘s Cat, it was all possibilities at once. I never wanted to solidify the probability one way or another. I now refrain from telling the tales in public, and rightly so, but have still done so in private will full disclaimer and not on private land without the owner’s consent.  

That is the power of this being… still palpable to this day. He is far more real on this land, in the Valley, than any of the old gods or bogies of Europe. For he is indigenous. This is his territory. He is not a being to worship, to placate or offer too. He cannot be revered as to do so would be a moral and ethical faux pas. But he must be feared, respected and above all remembered. As even if we forget about him, he is still there. Best know the signs and recognize him then get caught unexpected.

Blundy