Among the Algonquian peoples the belief in a cannibal giant, called  windigo (with variants in the different languages),  was widespread. The Windigo, like other creatures, was described both as a mythical being and sometimes as a real group of beings, sharing the same characteristics and inhabiting especially the isolated and uncomfortable areas. They appeared mostly in winter and they could assault the hunters penetrating into the woods or the voyagers going through lonely places, driven by an insatiable hunger for human flesh, and sometimes announced by a whirlwind and swirling snow. Such greediness was designed to be ungratified, because the Windigo were always described as beings with a skeletal and emaciated appearance, with  long teeth, bulging eyes and a heart of ice. Actually, this being seems to be strictly related to death, not only for his outward appearance similar to a corpse, but also for the decomposition smell which they exhaled, and for their relationship with cold, ice and solitude (Johnston 1995: 221-22) .

Reconstruction of a winter travelling scene of an Ojibwa family (Mille Lacs Indian Museum and Trading Post, Onamia, Minnesota)

Among the Ojibwa and Cree of the Subarctic there was the belief that some individuals could become possessed by the Windigo spirit. It was believed that these people felt an overwhelming desire to kill and eat their campmates. In particularly difficult environment conditions like those of the Subarctic regions, it was possible that some groups, during winter, was brought close to starvation for lack of food, and could have recourse to the bodies of their deceased companions in order to keep themselves alive. According to the beliefs of the Natives, such individuals, once having experienced human flesh, were craving for this kind of food, losing their taste for any other. Their hearts became a lump of ice, and they saw the people around them no longer like people but like deer, moose, and other game animals. These Windigo had to be killed, before they could kill and devour their own campmates. For a certain period, the anthropologists have regarded this complex as one of the so-called “culture-bound syndromes” or “culture-specific psychoses”, that is pathological patterns associated with specific socio-cultural contexts (Harris 1993: p. 379-80). It seems rather that they correspond to a complex of cultural and mythical representations, in the light of which the members of those cultures have interpreted actual cases of individuals affected by particular psycho-pathological disorders.

Reconstruction of a winter everyday scene in an Ojibwa village (The Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg, Canada)