Native Americans are a vastly diverse culture, despite many grouping them into one homogeneous group, and from the many tribes that have gotten to exist, we're bound to get some good stories. They're human, of course, so they have the same fears that we do, with a different way to express them. Here are some of their more interesting tales.
5: Kanontsistonties: The Flying Heads
This one sounds almost likes something Junji Ito would have made up. These cannibalistic monsters came to exist because of a famine which wiped out most of a tribe. The young ones wanted to flee, but the elders were against the idea and would rather perish in their own land than leave it behind, so the young ones killed the old men.
To dispose of their remains, they decided to decapitate the bodies and offer them to the gods for forgiveness, so they did, but one of the young chiefs entangled himself among the heads and drowned with them in the lake, and since then, the monsters appeared. As for how it was solved, there are two versions. In the first, one head saw the woman roasting nuts in a campfire, and when she took them from it and ate them, he thought she was consuming hot coals and fled from her apparent great power. In the other version, he stole coals thinking they were acorns and flew away in pain.
4: The Skinwalker
The Navajo version of the werewolf, the skinwalker is usually a shaman who can take the form of any animal, mostly wolves, birds and bears, but if he stays in that form for too long, he can lose his humanity. There are some videos claiming to have caught them on camera, and they're usually a featured villain in creepypastas, but I wouldn't worry much about running into one of these. After all, I don't live close to the Navajo.
3: Skudakumooch, or the Ghost Witch
The Wabanaki tribes often tell the tales of the ghost witch, said to be born from the body of a shaman who practiced black magic, every night she goes out with the intent to murder and devour any humans she may come across. They can be killed with fire, but don't make eye contact or you'll be cursed.
One particular account tells of an old witch who was hanged from a tree, in a burial grove. That winter, an Indian and his wife came along, and the woman, seeing the hanging bodies, felt that sleeping wouldn't be the best course of action. The husband went to sleep anyways, and when the fire went out, the woman heard gnawing. She tried to wake the man to no avail and thought him sound asleep. That morning, she turned him around and found his left side to have been devoured, with his heart gone, so she went to the nearest lodge, told her story, and though nobody believed her, they then found his body under the witch's body in the tree. The corpse had fresh blood on its face.
2: Teihiihan: Cannibal children
These are seen throughout Latin America as cannibalistic dwarves, but as the Cheyenne spoke of them, they were child-sized humanoids that were stronger than they seemed and attacked in large numbers. It took an alliance of various tribes to wipe them out completely. They're known for managing incredible feats, including firing arrows as long as ten men and as thick as one.
1: The Wendigo
The greatest of the Native American legends, with the most widely-known version being that of the Great Lakes, the Wendigo is a humanoid or a human possessed by an evil spirit, with unending desire to consume and destroy humans and their environments. It's usually associated with the taboo of cannibalism because eating babies is wrong, ok?
It's usually described as having thin skin pulled against its bones, eyes deep in their sockets, looking like a corpse on the prowl, and they're usually associated with the winter as well. Others saw them as giants that grew as they consumed, so they'd never be full. Some see them as the result of greed. It's said that you can identify the wendigo because they'll look like living, rotting carcasses,
They've been featured in video games like Until Dawn, and they're also one of the more famous cryptids, about as famous as the Mothman. There's also creepypasta surrounding them, in case you want something that hits your nerves a little harder than the traditional Native legends, some of which is excellent.
With the number of peoples that you can group in the Native Americans, the truth is that we've barely scratched the surface in the stories that they offer. You can spend a lifetime studying just one tribe, imagine the possibilities. Meanwhile, want to read more horror folktales? Check this one out on Japanese legends.
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