The Myths And Folklore From Pacific Northwest Contain Some Truly Terrifying Legends

Many native tribes tell stories about wild, hairy men. They all go by different names, but in the Pacific Northwest, the title that has stuck is "Sasquatch." This creature often has special abilities, too, ranging from super strength to invisibility.

The people of the Colville Confederation once followed Sasquatch – who they called "Skanicum" – to a ravine surrounded by trees. There, the creature vanished without a trace. The pursuers knew he was hiding; his natural camouflage allowed him to blend in seamlessly with the trees.

Throughout the stories of the myriad tribes of Native Americans who populated the Pacific Northwest, there is a constant: the mountain. High peaks often represented the focal point of their unique mythological foundations.

Powerful forces were often said to live at the tops of the mountains, whether they were benevolent creators or evil spirits. Mount Rainier, for instance, was supposedly crowed by a lake of fire, in which a dark force lingered. Anyone who climbed above the snow line was surely doomed.

According to legend, the people who lived around Mount Hood were once as tall as trees. Then, an evil spirit took up residence at the top of the mountain and began spewing lava and molten rock, destroying the surrounding land.

The god Changer appeared to the people's chief in a dream, telling him to conquer the evil spirit in order to save everyone. The chief climbed the summit and began hurling rocks back at the spirit, and the resulting epic battle lasted for days. The chief ultimately defeated the spirit, but when he looked back, he realized their conflict had decimated the land. Heartbroken, he wept himself to death.

As for the people, they managed to survive. But the burned land caused them to starve and shrink.

The Shasta tribe of northern California told the story of the Old Man Above, who lived with Little Daughter in their great tepee at the top of a mountain. One day, Wind conjured up a great storm. So, the Old Man Above told Little Daughter to stick her arm through the hole at the top of the tepee and tell Wind to settle down.

But Little Daughter was curious about the world outside the teepee. Instead of just sticking her arm out, Little Daughter put her whole head through the opening. Wind took this opportunity to carry Little Daughter down the mountain, where she was taken in by the hospitable Grizzlies. In those days, the Grizzlies walked on two legs and spoke the language of men.

When the Old Man Above showed up, he found that Little Daughter had married into the Grizzly clan and had spawned a new race: man. The Old Man Above was so outraged he commanded the Grizzlies to cease speaking and walk on four legs, always staring down at the ground. The Old Man Above drove the new race of men out of the land and took Little Daughter back to the tepee, which he closed permanently.

One Tlingit story says that, when the world was new, it was covered in darkness. Light existed, but Gull kept it to himself, locked up tight in a little box. Finally, Raven decided to do something about it.

One day, Raven and Gull were out walking. Raven wished Gull would step on a thorn – and he did. Raven offered to pull out the thorn, but told him he needed light to see. Gull opened his box a sliver. The craft Raven kept pushing the thorn deeper and deeper into Gull's foot, claiming he couldn't see it and asking for more illumination. Only when Gull had released all of the light in his box did Raven finally pull the thorn out.

In his youth, the trickster god Blue Jay was something of a rabble rouser. In order to get him to calm down, the Chinook say Blue Jay’s older sister Ioi told the trickster to find himself a nice woman from the land of the dead and take her as his wife. So, Blue Jay took his older sister’s advice and went wife-hunting.

Blue Jay found the body of a beautiful young girl and went to get her revived. He traveled to several villages before he found the right people to revive a woman who had been dead for exactly five days. Blue Jay became so popular in the village that they elected him chief.

Soon, Blue Jay got bored of the land of the dead and took his new wife back home. Her father, seeing her alive, demanded that Blue Jay cut off all of his wife’s hair and hand it over as a dowry. Blue Jay refused, turned into a bird, and fled to the land of the dead, where he was joined by his wife.