14. Wendigo
The wendigo (or windigo) is a supernatural cannibalistic monster believed by several Algonquin tribes – including the Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Cree, Naskapi, and Innu – to reside in the forests of the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes regions of North America. Appearing with some human characteristics, or according to a minority of interpretations an evil spirit possessing a human into monstrosity, a wendigo is typically created through human cannibalism or by an individual overcome with avarice and greed. Described as extremely gaunt and emaciated, with grayish skin, sunken eyes, tattered lips, and possessing a deathly odor, the wendigo greedily feeds on human flesh. However for each person it consumes the monster grows ever larger, so that it is always hungry and hunting; as such the legend is generally associated with stories of insatiable gluttony and gratuitous murder.
It is increasingly considered by anthropologists that the wendigo existed as much as a metaphor as a literal monster within native mythology, with the concept described as an early depiction of “social cannibalism” and applicable to any individual or idea which expresses a relentless drive towards unnecessary consumption and greed; in so doing, the story didactically encourages cooperation and moderation and discourages the taboo activity of cannibalism during harsh winters. Threatening the stability of a tribe’s existence and exhibiting a destructive nature, the allegory, coinciding with the ongoing eradication of native populations and the emergence of an early consumer capitalistic society in North America, is evident and telling, with the violent and unnatural wendigo symbolically representing the exclusion and forced assimilation experienced by disregarded natives via encroaching and expanding American colonialism in pursuit of Manifest Destiny.