The Windigo in "Tracks"

Analytical Essay # 116346

Literature > American
Native-American Studies

This paper explores the figure of the Windigo in Louise Erdrich's "Tracks".

2,973 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how the Ojibwa tribe believed in a cannibalistic animal called the Windigo. The paper examines how Louise Erdrich's novel "Tracks" consistently draws upon this fearsome figure, both through explicit reference to the Windigo and also by projecting Windigo traits onto her characters. The paper focuses on the Windigo tradition as it appears in the characterizations of Fleur Pillager and Pauline Puyat.

From the Paper:

"The figure of the windigo is common throughout the oral histories of Algonquian tribes, including the Ojibwa, Cree, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Illinois, Fox, and Kickapoo. Traditionally, the windigo was a human who had been transformed by starvation, witchcraft, or contact with another windigo into a wolfish being that craved the taste of human flesh. The windigo, however, is far more complex than a cannibalistic bogeyman. According to Brightman, the original meaning of windigo for Ojibwas was "fool," or, more accurately, "an individual who had lost his or her wits." He further notes that "the sense of 'cannibal monster' is a semantic innovation developed in the boreal forest languages during a 150 years or more period of food crises" (340)."

Sample of Sources Used:

Brightman, Robert A. "The Windigo in the Material World." Ethnohistory. 35.4 (1988): 337-360.
Erdrich, Louise. Tracks. New York: Henry Holt, 1988.
Landes, Ruth. Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1968.
McCafferty, Kate. "Generative Adversity: Shapeshifting Pauline/Leopolda in Tracks and Love Medicine." American Indian Quarterly. 21.4 (1997): 729-752.
Podruchny, Carolyn. "Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition." Ethnohistory. 51.4 (2004): 677-692.