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Native peoples who populated america lengthy earlier than it was america had a deep connection to the land and its creatures. Their tales and rituals had been born from that connection, and there are legends from these instances that elicit a primal, horrified response from those that hear them immediately. Listed here are ten Native American legends that may terrify you.
Associated: 10 Legendary Tales About Mythical Creatures
10 Wechuge
Crafty, savage, and affected person, the wechuge hunts by drawing its victims into the forest and away from the remainder of the tribe. It’s solely then that it reveals itself. Large, monstrous, and product of ice, the wechuge feasts upon lone vacationers and incautious members of the Athabaskan tribes within the Canadian Pacific Northwest.
As soon as males like some other, the wechuge dedicated any variety of social taboos—from permitting their pictures to be taken with a flash to enjoying an instrument made with a stretched string, like a guitar—and thereby invited one of many nice animal spirits to overwhelm them with energy. If the good spirit was not enticed to depart the person earlier than the transformation was full, he would ultimately eat his personal lips and, after that, grow to be a wechuge, cursed to eternally hunt and feed upon his personal folks.[1]
9 Qalupalik
Soaking moist, with slimy inexperienced pores and skin and lengthy fingernails, the qalupalik or qallupilluit of Inuit legend resembles nothing greater than the reanimated corpse of a drowned lady. In some tellings, their pores and skin is bumpy or scaly, they usually at all times reek of sulfur.
They put on amautiks, the identical factor Inuit ladies put on to hold their youngsters on their backs, however for a really completely different cause; qalupaliks hunt the bottom close to skinny and damaged ice, searching for to grab up unattended youngsters and carry them again within the amautik to be drowned.
A toddler wandering too near the water may hear buzzing or knocking coming from the ice beneath their toes. These are certain indicators {that a} qalupalik has sighted them and is attempting to lure them nearer to the water’s edge. Victims of those creatures are by no means seen once more.[2]
8 Tsul Kalu
Tsul kalu, also called the Cherokee Satan, is a big creature, skinny and lined in soiled white hair, not not like a conventional North American bigfoot. His legend originates in what’s now North Carolina. To today, there exist impressions in stones which might be stated to be from a tsul kalu’s footprints.
As lord of the sport (or the hunt) in Cherokee folklore, tsul kalu is claimed to have the ability to learn minds and hypnotize his victims. His most well-known legend entails taking a Cherokee lady as his bride. The girl’s mom had satisfied her that she ought to take a husband who was an amazing hunter and will present for his or her household. The tsul kalu learn these ideas and appeared to his bride with a deer as an providing.
The Cherokee defended their looking grounds from the tsul kalu by hanging masks of his face on bushes. They believed that there was greater than one of many creatures and that in the event that they noticed the masks, they might imagine they’d wandered into the looking grounds of an even bigger tsul kalu and be frightened away.[3]
7 Skadegamutc
The skadegamutc, or ghost witch, is a monster whose lore originates with the Wabanaki tribes. The legend says that when an evil shaman dies, their determined must cling to life can create an unholy creature. The shaman’s physique will reanimate at night time, and the skadegamutc will roam the forests looking to feast on the blood of hunters and the misplaced.
The skadegamutc may be fought off, however solely with the mixed power of a whole village. Even then, it can’t be killed besides by fireplace. When a ghost witch is encountered by a tribe, they need to band collectively to guard one another at night time and spend their days trying to find the corpse to burn, lest it declare considered one of them as a sufferer after sunset.[4]
6 Ogopogo
Far beneath the floor of Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, there lurks a serpent with the top of a horse and the antlers of a deer. That is no monster, although; it’s Ogopogo, the spirit of the lake and protector of the valley.
Each an city legend paying homage to the Loch Ness monster that’s been featured on Unsolved Mysteries and an actual, sacred perception of the native Okanagan/Syilx indigenous folks, Ogopogo represents an intersection of cultures. The darkish coloring and horse head should not what you’ll see should you google the creature; as a substitute, you’re extra more likely to discover a cartoon dragon, a mascot that’s been used to promote vacationers on visiting the area.
Indigenous folks traditionally made choices to the spirit of the lake within the type of tobacco, sage, and salmon—and that final one is probably going what led to the illustration of Ogopogo that one in six adults in British Columbia imagine to be actual immediately. When early settlers noticed the Syilx folks throwing meat into the lake, tales about an amazing serpent that required meat to be able to permit secure passage throughout the lake unfold. Some armed settlers even patrolled the lake’s edge in case the creature attacked.
After years with out bloodshed, the monster of Okanagan Lake grew to become toothless folklore and a way of driving tourism.[5]
5 Flathead Lake Monster
Way back, members of the Kutenai tribe had been crossing the frozen Flathead Lake in Montana when two ladies stumbled on a set of antlers jutting by the ice. Believing that an animal will need to have fallen into the lake, the women gathered some sharp rocks and set to work breaking up the ice. It was then that the ice break up aside, and the top of a monster appeared. The ladies had been capable of escape its wrath, nevertheless it’s stated that half the tribe was misplaced to the frigid waters of the lake that day.
