A Yooper's Tale: Death by Wendigo

Chapter 1

Wendigo

Native American lore talks of a terrible cannibalistic creature that devours the flesh of its victims. It’s called Wendigo and it is born of the evil deeds of men. This legend of lore stands some fourteen feet tall on two powerful hind legs with yellow glowing eyes that seek its hapless victims in the gloom of darkness. Wendigo, a Cree Indian word, means evil that devours. Gnashing teeth and large carnivore fangs of the creature rip and consume human flesh with an insatiable appetite. The beast is adorned atop its skull with a crown of antlers, giving it at first the appearance of some great stag on two legs. The Wendigo is no great deer, however, for those unlucky enough to see one. The beast’s face has more the appearance of a huge monster to be part wolf, part demon, and part inexplicable horror. Its appearance exudes pure terror on the beholder and is capable of rendering a victim scared stiff. Its giant muscled body is covered with matted and tangled hair. The creature moves hunched forward as if attacking and dwarfs its victims with its ravenous death-dealing stature. It protrudes claws that are long and sharp, attached to long deadly fingers, in turn attached to muscled arms that appear too long for the body. Its two powerful hind legs have eagle-like feet that seem hairless with talon like claws. Some old legends say that one look from this creature can paralyze the victim with fear and dread as if hit with a neuro toxin. Descriptions of Wendigo vary somewhat among the Algonquian-speaking tribes, but what is true of all the descriptions is that it is a terrible, evil beast that consumes the flesh of men.

The legends and stories of the Wendigo are strongest among the Cree American Indians. The Cree, as one of the Algonquian-speaking nations, are the largest of the Native American tribes and by many are considered to be the First Nation peoples. The term First Nation people was bestowed on Indians by Canadians, but here it is meant as the first ancient humans to inhabit North America. The lore of the Wendigo with the Cree peoples echoes through their history with the birth memory of these ancient peoples. Their ancestral home range extends west from James Bay through the Canadian provinces down to the Great Lakes and west of Lake Superior out into North Dakota and the Rocky Mountains.

The accounts of the Wendigo and stories of horror and death have followed the Cree people throughout all their range. Lore of the Wendigo is also traced in many of the related Algonquian-speaking Native American tribes, including the Ojibwa, Chippewa, Huron, Menominee, Noquet, Ottawa, and others in the Great Lakes region. It is no small wonder that the stories of the Wendigo were passed on from generation to generation as more than lore from the old ones. The elders of the local tribes of Minnesota, Northern Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan would speak of their tribal memories and of accounts with the beast called Wendigo. These hunter-gatherer tribes with ancestral roots of the First Nation peoples believed in this creature of evil. The ancients who first inhabited North America encountered and believed in the Wendigo. The Indian tribes of North America believed in the Wendigo in both its spiritual and physical form.

In modern times, the lore of the Wendigo is still present, but it has become more of a lost dream, like the mammoths that once roamed the lands of the Algonquian-speaking peoples. Tales of modern-day Wendigo encounters seem to be absent in the westernizing tribal cultures. Business council meetings have replaced tribal ceremonies. Economic development, health issues, education, and the basic traditions of language, dance, and heritage have replaced the discussions of lore and lessons of the elders. Times have changed, and the Native American peoples have adapted. Though the First Nation people and modern tribes still hold tight to their connections to Mother Earth, nature, and the life spirit, things have changed. The impact of science, the industrial age, education, and, of course, the Canadian and United States government cannot be denied. New demons like drug and alcohol abuse have replaced Wendigo. New attitudes of society, progress, and modern conveniences of Western civilized culture have become part of the Native American life framework.

With changes of the twentieth and twenty-first century, many passed-down stories are now just lost memories. The Wendigo is now nothing more than the wind talking to the tall white pines in a dark old forest. The lore is now just that, something elders tell the young ones to scare them into good behavior. Yes, the Wendigo is now only a ghost story told around campfires, something not real, something alive only in the imagination…or is it?

Chapter 2

1800s—Silver Jack Driscoll

John Driscoll and his Cree Indian companion Edward Smith were weary of traveling. Their horses plodded along at a steady pace, but it was slow going. They left the lumberjack camps of Saginaw almost over two weeks prior and were finally in Michigan’s vast Upper Peninsula rugged wilderness. Springtime was breaking free of winter in Michigan, but here in the rugged terrain of the UP, it was common to get hit with snow well into late spring.

The pair of men was heading into lumber and mining country of the Upper Peninsula to continue prospecting for silver and gold. Driscoll and Smith had been making this annual trek together for almost ten years now. The little explored depths of the Huron and Porcupine Mountains west of Marquette would be their prospecting destinations, but L’Anse would be their stop for this night.

