7. The Katshituashku was a carnivorous monster of gigantic proportions that terrified several Native populations
The Katshituashku (also known as the Stiff-Legged Bear) was an enormous man-eating monster with a large head that allegedly preyed on Native people throughout Eastern North America. Approximately elephant sized, with the Penobscot Indians of modern-day Maine detailing the creatures’ inability to sleep lying down due to giant inflexible legs, it is widely assumed that the monster originated from early mastodon remains discovered by Natives and incorporated into existing oral histories and mythologies.
The Katshituashku serves as a general figure of wider Native folklore, with several other tribal cultures retaining belief in a similar monster. The Iroquois people feared the “Naked Bear”, great man-eating creatures with the form of a bear but no fur and an oversized head; the beast was near invincible to ordinary human attacks, and could only be wounded in the soles of their feet. Likewise the Lenape, Shawnee, and Algonquian tribes told legends of the Yakwawiak – gigantic, stiff-legged, hairless bears comparable to mammoths or mastodons – whilst among the tales of the Alabama and Koasati peoples existed a huge carnivorous predator known as Atipa-Tcoba, described as bearlike in appearance.