Water monsters

[Erik Gooding]

>>From Riggs (1893:142) concerning Unktehi, the water monster of the Dakota
(Santee-Sisseton):

"They say it was Unktehi. So when Unktehi  had come to the shore, they
filled both his eyes with the burnt stones, and on his many horns they
piled the baggage, and their husbands they placed among the baggage."

The horned-water monster is at least common throughout  the Dakotan groups,
from the lakes of Minnesota, to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, to the
lakes of southern and central Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. I'm not
sure if this is a Dakotan-only idea or not, it may have come from the east
and the Great Lakes groups. There is a drawing of one of these somewhere,
perhaps in Dorsey (1894) or something from that time period.

Erik G.


At 05:43 AM 1/20/02 -0500, Linda A Cumberland wrote:
>For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the
>lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine
>consultants in the summer of 1998.  Told in English as we were
>picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she
>didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she
>sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out
>again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was
>huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the
>other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting"
>would have been in the 1960s.  I haven't pursued the story, but the
>existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does
>anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster?
>
>Linda
>
>
>> The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the
>> Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this
>> water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an
>> English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times
>> apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the
>> Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami,
>> Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.)
>>
>