# Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 12/Issue 47/Water-Monsters of American Aborigines

WATER-MONSTERS OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES.
Aquatic monsters are found in the folk-lore of every people, and are probably as numerous as land-monsters or terrestrial prodigies, for the sea, the lake, and all watery depths are more mysterious and more unaccountable than the surface of dry land. The term "monster" may be taken in a double sense ; either it means an organism exceeding others of its kind in size, power, speed, or ugliness, but nevertheless a real product of nature; or else it designates an impossible creation of human imagination, like the dragon, griffin, unicorn in heraldry, etc.
The Gila monster or Heloderma, salamander, inspires terror among the people, or they would not call it the hell-bender; the whale is dreaded for its strength by all those who approach too near. Among the imaginary prodigies, of which antiquity was as productive as later epochs, might be mentioned the chimaera of Lycia in Asia Minor (which once may have represented some spout of volcanic origin), and Scylla and Charybdis, the living symbols of whirlpools and surfy shores. No wonder that such curiosities were once deified. The Krake was a floating, huge island in the folk-lore of Norway near to the maelstrom, a huge phenomenon brought into whirling motion by the influence of the tides. The celebrated Lorelei on the shores of the Rhine River may be called a combination of a mountain siren with a maid of the whirlpools.
It will be found that prodigies of this sort are always compounded of a human and of an animal or brutish element. The animal additions are generally in the shape of organs of the body, as wings, claws, tusks, etc., and in some instances portions of vegetable character are added to the figure. Artistic nations subordinate all these symbolic additions to the human idea, but with primitive nations the beastly nature prevails over the human faculties. In ancient Egypt, zoötheism is expressed chiefly by animal faces or masks enveloping the head; the Egyptian gods and goddesses represent rather powers of nature than moral or intellectual qualities. Greek art tended to idealize the beast's attributes in the human form, as we see with the centaurs, the fauns, and the satyrs, even with the naïades and the dryades; but in other monsters of their creation the reverse tendency of idealism is perceptible, as in the Cerberus, the Graïæ, and the hydras.
Turning to our North American Indians, their monsters have in themselves more of the animal than of the human, and this appears usually in an exaggerated form. In the following pages it is not ​intended to present anything approaching completeness, but merely to record some instances that have come to my knowledge.
Parallel to the horned snake, which seems to be known to all or most Indian tribes, the Wabenaki of the northeast have a horned snail or wiwilméku, which occurs frequently in their mythic and legendary tales. Within the memory of the Passamaquoddy Indians of southeastern Maine, a renowned medicine-man and travellers' guide, Medshelemet of the Penobscots, had a difficulty with a Micmac chief, and they agreed to settle it in the waters of Boyden's Lake, Washington County, Maine. Medshelemet transformed himself into a horned snail, and the Micmac chief into a huge serpent of forty feet length or more (Ktchi at' husis, "large snake)." During the combat they whirled around in the lake, so that its waters have remained disturbed up to the present day, and the name, Nesséyik, even now recalls this fact. Medshelemet came out victorious, and killed his antagonist, then tied him to a tree standing at the west end of the lake on a promontory called Kwíssawi-ágĕmek. This man is a historic person who died but forty years ago; he is still remembered by the hunters of his tribe, and reputed for his singular ability of procuring tobacco for the hunting parties he accompanied, although there were no stores there from which this commodity could be obtained. These two form a curious instance of modern euhemerism, which is not at all unfrequent with medicine-men or "shamanic jugglers."
Next in order among superhuman beings come the dragons and the huge serpents, horned or not, a class which fully demonstrates that the Indians have no lack of snake stories and are probably better supplied with them than ourselves.
