You might say Nathan Carlson has a possession obsession, with a keen interest in cannibalism on the side. The University of Alberta Native Studies student is doing a research project on the wihtikow (also known as ‘whetigo’ and ‘wendigo’) the evil spirit said to have haunted northern forests in former times.
There are still people in Slave Lake who heard stories about such spirit possession from their grandparents. In them, a person possessed by the evil spirit would turn to cannibalism. He could only be stopped by someone with stronger medicine (magical or spiritual power), or by decapitation.
Having perused the historical record, Carlson has found that Lesser Slave Lake area had its share of wihtikow stories.
“Lesser Slave Lake seems to be a ‘hot spot’ of wihtikow activity,” he said in an e-mail to The Leader last week. “I have heard of two cases happening at Mitsue Lake, both involving cannibalism.”
It is fairly widely accepted locally that Mitsue (a Cree word meaning ‘eating’) got its name because of incidents of cannibalism that happened there in the latter part of the 1800s. Leo and William Giroux of Slave Lake confirmed that in an interview for a story on wihtikow that appeared in The Leader on Jan. 8, 1992.
The Giroux brothers said that the person possessed by wihtikow could be cured, but once they’d eaten someone, it was too late.
“A wihtikow would kill a whole camp and stay there till he ate up everyone,” said William.
There don’t seem to be any written records of the Mitsue area wihtikow activity. At least Carlson hasn’t found any, although he mentions the story in his thesis. But one of the more famous cases, for which there are official records, happened at or near the present townsite of Slave Lake in the summer of 1887.
“A woman by the name of Marie Courtoreille apparently turned wihtikow, and to prevent her from committing murder and cannibalism, she, herself, was executed by her husband and stepson.”
The two men were tried at Ft. Saskatchewan and received sentences of six years each.
A case at Trout Lake is also on the books. Here’s what Carlson says in his thesis:
“In 1896 a man traveling through the woods with his family reported having a strange vision of a creature that apparently made him insane. He and the villagers believed he’d turned into a windigo and as his condition worsened, he was locked in a cabin. One eyewitness, a fur trader from Scotland, stated that he hardly looked like a human being at one point. The man was eventually executed by the frightened villagers, and huge logs were piled on his grave to make sure he couldn’t come back to life, as he had vowed to do unless a priest came to the village within three days. Strangely enough a priest did arrive, apparently the first ever in that area, and found all the villagers huddled in a shack, fearing for their lives.”
It was this incident that Carlson heard about from his grandmother, leading to his decision to investigate it in his university studies. His research has turned up 35 such cases, although only one of them documented actual cannibalism. A man was convicted of killing and eating his wife and five children near Athabasca Landing and was hanged at Ft. Saskatchewan in 1879.
Carlson says he’d like to publish his findings on the matter in an academic journal or as a book, or both.

Copyright © 2000 The Lakeside Leader. All Rights Reserved.
No part may be reproduced without written permission.

View our Privacy Statement.
Send website suggestions to the Webmaster