Sightings of the Flathead Lake Monster have continued for greater than a century. There have been greater than 100 reported sightings, starting with Captain James Kerr and the steamship the U.S. Grant in 1889 and persevering with as not too long ago as the autumn of 2017. Witnesses describe seeing the water half and a 25-foot (7.6-meter) lengthy, eel-like creature briefly surfacing throughout encounters.[6]
4 Piasa
Lots of of years in the past, there lived a beast not like some other. It hunted unseen, the one warning that it was about to grab up its prey coming because the monster’s nice leathery wings blotted out the solar.
The Piasa was a large avian creature with a tail that wound round its physique and thru its legs. Shimmering with multicolored scales, the Piasa had a set of antlers rising from the top of a person. It was massive sufficient to hold away a whole deer for a meal, however after one significantly bloody battle between native tribes left many lifeless close to its nest, the Piasa developed a style for human flesh.
The Illini couldn’t kill the monster regardless of their finest efforts. Determined for an answer, Chief Ouatoga embarked upon a month-long quick separated from his tribe. On the final night time, he was gifted a plan to slay the beast by the Nice Spirit; he instructed twenty warriors to cover close to the Piasa’s den, after which Ouatoga himself stood defenseless outdoors to entice the monster. When the good predator emerged, all twenty warriors attacked with a barrage of poisoned arrows and slew it.
The tribe painted the Piasa onto the rocks above the valley as a warning. These work have been misplaced to time, however within the Nineteen Nineties, a brand new portray was commissioned. It now overlooks the Mississippi River close to Alton, Illinois.[7]
3 Atahsaia
The demons that stalked the southwestern United States and hunted the Zuni folks there knew little worry, however all of them feared the good cannibal demon Atahsaia. Twice as massive as any man who ever walked the earth, with sharp yellow tusks and an amazing flint axe, the demon was eternally ravenous—and had a predilection for human meat.
There’s a story of a younger lady who, determined to feed her aged mother and father, ventured into the forest to hunt. The girl was expert and caught many rabbits, however because the day turned to nighttime, she was caught in a blizzard and sought refuge in a cave. There, she lit a hearth, and her fireplace drew the eye of Atahsaia.
Too massive to enter the cave, Atahsaia stood at its mouth and bellowed on the lady to throw him some meat to curb his urge for food. Petrified, she threw every of her rabbits into the monster’s gaping mouth and watched them disappear. Quickly, they had been gone, and nonetheless, Atahsaia hungered. The girl threw her sneakers, her garments, and all of her gear into his mouth. When he’d eaten every part she needed to supply, the demon started to hammer on the mouth of the cave along with his axe, decided to proceed his feast with the huntress.
Listening to the thuds of his axe and directly realizing Atahsaia sought to devour some poor hunter caught within the storm, the warfare gods Åhayúta and Mátsailéma gathered their weapons and got down to confront the demon. They arrived simply as he entered the cave and slew him, then slept on the cave’s mouth to guard the huntress towards the night time. Within the morning, the warfare gods led her again to her village and gifted her a whole bunch of rabbits to interchange these she’d misplaced to the demon.[8]
2 Mosquito Man
Lengthy earlier than Edward Cullen or Lestat de Lioncourt, the Mosquito Man haunted the Northwest Coast tribes. The monster appeared very similar to a person, besides that as a substitute of a mouth, it had a protracted proboscis it used to suck the mind out of an individual’s head. As intelligent as any vampire, the Mosquito Man would solely seem in teams of individuals as they celebrated. In that means it was capable of keep away from detection earlier than it had fed.
In a single Haida legend, the Mosquito Man got here to a gaggle of brothers who had simply returned from a hunt. When the eldest brother’s baby started to cry, every man tried in flip to quiet it. When it got here time for the Mosquito Man’s flip, the child quieted, and it was solely after he’d handed its physique to the subsequent brother that they realized he had feasted on its mind.
The brothers attacked the monster, who grew to become enraged and slew all besides the youngest of them. That man he chased throughout till, ultimately, the brother led the Mosquito Man to the lake. When the creature fell into the water, the Haida tribesman started to sing, and the lake froze, holding the monster with solely his head above the ice. The brother then gathered wooden and set a hearth over the Mosquito Man. The ashes that took flight within the wind afterward grew to become the primary mosquitos.[9]
1 The Chindi
When a baby is born, a wind enters its physique with its first breath; when that very same particular person dies, the chindi is expelled. The Navajo historically do their finest to make sure that their folks die outdoors in order that their chindi can fade away harmlessly; when somebody dies inside, the chindi is trapped, and solely a ritual cleaning can free that dwelling from the spirit’s wrath.
Chindi are a critical consideration in Navajo tradition. Publicity to a chindi could cause ghost illness, which might result in illness and even dying. Witches and medication males with nefarious intentions can use bones or physique components to inflict ghost illness as effectively. It was as soon as widespread for Navajo folks to put on jewellery and conduct cleaning rites to guard themselves from dying’s attain.[10]
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