Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition

While traveling around Lake Superior in the 1850s, German explorer Johann Georg Kohl met many retired and elderly French-Canadian voyageurs and their Aboriginal wives and families. A constant theme in his discussions with them was privation. "'In my utter misery,' a Canadian Voyageur assured me, 'I have more than once roasted and eaten my mocassins.'"¹ Stories about starvation often led to stories about cannibals, such as the tale of a man who killed and ate his two wives and all his children in succession, another who turned on his friend, and a third who wandered about the forests like a hungry wolf, preying on unsuspecting humans (ibid., 355–7). Much like stories of werewolves in Euro-American communities, cannibals were frequently portrayed as humans transformed into monsters in voyageur lore terrorizing any that crossed their paths. Kohl reported that in 1854, on ële Royale, close to the north bank of Lake Superior, a "wild man" hunted humans and was thought to be a windigo. Windigos were specifically Algonquian monsters who ate human flesh and had hearts of ice.² Human beings could be transformed into windigos by witchcraft or famine cannibalism.³

In one story told to Kohl,

a Canadian Voyageur, of the name of Le Riche, was once busy fishing near his hut. He had set one net, and was making another on the beach. All at once, when he looked up, he saw, to his terror, a strange woman, an old witch, une femme windigo, standing in the water near his net. She was taking out the fish he had just caught, and eating them raw. Le Riche, to his horror, took up his gun and killed her on the spot. Then his squaws ran out of the adjoining wigwam and shouted '[R]ish!' . . . '[R]ish! cut her up at once, or else she'll come to life again, and we shall all fare ill.'⁴

What can we learn from these stories? On first glance it seems that the French-Canadian voyageurs who chose to spend their lives in the pays d'en haut (which literally translates as "the upper country") adopted the cultural ways of their Aboriginal wives and kin, which included a fear of windigos. Yet the stories also reflect more complex cultural movement, a mingling of cosmologies, and oral technologies, distinct to French-Canadian voyageurs. The cannibal monster stories that voyageurs told each other reveal many aspects of their lives and cosmology, such as starvation, mental illness, and metamorphosis. In addition, the French-Canadian belief in werewolves provided voyageurs with a framework to understand windigos in French-Canadian terms, and in the narratives about cannibal monsters, the motifs of windigo and werewolf mingled. These points of cultural conjunction became a form of métissage outside of the practice of marriage and the birth of métis generations.

French-Canadian voyageurs came from an oral world in which systems of knowledge and meaning were shared through stories and songs. When French peasants crossed the Atlantic to settle in the St. Lawrence valley, starting in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, they brought a rich oral tradition.⁵ This oral tradition evolved among the peasants, called habitants, in Canada and came to reflect a distinct French-Canadian identity.⁶ When habitant families could not comfortably subsist on their crops, their sons joined the fur trade as indentured servants to raise money for the household. These voyageurs traveled great distances into the interior of North America, transporting furs and goods between Montreal and far-flung posts and trading with many different groups of Aboriginal people. While working in the pays d'en haut, voyageurs' identities became shaped by their French-Canadian roots, their Aboriginal neighbors, and the circumstances of their workplace. From about the 1720s to the 1860s, numbers of voyageurs grew to a few thousand at any one time. Part of this labor force...