[Pursuit by a Pahkack]
Second [Story]! A young man lately told me the following.
I was returning home with my uncle when come to that point, we heard something crying behind us, "He! He! Ha! Ha!" and whistling alternatively. My uncle told me it was a Pah-kack (Skeleton), and [it] wanted to destroy us. It came up with us very soon and kept constantly buzzing and whistling in our ears so that, indeed, we were quite bewildered at last. It was at night and dark, but we kept straight on as we thought. We were mistaken for, after walking a long time, we at last came to the water hole again from where we had set off. We were both of [us] much afraid, but finding this path, we minded it no more though it pursued us making more and more noise the nearer we got home.
Many of these stories bear a great resemblance to those extravagant tales of la Béte a la Grande Queue, Loup Garoup, Chasse Galerie and many others natural to superstitious people. It requires, therefore, a great deal of caution and attention to get at the true ones. I have here inserted more than I originally intended, but they will serve to give you an idea of the notions of these people, and, except a few, I have selected those that appeared most rational. However they will all come in time.
[Wetiko]
There is a kind of disease (or distemper rather, and of the mind, I am fully persuaded) peculiar to the Crees and Sauteux, and of which they have the greatest dread and horror. And certainly [the fear is] not without the very greatest cause—the consequences, forty-nine times out of fifty, being death unfortunately to many besides the subjects or objects themselves. They term this Wen-di-bgo (according to the French pronunciation, which is more correct than the English, in this word)—the proper signification of which, to me at least, and no one I think can doubt it, is Giant of the Anthropophagi Genus, sect, tribe, or kind.
The stories related of these are as extravagant and fantastatic as those we read in our old romances in the days of chivalry. [They differ] in no one circumstance hardly but the means used in their destruction which, of course, is often done by the intervention or assistance of their guardian genii. However, there are some few more rational than those of ours, and though still beyond all bounds of credibility, are as devoutly believed by these poor creatures as the Gospel is by the most orthodox among us. I do not remember any of these sufficiently correctly to give you a few of the stories, one excepted.
Suffice it to say that they are of uncommon size. Goliath is an unborn infant to them. And to add to their dread, they are represented as possessing much of the power of magicians. Their head reaching to the tops of the highest poplars (about seventy or eighty feet), they are of proportionate size. Of course they must be very heavy. Their gait, though grand and majestic, at every step the earth shakes. They frequently pursue their prey (Indians of course) invisibly. Yet they cannot so completely divest themselves of all the incommodities of nature as to prevent their approach being known. A secret and unaccountable horror pervades the whole system of one, several, or the whole band of those of whom he is in pursuit. [There are] phenomena in the heavens [and] earth.
[Trapping a Wetiko]
In the days of Noah, (or near them at least) there were a large party of Indians collected together for mutual safety. Many camps had been already destroyed by him, and the Indians were in great danger [of] being entirely exterminated.