by Adam Shoalts
“We had some unusual weather. Hail storms, lots of thunder and lightning,” I replied.
Wes, sensing that Randy had something else in mind, added, “We found a dead bald eagle.”
In the silver glint of the moonlight, I could see Randy’s face react to this revelation as if it had some special significance. “Did you do anything with it?” he asked gravely.
“No,” we answered in unison.
Randy nodded grimly. “That eagle was put in your path for a reason.”
Wes and I, rather bewildered by this comment, made no reply. Neither of us at the time had thought much of a mouldy carcass of a dead eagle washed up on a lakeshore. After some remarks about eagles and omens, Randy delved into what was evidently weighing upon his mind.
“The reason I asked if you saw anything strange,” he said in the sort of hushed whisper that comes naturally when speaking in the gloom of a night-time forest, “is that I saw something very strange out here recently.” His words were uttered with such seriousness that there was no doubting his sincerity. After a pause he continued, “I was walking along this trail, and when I came up over that ridge there, I saw something moving slowly down below in the trees. It was dark and at first I wasn’t sure what it was. It looked like a big man or something. But as I watched, I saw it was no human … it was huge, seven-feet tall, all black and hairy, and walked from there to there,” he motioned to the spot in question. “I was terrified,” he whispered, and by the light of the moon, I could see the fear in his eyes was real, “I froze, scared half to death. People around here tell stories about such things, but I never believed them … till now.”
Wes, not easily frightened, turned as white as a ghost. He had always harboured a healthy respect for native lore and mysterious terrors. On the other hand, I was practically salivating with fascination. I didn’t believe in such creatures per se, but they were real enough as cultural constructs, and figuring out the origins of such legends intrigued me.
“What do you think it was?” I blurted out.
“I don’t know … it wasn’t human.”
As we hiked back along the trail, I badgered Randy with questions. Later that night, back at the reserve, I asked Wes what he thought of the story.
Wes shook his head. “If I had heard that story beforehand, I’d never have come here.”
“What? Are you kidding me? Didn’t it just make you want to come all the more?” I said excitedly.
“No,” Wes said shaking his head again. “It makes me wonder about some of those noises we heard in the night. What do you think Randy saw?”
I shrugged. “Probably he had too much to drink and saw a black bear on its hind legs, or somebody wandering around in a dark coat.”
Wes scoffed at these explanations. He slept little that night.
LATER I SCOURED the archives, digging up everything ever written about the subject, and found that Randy’s tale matched stories that dated back centuries. There were, as the anthropologist Alfred Irving Hallowell noted in 1951, two distinct wendigo traditions: “The first comprises actual persons who have turned into cannibals…. The second consists of mythical cannibal giants.” In the historical records, I found ample references to both variations on the legend. As the Cree elder Louis Bird explained:
Wihtigo. It was something that happened among humans. It means an other-than-human was created from an ordinary human—and sometimes maybe not. There is a question there. There were many kinds. There is a wihtigo that was created by starvation—humans starved, went crazy, and ate human flesh…. Other wihtigos are not understood—it is not known where they came from.
Presumably, this meant the giant kind, which Randy claimed to have seen in the forest that night.
The French encountered wendigo stories among northern tribes when they arrived in the New World in the seventeenth century. Father Jérôme Lalemant, a Jesuit missionary, witnessed “the deaths of some Indians” who were killed “by the other savages, because they were seized by a mental disease which rendered them ravenous for human flesh.” Rather than dismiss such tales as mere superstition, the French explorers were inclined to take them seriously—as they had their own traditions back in France of humans transforming into violent beasts. As Lalemant explained, “It is a sort of werewolf tale.”
Over a hundred known cases exist in the historical record of “wendigo possession,” in which aboriginal persons were said to be transformed into wendigos and driven insane with a murderous urge to eat human flesh. The act of cannibalism supposedly gave these deranged persons superhuman strength and turned their hearts to ice. Such individuals could only be killed by special means—they had to be decapitated and their bodies cut into small bits, lest they should rise from the grave. Some tribes even appointed a “wendigo slayer,” usually a shaman, whose task it was to kill such psychotic individuals—not unlike werewolf hunters in medieval Europe. Well into the late nineteenth century there were wendigo trials in Canada, in which individuals accused of murder defended themselves by claiming that what they had killed was not human but instead a wendigo.
