by Samantha Watson

Resurrection of the Windigo: Pauline Puyat’s Mythic

Monstrosity in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

Samantha Watson, College of Charleston

Ojibwe lore and legend serve a complex, multifaceted purpose in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, a novel that

adapts and reinterprets traditional folkloric entities in order to convey meaning to a contemporary audience. The

figure of the windigo, in particular, is one such being that simultaneously enriches and complicates Erdrich’s

narrative. Described as a starving, wintry cannibal of gargantuan stature, the windigo is a creature present in the

mythos of many Algonquian-speaking indigenous peoples, including but not limited to the Ojibwe. Windigo

lore is incorporated at various points in the novel to embody concepts of loss, grief, and death, but specifically

through the character of Pauline—one of the novel’s dual-narrators—Erdrich resurrects the windigo as a mon-

strous subject who cannibalizes her own people and culture. Pauline’s peripheral existence, in accordance with

her trauma-induced psychosis and predatory voyeurism akin to that of an owl, equate her to the windigo’s myth-

ic monstrosity.

Erdrich depicts the windigo condition as a liminal state of being precipitated by the overlapping of the

realm of the dead into the realm of the living—as a result, the affected individual possesses or ingests the spirits

of the dead, effectively allowing the individual to inhabit both realms simultaneously. This idea is exhibited

when Nanapush and Fleur go “half windigo” after the bodies of the deceased Pillagers are buried but their

spirits linger behind (Erdrich 5). Nanapush recounts his and Fleur’s deterioration into the windigo state: “Their

names grew within us, swelled to the brink of our lips, forced our eyes open in the middle of the night. [...]

Within us, like ice shards, their names bobbed and shifted” (6). Additionally, he remarks that they “needed no

food” and that others who had succumbed to the same condition “could not swallow another bite of food be-

cause the names of their dead anchored their tongues” (6). Nanapush and Fleur—starving and stuck somewhere

between alive and dead—symbolically consume the dead, demonstrating the way Erdrich characterizes the

windigo as a marginal being that exists within the meeting of two realms.

mixed heritage and attempt to move from one cultural sphere to another, Pauline shares the transgressive limin-

ality Erdrich attributes to the windigo. Although Pauline’s abandonment of her native culture effectively renders

her monstrous, she is not unequivocally condemned, and her cultural ambivalence instead belies a greater mon-

ster: the devourment of native culture by white hegemony. Pauline expresses her wish to move away from her

Ojibwe heritage when she admits, “I wanted to be like my mother, who showed her half-white. I wanted to be

like my grandfather, pure Canadian” (14). Her father warns her against this longing however, declaring, “‘You’ll

fade out there’ [...] ‘You won’t be an Indian once you return’” (14). Other scholars note this threat of fundamen-

tal change within oneself, as Kari J. Winter illustrates when she writes, “By rejecting the web of family ties and

Ojibwa narratives that she was born into, Pauline renders herself incomprehensible (‘mad’) and, indeed, she

becomes someone else” (48). This ambiguous warning suggests a threat of transformation, that Pauline will be-

come something perverse and other, perhaps warning of her eventual conversion to the windigo. Winter exam-

ines Pauline’s relationship with food, emphasizing the literal and figurative starvation she inflicts upon herself

in her pursuit of assimilation to white hegemonic society. Although not directly addressed by Winter, Pauline’s

resemblance to the windigo is ultimately furthered by her findings. For instance, Winter contends that Pauline’s

decision to become a Catholic nun transforms her into a “maniacal embodiment of Christian asceticism” who

“mortifies her own flesh by self-starvation and other forms of self-torture” which results in her abandonment

of her Ojibwe heritage (47). The windigo is a desperate being defined and created by hunger, hence Pauline’s

insatiable desire to become white paired with her severe self-discipline and self-deprivation of food creates an

eerie resemblance between the two. Pauline’s biracial status not only allows her to be a singular coalescence of

two cultural domains, but also empowers her to transgress from one boundary to another, ultimately aligning her

with Erdrich’s particular interpretation of the windigo figure.

As a survivor of deep-seated emotional trauma, much of Pauline’s destructive maliciousness towards her

own culture may be explained by mental illness or an attempt to cope rather than any supernatural force like the

windigo. However, the notion of windigo psychosis, as explained by James B. Waldram, offers yet another inter-

pretation in which windigo mythology is linked to psychiatric disorder. Waldram describes multiple approaches

to understanding windigo psychosis, the first being an Algonquian-specific mental disorder “characterized by

an individual’s belief that he or she was turning into the cannibal monster” (192). He cites an observation from

ethnologist Seymour Parker who details the initial symptoms as “‘feelings of morbid depression, nausea, and

Erdrich’s depiction of the windigo condition, particularly with Nanapush and Fleur’s ordeal—Nanapush actual-

ly implies mental illness when he remarks upon their becoming half-windigo, calling it “the invisible sickness”

(Erdrich 6). While this phrase may be interpreted as an allusion to tuberculosis—the disease that decimated

Ojibwe populations in the early twentieth century—the emphasis on its invisibility more strongly suggests the

historical silence surrounding mental illness and its validity as a treatable bodily ailment. Furthermore, Pauline

exhibits some of these same symptoms and seems self-aware of her own growing monstrousness. For instance,

fueled by her guilt and warped sense of Christian penitence, she continually starves herself, expressing how her

“stomach never filled” yet she “grew strong” suggesting a metamorphosis into the starving monster of legend

(136).

