Comments on: Injun Devils

By: talthar

talthar — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:16:23 +0000

I always thought the wendigo was a cannibal spirit, sort of a cautionary legend of what could happen to people who were trapped in the wilds with no food. If you turned to cannibalism you would be possessed by the spirit of the wendigo.

By: shill

shill — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:11:03 +0000

Loren: I’m curious about why windigo is used for a bipedal Bigfoot like creature. Reading the historical take on “wendigo”, it does not seem to fit. Can you possibly do an entry on this? (reference for Wendigo I was using was Gilmore’s “Monsters”)

By: Jeremy_Wells

Jeremy_Wells — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:37:22 +0000

Hmmm, the tassled ears here are the thing that make me think we are dealing more with a lynx or a canid with fuzzy tufts of some sort.

The ten foot stride sounds a bit long for a lynx or an unknown canid though.

Maybe it was just a really old BF that was starting to get those same tufts of “old man hair” in his ears that my granddad has.

By: oldbutnotstupid

oldbutnotstupid — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:10:42 +0000

I’ve done a little research, about an hour, and have come up with some food for thought.

I don’t believe that at the time it was used, Injun was not meant to be an offensive term.

Here’s why. We all know how words of other races have gotten into the english language. In fact English is mixed as the population of North America.

Jun is chinese, its a name meaning truth.

That said, we have two peoples, Injun and Cajun. The words may simply have meant people of pure race as opposed to
a mixed linage at the time in question. True Acadian and true Indian.

Why I say this is based on the two examples given. Injun joe and injun devil. Injun Joe would simply be a Native American person who went by the name of Joe. Possibly because his native name was too hard for whites to pronounce.

The term Injun devil, I believe refers to a Native American of bad caracter,we have them in every race. It could have been a killer for example, a person with dangerous tendancies do to harm. This is how legends begin.

The two things the native peoples and the acadians held in common at the time was they spoke their own languages as a first language rather then english. This also may have played a part in the formation of the words. It is us latecomers who may be seeing things in the wrong light.

That’s my thinking. Injun devil may be quite human and not a crypto at all.

The answer to this one may lay with the elders of some of our Native American friends on here, they are in a better position to research this than I.

Words change meaning and become disrespectful only through the ignorance of our own thought processes.

By: sschaper

sschaper — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:57:39 +0000

Certainly -jun is as to -dian as -shun is to -tion. The former case is voiced, the latter is not. The former has been written down, the latter mainly only pronounced.

I would also guess that the context is more like ‘devils the indians tell us about.’

From my grandmother’s Ideals magazines and other sources, not that long ago in this country, folk thought of this land as inherited from the Indians, that their presence was still very much about. Not a PC view of it being their land, but a more traditional folk sort of way.

So, “Injun Devil” would make sense. This was their country, and this was one of the monsters of their land.

By: tpeter

tpeter — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:09:58 +0000

Dear Loren,
I confess I never gave as much as two minutes concentrated thought to the history, semantics, etc., of the word “Injun,” always simply taking it for granted that it’s obviously just a slurred or careless pronunciation of “Indian,” usually used in a somewhat contemptuous or derogatory sense, like the “n”-word for African Americans. I don’t believe I recall ever coming across the term “Injun devil,” or if I did gave it no particular thought. It’s of course good to know that it used to be a common term once for various sorts of cryptids–so that if we come across it in historical or folkloric materials we’ll know people were seemingly referring to some sort of cryptid. However, it’s too vague and too redolent of ethnic condescension to be worth seriously reviving in this day and age! :=) As a serious contemporary cryptozoological term, it’s about as informative as calling any Garden State cryptid a “Jersey Devil”!
–Cheers, T. Peter

By: afigbee

afigbee — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:19:22 +0000

The particular injun devil in the 1906 article could as easily be a wild hog, with its lolling chops and tassled ears.

By: Lee Pierce

Lee Pierce — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:02:11 +0000

Interesting article. I live in NW New Mexico close to the Navajo reservation. I count many of them among my friends. Most of them use the term “Indin” when talking about themselves. The proper term to describe them is “Dine” (Dinay)which means “The People”.

By: Sunny

Sunny — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:59:10 +0000

I think you’ll find that “Cajun” is an adaptation of “Acadian”, the French-Canadian folks who were exiled from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI after they refused to pledge allegiance to the English Crown in the mid 1700s…yes, they are from Canada, but the word comes from “Arcadia” –

The linguistic folks are pretty sure that “Cajun” and “Injun” are just language bastardizations of “Acadian” and “Indian”, as they refer specifically to the *people*, as opposed to cryptoids.

By: Maohk Kiaayo

Maohk Kiaayo — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:19:49 +0000

I think that when you are dealing with Native American stories or legends they tend to be very non descriptive or to fantasized. Also by now they are told and retold and heck several different people across the country had the same fanciful account 200 years ago in the same spot. You see what Im saying. However I think they are the key. If we want to delve more into the secrets of this land then we need to seek the people that were here first.