The most detailed description ever furnished of the other sort of wendigo—the less human, more monstrous variation of the legend—was offered by Joseph Guinard, a missionary among the Atikamekw natives in northern Quebec in the 1920s. The anthropologist Richard Preston summarized Guinard’s depiction of the wendigo, which was based on Atikamekw elders’ accounts:
The Witiko … are solitary, aggressive cannibals, naked but impervious to cold, with black skin covered by resin-glued sand. They have no lips, large crooked teeth, hissing breath, and big bloodshot eyes, something like owls’ eyes. Their feet are more than two feet long, with long, pointed heels, and have only one big toe: “This is the way his tracks appear on sand and snow.” Fingers and fingernails are “like the claws of the great mountain bears.” The voice is strident, reverberating, and drawn-out into howls, and “his food was rotten wood, swamp moss, mushrooms, corpses, and human flesh.” Witiko has extraordinary strength and is invulnerable. He is a nocturnal hunter of men; when he is close, his heart beats twice as quickly with joy, sounding like the drumming of a grouse. They can fly and also swim under water, making large waves to capsize canoes. They have foreknowledge of their victims’ location.
It was, in other words, not a creature a traveller would wish to cross paths with alone in the northern forest.
The cannibalistic wendigo was explained easily enough—it was based on actual cannibalism, a horrific temptation in the harsh subarctic, where starvation could be a fact of life. Like European tales of werewolves or vampires, the wendigo legend served as a cultural taboo against cannibalism. In this sense, it was a very real cautionary tale of how violence debases those who commit it—mortals turned into fiends through bloodlust. More enigmatic was the other side of the legend—the giant monsters that were said to stalk the remotest parts of the wilderness. Even the Cree elder Louis Bird had said that these creatures were a mystery. What cultural function could belief in scary giants fulfill? Unless it was meant as a warning against straying too far from the beaten path, out into the unknown swamps. It was cause for reflection as I sat in the dark by my fire beneath the spruces swaying and creaking in the wind. That night I slept with my knife close at hand.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, paddling hard against the current up the Aquatuk in the rain, each stroke plunging me deeper into the unknown, I rounded a bend and caught sight of the mouth of a small tributary. I paused and fixed my eyes on the magical sight before me—this was it—the start of the nameless, unexplored river. It was about sixteen metres wide at the mouth and flanked by tall black spruces. The waters were swift, dark, and full of jagged rocks. No one, as far as I could ascertain, had ever explored this waterway. My excitement at having finally reached the river overcame any concerns about the difficulties and dangers that lay ahead. I beached my canoe on the muddy shore and jumped out to double-check the maps. I was anxious to be certain that this was the river I had been l
ooking for. When I had confirmed beyond any doubt that this was indeed the river I had come to explore, I took a moment to set up my camera on a makeshift tripod fashioned out of the plastic barrels stacked together and photographed myself holding the Society’s flag beside the water. As I did so, I noticed freshwater clam shells lying along the banks, likely eaten by river otters.
The dark skies, steady rain, and cold temperatures could do nothing to dim my enthusiasm as I began my battle upriver. Swift as the current was, I managed to paddle a short distance before I had to plunge overboard and begin wading. It was a thrill to think that I was probably the first person this river had ever had wading through its clear, pristine waters. The forest on either side was centuries-old black spruce, which rose to a height of some ten metres or more. Rising out of the water in places were large granite boulders, looming up like icebergs. Sandbars appeared near bends, and the river had the occasional small rapid. Like on the Aquatuk, there was no sign of any past human presence, and as I penetrated deeper into this unexplored territory, I felt what an archaeologist must feel when opening some ancient tomb no person has peered into for centuries.
