So was Wendigo psychosis a real thing, or just imperialist propaganda used to demonize tribal peoples?
>imperialist propagnda
It's a fucking part of Algonquin culture, not something made up by Westerners. The Algonquin peoples believed that eating human flesh gave you an insatiable hunger for more. This is even found in European myths.
It's a myth saying why cannibalism is bad. Once you break that taboo it's very easy to justify doing so again. It's very easy to run out of food in a hunter-gatherer society that's just getting into agriculture. Don't eat people, it's bad, you'll become a monster, and don't tolerate others eating people.
Wendigo psychosis predates European contact with the Americas m8
>>500534
That's not demonstrably true; the Algonquians had no writing system pre-contact. All evidence we have for Wendigo beliefs comes from post contact, when Europeans encountered the Algonquians and recorded it, or when contact with Europeans transmitted writing to the Alqonquians and they recorded it themselves.
In fact, a number of scholars have theorized that wendigo beliefs popped up as an indirect result of contact, with the natives creating it as a sort of unconscious coping mechanism, to deal with all the resulting epidemics and famines.
Folklore with roots in reality.
Like how west africans had a high infant mortality rate due to malaria and so made up stories about evil spirits who are born as human children to cause heartbreak with their deaths.
>>500545
>muh native demonization
i'm some random guy stating an opinion about the subject, the wendigo psychosis was not something colonials drew from their pockets
>>500559
How absolutely fucking saddening
>>500524
>Once you break that taboo it's very easy to justify doing so again
If you enjoy getting Kuru.
>>500580
>Don't eat the brain
>Avoid Kuru
Cannibals- 1
Imperialists- 0
>>500561
I'm not saying it was, just pointing out that the first mention we have of wendigos in the written record is from "Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania," written in 1612, at least a century after contact with the northern tribes. It's quite possible that in the intervening time, epidemics spreading ahead of the advancing Europeans seriously affected Algonquian culture.
That's not to say there's nothing to wendigo psychosis. The sheer volume of recorded cases attests to a genuine phenomenon. It's exact nature, though, is a bit questionable. It depends a bit on how you define "wendigo psychosis." If by that you mean "Algonquians could actually believe they were becoming wendigos and then would be compelled to attack and cannibalize people" then I don't think that was really a thing. The evidence is scanty, with incidents like the Swift Runner case being an outlier.
Most recorded wendigo cases (and it should be noted many of these "cases" were never verified, but there's enough of them to warrant serious analysis) where someone died involved the suspected wendigo being executed before they could attack anybody. They started acting erratically, their friends and family began to fear the person was going wendigo, and they killed them preemptively. However, most of the surviving descriptions of these "erratic" behaviors are inconsistent, and suggest a variety of mental illnesses. It's also worth noting that in most recorded cases where someone having this sort of fit was restrained, the fit passed and they were fine. That suggests a normal mental illness, not a compulsion to consume human flesh.
Now if by "wendigo psychosis" you mean the communal hysteria and preemptive killings, yes, there is a large body of evidence for that. But is seems to have functionally been similar to the witch hunts and werewolf executions of Europe and New England, in which people were killed over a belief, but not because they were genuinely acting as werewolves or witches.
>myth
Just keep telling yourselves that.
>>501171
sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit
>>501530
mock the spirits at your own risk
>>500486
/k/ warns any one that goes into the woods up north to take plenty of ammo. Any kind of special ammo really.
but then agin it's mainly an exuses to shoot more ammo
>>500622
First vampire story from Croatia sounds like wendigo
>>500622
>>504090
Honestly, the Slavs had the right of it. If your community has to blame some supernatural entity to deal with bad things happening, far better to blame a dead man, call him a vampire, and then desecrate the corpse than it is to call a living person a wendigo/witch/werewolf/changeling and then commit murder.