Rev. S. T. Rand mentions a fabulously large snake believed in by the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia, whose name is Ktchi pitchkayam; no description is given of it, but the name implies similarity with the Kinepíkwa or Ktchi-Kinepíkwa, "the great snake" of the Algonkin tribes farther west. The Shawnee Indians have a story of a one-horned snake, wewiwilemitá manetú, of which they give the following particulars: A young maiden who was "eating alone" saw a fawn who had one horn red and the other blue; it was lying in the waters of a lake, immersed up to the neck. The next time she saw it it had become much larger, and was moving out of the watery element. The next time it appeared to her in the form of a snake. A fourth time the snake had disappeared from the lake, but the lake had increased in size, and its waters were hot and boiling. Having informed her father of the occurrence, he held ​council with the old men of the tribe, who agreed among themselves upon killing the snake, or trying to do so. For this purpose they induced the young woman to go to the lake again, when her next courses should come on. Twelve old men accompanied her, singing and carrying a drum, taking along their shamanic "medicines" with them. They camped out that night, and next morning sent the girl into the lake to erect a tent-like structure or trestle in its midst. When they sang their magic songs many kinds of snakes appeared and laid their heads upon the (horizontal) cross-poles of the structure. The conjurers told them, "You are not the ones (wanted)," and the waters became excited and boiled. But when a certain snake came and put its head on the cross-poles, they said, "You are the one." The girl was then ordered to enter the water again and to strike its surface four times with her underwear. This she did, and the effect on the snake was so weakening that it could be killed by the conjurer without any exertion. The snake was brought to the shore, cut up, and the assembled tribe voted as to the use to be made of the snake's body. They resolved to cut it into pieces and to give a piece to every person (to serve as talisman, physic, or amulet), and then a name was given to the snake, calling it Msí Kinépikwa, or "great reptile."
The Potawatomi Indians, when settled along Wabash River, had a tradition that there was a monster serpent in Lake Manitou. "Their superstitious dread of this lake was such that they would not hunt upon its borders nor fish in its waters for fear of incurring the anger of the evil spirit that made its home in this little woodland lake. When the government officers were about erecting the Potawatomi mills, the Indians strenuously objected to the erection of a dam at the outlet of the lake, lest its accumulated waters might disturb and overflow the subterranean abode of the serpent, the exasperated demon rush forth from his watery domain, and take indiscriminate vengeance on all those who resided near the sacred lake."
Among the Peoria Indians, who formerly lived in Illinois and are now in the Indian Territory, the Lenapízha or "true tiger" is an awe-inspiring animal of the dragon species and of enormous dimensions. Although it can live on dry land, it is mainly seen on the water, and there it shines in its brightest colors. It is a phantom representing the lightning striking a lake or river, and the ebullition of the water consequent upon the stroke causes it to appear as a fire-dragon. In the popular idea it also stands for any huge animal, and its name serves as a personal name of totemic origin, corresponding to the Shawnee manetúwi msí-pissí, "great miraculous ​tiger." Wapí-pízhi or "white tiger" is another denizen of the deep, whom the Peorias still recollect, but now use mainly as a personal name.
Aquatic and terrestrial prodigies of a pacific nature and diminutive in size are beings akin to fairies, who are of both sexes. The water-fairies come nearest to the sirens and naïades of old; they sit on river banks and lake shores, and by gesture and song allure the passing people to approach. Indian pictographs are said to be their work, since these tracings seem to appear and disappear according to the state of the weather. The pictographic scratchings on Fairy Lake, western Nova Scotia, and in Maine near Machiasport, are all ascribed to the agency of these mysterious dwarfs, who thereby intend to foretell events. In Passamaquoddy they are called unágemes, plural unageméswuk, "spirits dwelling in the rocks," from unák, rock, the ending es being of diminutive import.
Among the Miami Indians, a lake or river fairy or other prodigy is called mänsanzhí; its female companion, mänsanzhí kwä, is a genius of the lakes or "fresh water mermaid," the term being at present used only as a girl's name.
Creek Indians consider the fairies chiefly as wood-spirits, and what I have learned about them is published in Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1888, No. 3 (Notes). They are called little people or isti lupútski; some of their number are the cause of a crazed condition of the Indians' minds.
The numerous tribes of the Siouan family, whose principal member is the Dakota nation, undoubtedly had as many water-monsters as the Algonkians, considering the large number of lakes, brooks, and rivers in their extensive domain.
It will, however, suffice to mention Unktéhi, or Unktéxi, their Neptune or divine ruler of the waters, whose name also designated a fabled monster of the deep and the whale of the salt-water. In fact, Unktéhi means any large animal, for it is used also to designate some large extinct animal, whose bones are at times found by the Indians. The Winnebago or Hotchank Indians of Nebraska and Wisconsin know of the Waktchexi, a miraculous beast of the watery element, which had the power of imparting wonderful qualities to people who had been fasting for ascetic purposes.