Another hour or so and they would arrive in L’Anse and the soft beds and warm rooms inside the JB Belanger boardinghouse. All the walking and riding was a nice change from working a two-bladed ax and the double-handled saw. Two weeks of traveling by foot, horseback, and barge across the Straits of Mackinac, however, had both men ready for a rest. As John Driscoll thought of the soft bed, he thought to himself that L’Anse would be a fine place to spend the last few days of May and rest up before beginning the prospecting season in the wilds. The horses plotted on, and Driscoll’s mind drifted back to the past few days of traveling. The last really good night’s sleep had been in Seney a couple nights ago.

Their last overnight had been in a noisy Marquette boardinghouse. Marquette was now becoming a bustling town since its docks had been completed in 1857 and the Soo Locks opening in 1837. There was now a maritime Great Lakes highway opened from the young cities of Chicago and Detroit to what was once the northern UP wilderness town of Marquette. The expanding town had all the commotion for a sleepless night associated with the lumber and mining industry activity that had piled in off the Great Lake steamer Vienna from the port of Marquette.

The night before that was a pitched camp on a rocky site overlooking the small community of Munising. The campsite was on a rocky pitch protected from the harsh northern winds but still offered a fantastic view of Lake Superior and Grand Island. Driscoll had heard that Abraham Williams, a fur trader and ironsmith, had managed to purchase most of the island. He was still out there living with his two wives, brood of kids, and a band of Ojibwa Indians who were the original residents of the island. Rumor had it that Cleveland Cliffs Company had approached Williams about selling the island to make into a hunting and vacation area for the mining company executives and their guests.

The night before, Munising was spent at one of the two Seney lumberjack boardinghouses. Seney was a typical Michigan lumber town. There were a couple boardinghouses packed with lumberjack crews, a supply store, a general trading store, a couple liveries, a sawmill, a tannery, and a small population of perhaps fifty or so local residents. There was also a small Catholic missionary, which doubled as a community meeting place. The lumber town was complete with a saloon, which was located at the center of the row of building making up the main street. As was his custom, John Driscoll visited both the Catholic mission house and the saloon to pay his respects.

John had been raised Catholic and still held the belief. He was a lumberjack by trade, though, and a legendary one at that. Being a lumberjack and being a good Catholic weren’t exactly complimentary ways of life, but John did his best. Lumberjacks were a tough, hard breed, and John Driscoll was probably the toughest and hardest of them all. He wasn’t an ornery or belligerent character. He was a man of few words, and normally they were kindly words, probably because of his Catholic upbringing. If it wasn’t for his imposing six-foot-four muscled frame and square chiseled jaw, one might make the mistake of thinking of him only as a gentle giant. He kept his company mostly to Edward Smith and didn’t seem to have many other friends, though he did enjoy the company of a woman when one was available. His shock of silver-white hair seemed premature for a man of about forty. His tough, weathered face showed character, strength, and toughness. His eyes were a sea green and mostly kindly, but they could change in an instant and pierce through a man, causing him to dread what was coming next.

The silver hair had come on suddenly about four years before, replacing a thick mane of black hair, almost as if overnight. Few asked about it, though most who knew him wondered what happened. The few that considered themselves friends of John Driscoll, or Jack as he liked to be called, would ask about the hair but only got a menacing scowl or growling retort that he couldn’t or maybe didn’t want to talk about it. So it was, the man named John Driscoll became known as the legendary lumberjack Silver Jack Driscoll. That was the way Silver Jack Driscoll liked his nickname, Silver Jack…because of his silver hair.

Truth be told, though, there was another reason folks took to calling John Driscoll Silver Jack Driscoll. John Driscoll and his traveling companion Edward Smith tried to keep it a secret, but in a moment of whiskey-induced folly, the secret came out. Not in a blunder of words but in pieces of silver that Edward carried in a deer skin pouch in his coat pocket.

Driscoll and Smith had discovered silver west of Marquette years ago and were mining it during the summer months when the timbering season rested. It was in the same saloon in Seney they were at just a few nights prior, where the silver secret had been revealed three years ago.

On that particular occasion, three years ago, the two were returning from the Huron Mountains and heading back to Saginaw for the winter timbering season. As was Jack’s custom, he made the Christian sign of the cross before taking his first shot of whiskey for the evening. A group of Swedish immigrant miners on their way west to the mines of Ishpeming noticed and made a mockery of Driscoll’s antics. Unfortunately for young husky Swedes, they didn’t know or didn’t seem concerned about Driscoll’s reputation as a brawler. There were about ten of the young jesters, just the odds that Jack liked in a good brawl. When another half dozen came in from outside, Edward had to jump in and help Jack out. It was then that Edward’s coat pocket was torn, and pieces of rough mined silver splashed on the floor. The entire room stopped fighting and just stood and stared. Jack and Edward did what they could to quickly recover the pieces of silver, but a local was quick and had snatched up a couple of the pieces and recognized it a rough mined silver. The cat, in addition to the silver, was out of the bag.

