DCHP-3

Wendigo

< Algonk.; Ojibwa windigō evil spirit; cannibal
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

Spelling variants:
Weendigo, Windigo, etc

Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.

1n.

The concept denoted by Weetigo and Wendigo varies from a personified Evil Spirit to a supernatural creature of which there are many, all having fearful characteristics including an insatiable appetite for human beings.

See: Weetigo(def. 1 and note)

Quotations

1830
The Muskegoes, who inhabit the low and cheerless swamps on the borders of Hudson's Bay, are themselves reproached by the other tribes as cannibals, [and] are said to live in constant fear of the Weendegoag.
1847
When Windego saw him, he was very angry, and said, "What do you mean, boy, by coming out and making that noise? I am going to eat you."
1863
These montagnais think . . . that the Wendigoes are great cannibals, twenty and thirty feet high. They think that they live on human flesh, and that many Indians who have gone hunting, and have never afterwards been heard of, have been devoured by Wendigoes.
1963
Some of the old accounts of Wendigos in the northwest describe apparitions more in accord in description and behaviour with the Sasquatch . . . than with the traditional wendigo or weetigo of the Cree-Algonkinian tribesman.
2n.

usually wendigo, a man turned cannibal and believed possessed by an evil spirit.

See: Weetigo(def. 2)

Quotations

1859
The Weendigoes are looked upon with superstitious dread and horror by all Indians, and any one known to have eaten human flesh is shunned by the rest; as it is supposed that, having once tasted it, they would do so again should they have an opportunity.
1860
Thick Foot's brother had killed his grandson, a boy ten or twelve years of age, being apprehensive that said boy was becoming a "Windigoo."
1921
A weendigo, as one who was known to have been guilty of making such a terrible repast was called, was always thereafter not only detested but shunned.
1949
The Weentigo, an Indian who had killed his companion and eaten him, was an object of dread and superstition to the Indians everywhere.
2bn.

usually wendigo, turn wendigo, become a maneater.

Quotations

1886
Delirium, resulting from fevers, etc., was a thing they entirely misunderstood, and looked upon it as a symptom of the approach of irresistible cannibalism, or "turning windigo," and it became their duty to knock such patients on the head.
1934
Upon a spruce bed in one of the birch-bark lodges lay the young squaw Sap-was-te, raving in delirium; possessed, said Pe-ce-quan the Medicine Man, by evil spirits; liable at any moment to turn "Weendigo," or cannibal, and endanger the lives of every member of the band.
3n. — Figurative uses

Quotations

1936
The bird with the canoe is the tribal softie; the others sling three or four hundred pounds of goods on a headband and stagger after the canoe bearers as if the Wendigo himself were on their heels.
1948
Charlie laughed; I laughed; we both laughed to beat the windigo.
1956
"And should you see any signs of Eskimos you will abandon this campus if the devil Wendigo was on your heels, and flee into the south."
4n.

Quotations