Cognizant of her own passivity and paralysis during Fleur’s rape, Pauline is haunted by her own failure

to intervene—ashamed of her inaction, she effectively condemns herself to monstrosity. This self-destruction is

indicative of windigo psychosis, and Pauline certainly seems to incriminate herself. She experiences nightmares

featuring Fleur’s rapists who she says “walked nightlong through my dreams, looking for whom to blame.

Pauline!” (62). Additionally, when recounting the night of Fleur’s rape, she refers to herself as “the shadow that

could have saved her [Fleur],” effectively admitting her own inability to act.

While Fleur’s rape commences Pauline’s odious descent into monsterhood, Mary Pepewas’ death al-

lows for Pauline to reconcile and come to terms with her monstrousness. She declares, “I knew I was differ-

ent. I had the merciful scavenger’s heart. I became devious and holy, dangerously meek and mild” (69). This

self-comparison to a scavenger—an animal that feeds off the dead—connotes a sense of self-loathing that often

accompanies mental illness, as well as the perverse hunger of the windigo. However, despite her likeness to

one suffering from windigo psychosis, Pauline experiences a lucid dream following Mary’s death in which she

perceives herself as inhabiting the body of a winged creature, implying a literal transformation into a monster

rather than a symbolic one. Thus, the mental anguish Pauline undergoes, as well as her subsequent derangement

may be interpreted as a literal transformation into the windigo figure or, rather, as a case of windigo psychosis in

which a mentally-ill Pauline deludes herself into believing she’s become a cannibalistic monster. The ambiguity

surrounding both interpretations implies that both are plausible, which only emphasizes Pauline’s refusal to be

categorized or contained. Regardless, both of these approaches accentuate Pauline’s likeness to the windigo, and

46 Waldram details a second interpretation in which windigo psychosis can be understood as a “culturally

localized expression of a universal condition, depression” (194). This idea of the windigo as a folkloric repre-

sentation of depression emphasizes certain aspects of the creature’s lore—specifically regarding possession or

incorporating one body into another. For example, disassociation is a common symptom experienced by those

suffering from depression and is defined primarily by a severance or disconnect from one’s own identity and re-

ality, causing a detachment from both. Thus, if one assumes Pauline to be suffering from a mental illness resem-

bling that of depression, it follows to interpret Pauline’s incorporation of other characters’ bodies and realities

into her own as the result of severe dissociative episodes in which she becomes a metaphorical windigo, canni-

balizing the will and autonomy of others to replace the absence of her own. The nightmares that plague Pauline

following Fleur’s rape demonstrate the way Pauline possesses another. She describes, “Every night I was wit-

ness when the men slapped Fleur’s mouth, beat her, entered and rode her. I felt all. My shrieks poured from her

mouth and my blood from her wounds” (Erdrich 66). Pauline’s nightmares entail a merging of Fleur’s body into

hers, as if Fleur’s experience has been ingested and absorbed by Pauline. This figurative devouring of anoth-

er’s reality happens again when Pauline seems to supernaturally influence Sophie, compelling her into having

a sexual encounter with Eli. She explains, “I turned my thoughts on the girl and entered her and made her do

what she could never have dreamed of herself. I stood her in the broken straws and she stepped over Eli, one

leg on either side of his chest” (83). The phrase “entered her” in particular conveys the sense of placing one’s

flesh within another’s, evoking windigo-associated ideas of bodily consumption. Pauline herself acknowledges

her consuming and consolidation of bodies when she remarks upon the strangers around her, “I was their own

fate [...] they knew that these bodies they tended and preened, got drunk, pleasured and refused, fed as often as

they could and relieved, these bodies to which they were devoted, all in good time came to me” (75). Therefore,

Pauline’s disassociation from her own reality—perhaps the result of trauma-induced mental illness—allows for

and encourages her incorporation of others. Their experiences, their wills, and ultimately their bodies become

hers to ingest and devour in cannibalistic fashion.

Among Algonquian indigenous peoples, the owl and the windigo share an intrinsic association with one

another not just from a cultural or folkloric standpoint, but also through an etymological one. Robert A. Bright-

man explains that the word windigo has two Proto-Algonquian forms that “each possess reflexes meaning ‘owl’

in some languages and ‘cannibal monster’ in others” (340). He elaborates further, nothing that in the Ojibwe

languages, the word literally translates to ‘owl’ (341). This etymological evidence certainly suggests a conjunc-

tion between the owl and windigo, and while it doesn’t explain precisely why the conflation of the two exists, it

does allow for the possibility of further associations. Brightman theorizes about the possible reasoning behind

the owl and the windigo’s seemingly irrelevant connection, contending that “there exists also a potential meta-

phoric resemblance between perceptions of the impassive staring behavior of owls and the glistening eyes and

staring of windigo symptomatology” (341). Characteristics pertaining to the windigo’s ever-watchful gaze can

be observed in the folkloric tradition of Algonquian peoples. For instance, an account from Reverend Joseph E.