The eastern and western Cherokees have an inexhaustible wealth of folk-lore, of which but little has been made public until now. In his "Mythology of the Cherokees," James Mooney describes some miraculous animals that people the upper streams of the Tennessee River. Among these figures the Dakwa, a huge fish, formerly seen in Little Tennessee River, above the junction of Tellico, at the ​mouth of Toccoa Creek. Another of these fantastic beings was a great leech or tlanúsi, formerly in Valley River, just above the junction of Hiawassee Creek, at Murphy, North Carolina ; this village was called on that account Tlanusíyi, or "leech-place." A third of these creatures was Ukténa, a huge snake or water-serpent, once holding forth at different places along streams and to be kept distinct from the "great horned ukténa."
The Iroquois people of New York, rich in all kinds of mythic folk-lore, were not delinquent in forming stories about miraculous aquatic beings. The Onyare (in Mohawk, On-yar-he) is their lake serpent, which traversed their country and by coiling up in dominant positions near the pathways or trails interrupted communication between the settlements of the Iroquois. Onyare's breath, diffused through the air, brought on sickness; it was finally with its brood destroyed by thunderbolts, or compelled to retire into deep water. The life of Onyare is in the stories brought into connection with the Stone-Heads or Otneyarhe, and also with the Flying Heads or Konearaunēnē.
The ancient Creek Indians believed in a miraculous horned snake, which at times appeared at the surface of water-holes, and whose horns, used as a war-physic, were prized higher than any other fetish within their knowledge. When the snake was seen in a blue hole filled with deep water, the old men of the tribe sang their incantations, which brought the snake to the surface. They sang again, and it emerged a little from the moving waves. When they sang for the third time, it came ashore and showed its horns, and they sawed one off; again they sang, and it emerged for the fourth time, when they sawed off the other horn. Fragments of the horns were carried along in the warriors' shot-pouches on their expeditions, and the song lines of the horned-snake referred to all the manipulations connected with the capture of the snake's horns or tchito yábi. The refrain was "kitiwaíhi, kitiwáyi, áhayi."
The Káyowe or Kiowa Indians, now settled in Oklahoma, know of Zemo' hgú-ani, a species of horned alligator of extraordinary size found in deep holes in streams, and have named certain places after it. By the Jicarilla Apaches, in the northern part of New Mexico, a great frog is remembered, who lived in a former lake at Taos pueblo, and has been described by J. Mooney in his article on "Jicarilla Genesis," "Amer. Anthropologist," July, 1898, pp. 201, 202.
Especially productive of this class of "miraculous hydrozoölogy" were the nations living on Columbia River and its numerous tributaries. Among the Kalapuya Indians of Willamette River, Oregon, the figure of Amhúluk, a monstrous and nondescript being which lives in a water-basin at the Forked Mountain (tcha Waláktchi améffu) ​near Forest Grove, Oregon, is prominently popular. It is a large monster on four legs, with long horns, a spotted body, and followed by small dogs, also spotted. It carries various things tied around its body and is frightful in its appearance. Children are allured by it to step over the soft and slimy banks of the lake into its waters, after which they become helplessly entangled in the mud and weeds of the desolate spot. When called upon by their parents to return to the shore they reappear at times at the surface to disappear again, the only audible words they proffer being, "we have changed bodies." This water-basin also draws elks, deer, and other game into its bosom and absorbs them, never surrendering them afterwards. When a grizzly bear turns old, he goes there, and by the waters is changed into another beast, either natural or monstrous.
Another aquatic being or spirit of the Kalapuya people is the Atúnkai, whose home is in the depth of rivers, lakes, and in deep and sombre waters. Those who saw it describe it as resembling a seal or sea-otter. When a grizzly or other animal is drawn by magic into a water pool and metamorphosed into another animal, it is most likely the atúnkai that will form its future body.
Albert S. Gatschet.
* ↑ This means that she was menstruating, and therefore had to eat and stay alone in the woods or away from the settlements.
* ↑ From Cox's Recollections of Wabash Valley, p. 136, as quoted in R. M. Dorman, The Origin of Primitive Superstitions, Philadelphia, 1881, p. 283.
* ↑ Soon to be published by the Bureau of American Ethnology.