The rain and the water running off my pants and boots as I climbed in and out of the canoe slowly filled the vessel. I had to halt every so often to bail out the water. Canada geese with their broods of goslings swam in the river—it seemed as if this unknown waterway was some secret of theirs that I had discovered—when they saw me, they scurried off into the woods. Soon I crossed paths with larger game: around another bend, I caught hold of a magnificent sight—a majestic female moose standing together on the bank with a young calf. They seemed surprised and stood motionless, staring at me, doubtless wondering what this bizarre animal was. I photographed the mother and calf while waist-deep in the river, before the mother decided that this was enough attention for one day, and sauntered off into the forest. The baby moose took another curious look at me, then trotted off after her.
Pressing onward, I passed several small brooks that joined the river and a decent-sized creek. The rain continued sporadically, and for the odd moment I was treated with sunshine peeking through the clouds. An abundance of wildflowers covered the banks: yellow cinquefoils, dwarf fireweed, wild rose, and purple Lobelia kalmii (which the Cree used medicinally to treat a variety of ailments). Growing in the water near the shore were arrowheads, an aquatic plant named for their green, arrowhead-shaped leaves. The tubers of this plant are quite palatable: early explorers called it “Indian potato.” There were also plenty of strawberries and gooseberries. I regretted that I couldn’t identify more of the flora I saw, but much of the plant life in the Lowlands remains unfamiliar even to specialists—previously unrecorded species are still being discovered. Botanist John Riley noted that the Lowlands is “perhaps five times larger than the floodplain forests along the Amazon River” and “one of the least populated regions in the Western Hemisphere and one of the last regions of North America to have its flora and vegetation documented.” In other words, plenty of territory for undocumented species to remain hidden.
My first notable geographical discovery was a small island that didn’t appear on existing maps. It was a little isle in the middle of the river covered in grass, willow bushes, and cinquefoil flowers. Just beyond the island was a picturesque “S” bend, with two sets of rapids at either end of the “S” and a beautiful little pool in between. On the western bank overlooking the bend was a small hill crowned with spruces and tamaracks. It was about as pretty a spot as I had ever seen in the Lowlands, and an ideal place to rest for the night. I made camp in a sheltered grove of trees on top of the hill. After supper, I cleaned and oiled my gun, rebandaged my thumb, and fixed one of the tent’s poles that had broken in the storm. That night, I slept soundly and contently, untroubled by any thought of wendigos, supremely happy in the knowledge that I had at last reached a place unknown to the world—a nameless river that it wasn’t possible to learn about by simply picking up a book or consulting Wikipedia. It was a place I had seen many times in my dreams, a wilderness without a footprint, where I was the only living soul.
THE VICTORIAN EXPLORER Sir Richard Burton, who dared to enter the forbidden city of Mecca and sought the source of the Nile, remarked: “Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a journey into unknown lands.” Trekking farther along the meandering course of the nameless river, I was inclined to agree with him. The thrill of the unknown lured me around each river bend, while clear skies and warm weather quickened my pace. The current, however, was so strong that it nearly knocked me over in a few places, especially when I had to fight my way up rapids. In more tranquil stretches, as I sloshed along, I would spook pike and schools of minnows hiding in the weeds. Along the banks were wood frogs, northern leopard frogs, the occasional American toad, and butterflies that fed on the plentiful wildflowers. The forest thinned out upriver, and at places almost gave way entirely to open muskeg. A short distance beyond the riverbank, the trees mostly disappeared and were replaced by vast impassable bogs.
The smooth, pink granite boulders that loomed out of the water looked like the rounded backs of hippos, wading in some African river. Plenty of signs of real wildlife were visible. Beaver, moose, and caribou tracks lined the muddy banks, and across the mouth of a tributary stream stood an impressive metre-and-a-half-tall beaver dam. At midday, a northern harrier soared high above me, hunting for squirrels or snowshoe hares, or perhaps waterfowl. I noticed the bark had been stripped off a spruce growing along the bank where a bear had sharpened its claws. Encouraging as all this wildlife was, and as much as I relished the challenge of the adventure, it was wearisome work, and at times when I was cold, wet, shivering, and attacked by hordes of blackflies, I wished Brent had stuck around. Miserable as he had been, I missed his company. Still, I pressed on, eventually making camp in a spruce grove for another night on the river.
