10. Bakwas attempts to offer cursed food, whilst Kushtaka seeks to lure sailors to their gruesome deaths
As an innately spiritualistic culture, throughout Native American society there are numerous yet comparable accounts of a wide variety of evil supernatural spirits who prey upon tribes. Bakwas (also known as the wild man of the woods) is one such spirit belonging to the Kwakwaka’wakw people of modern-day British Columbia, similar to the Haida’s “gagit”, the Nuu-chah-nult’s “pukubts”, and the Tsimshian “ba’wis”. Bakwas offers ghost food out of cockle shells to humans stranded in a wood where drowned souls congregate; if they accept and eat the offered food, then they too become a ghostly being like Bakwas.
Equally Kushtaka (or land otter men) are shape-shifting monsters belonging to the folklore of the Tlingit and Tsimshian people of the Pacific Northwest, similar to the Nat’ina of the Dena’ina and the Urayuli of the Yup’ik. Capable of assuming human form, as well as that of otters among other shapes, Kushtaka enjoy tricking sailors to their watery demises. Typically described in legend as imitating the screams of women and children, the Kushtaka ensnares the victim, ideally children, and either brutally kills them or converts them into another Kushtaka; a minority of native narratives place the Kushtaka in a more pleasant light, depicting them as saving those dying at sea by turning them into a fellow Kushtaka. It is believed among tribes people that Kushtaka can be warded away through copper, dogs, fire, or in some instances urine. Due to this setting and the creatures preferred prey, it is widely theorized the origin of the Kushtaka legend was to encourage young children from wandering too close to the ocean.