The Wendigo: Native American Stuff of Nightmares
(The following article contains spoilers for the 2022 movie Prey)
In 2022 the seventh movie in the Predator franchise was released. The movie, Prey, was in many ways similar to the 1987 original, although trading the steaming jungles of Central America for the Oklahoma plains and the wisecracking mercenaries for stoic Comanche was a surprising, and appealing twist.
But once again we have an extraterrestrial descending from the skies to pick fights with the most dangerous adversaries they can find. Once again all pre-existing conflict is overruled as those caught in this monster’s sights struggle for their very survival, and once again it is ingenuity and preparedness which wins the day: all those who rush in to face the threat die, and quickly.
The Predator once again has his bag of tricks, which (although more primitive, as the movie is set almost 300 years before the Arnold Schwarzenegger original) are functionally the same. This predator can still turn invisible, still collects the skulls of its defeated foes, still has an array of technically advanced weaponry, still has the famous thermal vision.
Perhaps the biggest difference about the creature is in its appearance. This is not the Predator of the original films, this monster is leaner, its facial mandibles larger and more menacing, and its armor and equipment much more primitive, with a huge skull for a mask.
In arriving at this new design, and especially given the surroundings, it seems that the filmmakers took inspiration from a Native American legend, something horrific which was said to stalk the plains and forests of North America. No ordinary creature, this monster was a cannibalistic horror which towered over ordinary men.
The monster they called the Wendigo.
The Evil of Possession
First, a disclaimer: nobody is saying that the Wendigo is some extraterrestrial big game hunter. Nor are these legends associated with the Comanche in the movie. The Wendigo legends come from the Algonquian peoples to the north, not the Native Americans of the Great Plains.
A Wendigo, according to legend, would never be sated and would prey on humans, growing with each victim that it consumed until it towered over them. In appearance it was an emaciated giant, with skin stretched thin over a skull face, haunting the fringes of settlements and picking off victims from the darkness.
Such an appearance is understandable in the far north of the North American continent. The Wendigo is associated with the bitter cold of the winters, where exposure and starvation could drive people to desperate acts in the wilderness.
For you see this was, in some legends at least, not a corporeal monster at all. The Wendigo was sometimes seen as an evil spirit, a monster of possession who would take over a person’s mind and drive them into madness, with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Those who resorted to cannibalism in the extremes of winter were said to have been taken by the Wendigo.
Far from a legend, this aspect was a recognized psychiatric illness, known as the Wendigo psychosis. There are many stories of those who, in extremis, resorted to cannibalism and it doing so lost their humanity.
Nor were these the actions of sane men who were driven to such unspeakable acts out of a need to survive. The Wendigo psychosis is much more, a conviction that cannibalism is the only way to survive, a haunting madness borne out of the harsh conditions for which many were not prepared.
Perhaps the most horrifying story of the Wendigo is that of Swift Runner, a Cree from the province of Alberta. He and his family, a wife and six children, were facing starvation in the unusually harsh winter of 1878.
Things came to a head when, finally, Swift Runner’s eldest son died of starvation. Swift Runner turned on his family and killed them all, butchering them and eating them.
What is most horrific of all is that he did so while only some 40km from help. Swift Runner and his family could have easily reached these emergency supplies and shelter, but he apparently chose not to do so. This was not some act of desperate survival, this was something much deeper.
This is the third aspect which represents the Wendigo. It is not only the desperation which comes from harsh winters and extreme cold, it is not only the accompanying threat of starvation and the prospect that you may be doomed.
The Wendigo is seen as, above all, a selfish being. It is willing to put itself above literally everything else, above friends and family, above its own humanity. A Wendigo is a monster because of how it behaves, as much as how it appears.
The Algonquian peoples valued living in equilibrium with their surroundings. Although the idea that exploitation of the land only came to North America with the white man is a myth, the traditions of these first Americans speak of respect for the animals you hunt, and finding a harmony within nature.
The Wendigo has fully rejected such traditions in favor of personal greed and selfishness, placing themselves above the good of those around them and the world in which they live. They choose to take what they can and such people contribute nothing to their community, for they are purely predatory and parasitic.
This is perhaps the greatest parallel between the Wendigo and the Predator creature from Prey. This is a monster which kills without need, not for survival or necessity and only to prove a point to itself.
Such monsters have no place in society.
Header Image: Unlike most cryptids the Wendigo actually existed, at least in terms of a terrifying psychosis brought on by the isolating wilderness. Source: Aden Kowalski / CC BY-SA 4.0.
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