News of the silver spread quickly. In their travels that followed, many asked about the silver, but neither Jack nor Edward would give out any information. It was the following spring while heading back to the Huron Mountains from Saginaw that Jack noticed they were being followed. The two men following them looked to be unsavory characters intent on discovering the location of the silver mine or something worse. The two trailing Jack and Edward were no match in woodcraft and tracking skills. In the end, the two strangers met with an unseemly demise one might call backwoods justice. It became routine that every time Jack and Edward would go into a settlement or town for supplies, they would be followed back into the mountains. As fate would have it, each of the trackers in turn were never seen or heard of again.

By late summer, Jack and Edward were bringing out both silver and gold on their supply runs. Jack and Edward had sole knowledge of the only discovered silver and gold mine in what was now known as iron and copper country. The fact that two common lumberjacks turned part-time prospectors had a couple of secret mines that were producing a fortune in silver and gold was gaining attention. The timber company owners, mining company owners, and other big investors wanted the gold and silver too. Driven by greed, they were offering big rewards for anyone who could find Driscoll’s Silver mine or discover other mineable veins of the precious metals. The fact that Silver Jack Driscoll and Edward Smith, a lowly lumberjack and an even lowlier Indian lumberjack, might end up dead didn’t matter. All that mattered to these powerful titans of the northern wilderness was getting possession of that fortune of silver and gold.

Jack and Edward did not plan on giving up their secret or ending up dead. The disappearances of trackers trying to discover Jack Silver’s mines caused talk and rumors in the settlements and towns throughout the Upper Peninsula and into Wisconsin, Minnesota, and up into Canada. Some thought the trackers died trying to kill Driscoll and Smith. Others thought they just perished in the harsh, rugged Michigan wilderness. And still others thought that the trackers ran across hostile guardians of sacred tribal grounds that resented the White man’s encroachment.

Other rumors stirred too. Some of the stories were about curses. Maybe the mines themselves were cursed. Maybe Edward Smith, Cree Indian by birth, was a shaman who could cast a death curse on anyone following them in search of the mines.

There were even wild stories of some terrible beast in the darkness that protected the mines and would kill any trespassers. Some even said the beast was of Indian lore who ate the flesh of men it killed. Yet others said the beast was nothing more than a story being spread by Silver Jack Driscoll and Edward Smith. Maybe even the two men dressed in disguise as a beast to keep the curious novices and ill-intent trackers away.

These rumors and wild stories were usually dismissed as scare tactics to keep trespassers away. Silver Jack Driscoll and Edward Smith were a crafty pair, and many admired their tenacity and creativity to come up with such stories. Yet others were not so sure and thought that maybe there was more truth than fiction in these wild tales.

It was a particular summer four years ago that John Driscoll showed up at one of the Marquette trade and supply stores wearing a crop of silver hair instead of his normal, up until then, head of black hair. Indeed, something strange was going on. The secret location of the gold and silver mines, however, still remained a locked secret known only to Silver Jack Driscoll and Edward Smith.

Even though the UP was its own version of the Wild West, progress was coming. Camps were becoming outposts. Outposts were being developed into towns. Trails were becoming roads, and roads were becoming rail for trains. Immigrants were coming from all over Europe to work the copper and iron ore mines. Lumberjacks, always coming and going, would cut the virgin pines for the different timber operations to bring forth the lumber to build a nation. Cooper from the copper mines in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan would provide over ninety percent of the copper being used to bring America into the industrial age.

The iron ore mined in iron country would be transported by rail and wagon down to Fayette on the Lake Michigan side of the Peninsula. There it would be smelted into pig iron, which in turn would be loaded onto steamer ships and sailed to cities like Chicago and Pittsburg to be made into steel. The steel would be used to build great cities, ships, machines, engines, and automobiles. The metal would serve as the backbone of building America into the Industrial Age. The land would be tamed, and there was no room for crazy superstitions and fear of the unknown for the companies and wealthy businessmen making fortunes by pillaging vast natural resources of Michigan.

Driscoll’s thoughts returned to the present by a quiet whinny from his horse. Darkness was gathering as the two weary figures on horseback, pulling a train of four-pack horses, approached the small logging and mining outpost of L’Anse. Trailing behind, just out of sight, a single rider with a couple of pack horses followed and watched.

Driscoll and Smith checked into the JB Belanger boardinghouse in L’Anse and then put their horses up at the only livery at the outpost. After making sure the horses were well watered and fed, they returned to the small eating hall of the boardinghouse for a hot meal. The meal was venison with gravy, homemade sour dough bread with fresh butter, and sweetened hot coffee to wash it down. In a shadowy corner sat the single rider who had been trailing them, quietly eating his own meal.

Jacob Fiddler was the single rider who now sat inconspicuously in a remote corner of the boardinghouse dining hall. He sat, barely noticed, quietly eating his meal and barely watching Driscoll and Smith scarf down their venison and bread. Jack Fiddler was Cree by birth, average