Guinard—a Christian missionary who lived in the vicinity of the Algonquian-speaking Atikamekw peoples—

provides a translated description of the windigo’s physicality. He writes that windigos “are solitary, aggressive

cannibals, naked but impervious to cold, with black skin covered by resin-glued sand. They have no lips, large

crooked teeth, hissing breath, and big bloodshot eyes, something like owls’ eyes” (Halpin 113). Therefore, the

basis of the correlation seems to lie upon this voyeuristic quality of a creature who peers out from the shadows

at its victims.

Erdrich capitalizes upon this association between the owl and the windigo, utilizing careful wording

and imagery pertaining to birds and the act of staring in order to equate Pauline to an owl-like monstrosity—in

doing so, Pauline’s affinity with the windigo is deepened. The dreamlike trance Pauline experiences after wit-

nessing Mary Pepewas’ demise depicts Pauline as inhabiting the body of a monstrous bird, as evident when she

describes “my wings raked the air, and I rose in three powerful beats and saw what lay below” and “I knew that

after I circled, studied, saw all, I touched down on my favorite branch and tucked my head beneath the shelter

of my wing” (Erdrich 68). Pauline ultimately becomes inseparable from this illusory bird, referring to the wings

as “my wings,” and from her looming position in the sky, she “circled, studied, saw all,” which implies a rap-

torial gaze. This concept of predatory staring is furthered when she says, “I alone, watching, filled with breath,

knew death as a form of grace” (68). Additionally, this suggestion of Pauline as a conjurer of death aligns her

with Kokoko the owl, a figure from Ojibwe mythology who “floated off a branch like smoke and called” to

Pauline in the moments just before Mary Pepewas’ death (67) This then implicates Kokoko—and in extension

Pauline—to be a herald of death. Pauline’s unsettling penchant for staring and her affinity with death doesn’t go

unnoticed by the other characters in the novel. Nanapush imparts his wariness of her, stating, “the still look in

Pauline’s eyes made me wonder, so like a scavenger, a bird that lands only for its purpose” (189). Furthermore,

48 also stares out from the trees, exerting her unnatural influence, looking on as Sophie and Eli copulate. Conse-

quently, Pauline is likened to an owl whose hungry, peering stare parallels that of the windigo’s.

In assimilating herself to white hegemonic culture, Pauline effectively becomes an extension of the very

institutions that committed cultural genocide, systematically eradicating native people’s identity and autonomy.

Thus, it follows that Pauline is a metaphorical windigo, turning on her own native Ojibwe culture and canni-

balizing it. Pauline seems to comprehend her own capacity for spreading destruction, remarking, “I handled the

dead until the cold feel of their skin was a comfort, until I no longer bothered to bathe [...] but touched others

with the same hands, passed death on” (69). Like the diseased and starved creature she resembles, Pauline trans-

mits a contagion of death—one is reminded of the fitting moniker Nanapush uses to refer to going windigo as

the so called “invisible sickness.” Pauline actually admits her own otherness, declaring, “I was nothing human,

nothing victorious, nothing like myself” (204). Essentially, her humanity has been replaced by the cannibalistic

urges of the windigo. In fact, the pinnacle of her monstrous transformation arrives when she christens herself

as Sister Leopolda, marking her full assimilation into white Christendom. She recounts, “I asked for the grace

to accept, to leave Pauline behind, to remember that my name, any name, was no more than a crumbling skin.

Leopolda . I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice” (205).

Her comparison of names to that of “a crumbling skin” recalls her windigo-like ability to step into the reality—

or skin—of others, while the suggestion of ice echoes the windigo’s folkloric ties to winter and numbing cold.

Therefore, Pauline has figuratively transformed, embodying the mythic monstrosity of the windigo as a partici-

patory agent in her own culture’s eradication.

The windigo remains a haunting figure of ravenous self-destruction both in Ojibwe mythology as well as

in Erdrich’s folklore-inspired fiction. The windigo and in extension—Pauline—exists as a warning, an example

of the deformed monstrosity loss leaves behind in its wake. Whether it’s the loss of loved ones, one’s identity,

or one’s culture, Pauline as windigo transgresses her own monstrosity, instead exposing the inhuman cruelties of

cultural genocide and the societal forces that enact it.

Works Cited

Brightman, Robert A. “The Windigo in the Material World.” Ethnohistory , vol. 35, no. 4, 1988,

pp. 337-379.

Erdrich, Louise. Tracks . Harper Perennial, 1988.

Halpin, Marjorie, and Michael M. Ames. “The Witiko: Algonkian Knowledge and Whiteman

Knowledge.” Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence , UBC

Press, 1980, pp. 76-96.

Waldram, James B. Revenge of the Windigo: The Construction of the Mind and Mental Health of

North American Aboriginal Peoples. University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Winter, Kari J. “The Politics and Erotics of Food in Louise Erdrich.” Studies in American Indian

Literatures, ser. 2, vol. 12, no. 4, 2000, pp. 44-64.