In the fading light, lying exhausted in my tent, I was startled by a haunting bird call echoing from out of the woods. The strange cry rang out several times. I scrambled outside the tent to see if I could find what bird was producing the noise. I considered myself pretty good at identifying bird song, but whatever made that peculiar cry left me stumped. It was unlike anything I had heard before—a most unnatural sort of wailing howl. Not all mysteries are meant to be solved.
THE RIVER’S MEANDERING COURSE snaked approximately ninety-six kilometres to its headwaters. The first day making my way upriver, I managed to cover about eighteen kilometres. The second day, I travelled thirty kilometres, or roughly three kilometres per hour, with ten hours spent travelling. So, after two days, I was already halfway there. If I could cover twenty-four kilometres a day for the next two days, I would arrive at the headwaters and then be free to paddle back to the Aquatuk with the current.
This knowledge spurred me on with renewed energy. After a breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate, I travelled all day without interruption. The river bottom was normally lined with skull-sized rocks, though in places I came across gravel and sand. Small rapids barred my path at times, but I pulled my faithful canoe through without too much trouble. With Brent gone, I had taken to talking to my canoe, whom I christened Avalon, after another vessel I had once owned. She had been quietly proving herself a worthy companion on our journey, and now bore many battle scars from running shallow rapids and being towed up rocky stretches.
In one spot, the river widened out into a sort of lagoon, with dark green lily pads on the surface of the water that reminded me of the Amazon. But onshore were what looked like ornamented Christmas trees—tamaracks with bright red seed cones. Farther along, the river meandered in oxbows, so that at times it felt almost as if I were going around in circles. In a few places, these oxbows were so extreme that the river had cut itself a new channel, leaving behind a crescent-shaped pond from the old channel that was no longer connected to the river. One gloomy stretch had an area of considerable deadfall, where most of the trees adjoining the river had
toppled over from storms.
That night, after my third day journeying upriver, I camped on a bend that was thinly treed and well-elevated. The oxbow bend meant that the river was on either side of my tent at a distance of no more than four metres. As I was moving the plastic food barrels away from the tent for the night, I caught sight of something white half-hidden beneath some ferns. Puzzled, I bent down and parted the ferns. It was the bleached skull of a moose, broken into several fragments. The empty eye sockets seemed to stare up at me. The moose had likely been killed by wolves and its head carried off by a scavenger, perhaps a wolverine.
AS I EXPLORED my way upriver, I gathered a few rock samples for my geologist colleagues, recorded the flora and fauna I came across, and documented my journey through hundreds of photographs. I also took the GPS coordinates and notes I would need to map the river. I completed the final leg of my journey up the nameless waterway on the fourth day, battling cold temperatures and steady rain the whole way along the river’s winding course. Exhausted, shivering with cold, wet, hungry, and alone, it was becoming hard to concentrate on much of anything other than keeping one foot in front of the other, sloshing forward in the current. The monotony of the days and the swamp forest made things seem almost as if I was in a hazy dream. Regardless, nothing could deter me from completing my quest. The river grew smaller and shallower the farther up I ventured. Thankfully, the nearly incessant rain of the past fortnight had raised water levels enough to make wading possible—otherwise it seemed doubtful that this small river would be navigable.
Finally, by late evening on the fourth day, practically staggering in the shallow water, one hand on the rope attached to the canoe, the other holding a paddle for balance, I laid eyes on the river’s source. It was not quite the sight that greeted John Hanning Speke at the headwaters of the Nile or Sir Alexander Mackenzie at the tidewater of the Pacific, but to my eyes the lake at the headwaters was paradise. When the flush of triumph had worn off, I realized that all that greeted me besides the lake was more swamp, muskeg, and hordes of blackflies and mosquitoes that happily feasted on human blood for the first time. If wendigos did exist, I imagined that this would be a good place for them. Nevertheless, it was with a deep and quiet sense of satisfaction that I pitched my tent that night on the driest patch of ground available. The next day, I would be free at last to canoe the nameless river, rather than wade through it, back to the Aquatuk and out to the salt water of Hudson Bay—where I would face an adversary far more deadly than even the wendigo—the great white bear.
