Conte Ojibwé : Cannibal Giants

Le terme Ojibwé vient de Outchibou, nom donné au XVIIe siècle à un groupe qui vivait au nord de ce qui est aujourd’hui Sault Ste. Marie, en Ontario.Voici un de leur conte : Cannibal Giants (en anglais).

Les Ojibwés faisaient partie d’une série de groupes très proches, mais distincts, occupant un territoire situé entre le nord-est de la baie Géorgienne et l’est du lac Supérieur. Ces peuplades qui se rassemblent près de la ville actuelle de Sault Ste. Marie sont aussi appelées Saulteaux, un terme qui désigne aujourd’hui principalement les peuples ojibwés du nord-ouest de l’Ontario et du sud-est du Manitoba.

Ojibwé Cannibal Giants

Cannibal Giants

The holiday season has come and gone, but we still have two months of winter to get through. What better symbol of the coming cold months than the cannibal giants of Algonquin mythology?

Many people have heard of the wendigo, the cannibal monster found in American Indian folklore across much of the northern US and Canada. Wendigos have been featured in movies, comic books and TV shows. In northern New England, the five Wabanaki tribes talk about a similar creature, known either as the chenoo, the giwakwa, or the kiwakwa. You should avoid it no matter what it’s called!

According to Frank Speck’s 1935 article « Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs » in The Journal of American Folklore, the word « kiwakwa » means « going about in the woods. » If you don’t want to see one of these monsters stay out of the woods during the winter.

The chenoo/giwakwa/kiwakwa is a human being who has been transformed through dark magic into a cannibalistic giant. Much like the Incredible Hulk, they get larger as they get angrier, and often tower above the tallest tree. Unlike the Hulk, they are emaciated, have enormous fangs, and often have eaten their own lips in hunger. They are always hungry, and their scream will kill any human who hears it. Sometimes, a dead shaman of great power may return from his grave as a chenoo. Chenoos usually appear in the winter.

Chenoo get their evil powers from a lump of human-shaped ice in their stomach. There are several tales where clever people make a chenoo vomit up the ice lump, which returns it to human form. In some stories, making a chenoo eat salt will melt the lump.

Chopping a chenoo into many small pieces is the only way to be certain it won’t regenerate, and even after it’s killed people will avoid the spot where it died.