Katshituashku - The monstrous bear that killed Tshakapesh's parents

A man and a woman left their camp to go look for birch bark.

The journey took them near a cliff whose slopes were covered with woods.

They found the birch trees they were looking for.

But they never returned.

Something was waiting for them in the forest.

A being that their daughter already knew by reputation.

Katshituashku.

When night fell and her parents did not return, the young girl understood that something had happened.

The next day, she went to follow their tracks.

And she discovered the place where Katshituashku had killed them.

It seemed there was nothing left of her family.

Yet, in the middle of that scene, something had survived.

A child.

Her little brother.

Still tiny.

Still in their mother's womb.

His name was Tshakapesh.

The legend of Tshakapesh and Katshituashku

Katshituashku had torn open with his teeth what still contained the child, but had not eaten him.

The young girl gathered her little brother and brought him back to the camp.

She placed him in a wooden container that she closed with a birch bark lid.

Shortly after, the child pushed the lid off himself.

He sat up.

Then he began to grow.

Very quickly.

One day, Tshakapesh asked his sister to make him a bow and arrows.

She made him a small bow.

He broke it.

She made a bigger one.

He broke it again.

Each time, she had to make something sturdier.

Until the day she crafted him a bow from an entire tree.

Tshakapesh continued to grow and become stronger.

But a question began to haunt him.

Why were they living alone?

Where were their father and mother?

His sister eventually told him the truth.

Their parents had been killed by Katshituashku while they were gathering birch bark.

She also explained to him that he himself had only survived because she had found him after the attack.

Tshakapesh then made a decision.

He would find Katshituashku.

And he would avenge his parents.

The sister tries to stop him from leaving

His sister knew how dangerous Katshituashku was.

She asked him not to go.

She even pointed out where the being stood near the hill and the cliff, all while repeating that he would never be able to overcome him.

But Tshakapesh would not hear of it.

He pretended he was heading in another direction.

Then, when he was out of sight, he turned back.

He set off directly in search of Katshituashku.

As he approached the hill, Tshakapesh discovered many bear tracks.

The further he went, the more the tracks converged.

Until they formed a single path in the forest.

Tshakapesh followed this trail.

And he began to call out to Katshituashku.

The bears try to stop him

Katshituashku heard Tshakapesh coming.

But he did not move immediately.

He first sent a black bear to meet him.

In his mind, Tshakapesh should have dropped dead the moment he laid eyes on the animal.

Tshakapesh heard the bear approaching.

And immediately understood that it was not the one he was looking for.

He ordered the bear to go back where it came from.

He wanted only one thing:

to meet the one who had killed his father and mother.

Another bear was sent.

Tshakapesh drove him away as well.

Finally, Katshituashku realized he would have to show himself.

He became angry.

He believed that Tshakapesh would simply die upon hearing him arrive.

Tshakapesh pretends to be dead

When Tshakapesh finally heard Katshituashku approaching, he prepared his trap.

He went down to the bottom of the hill and buried his bow and arrows.

Then he lay down on the path.

Motionless.

As if he were dead.

Katshituashku arrived.

He saw the young man lying on the ground.

He immediately thought that Tshakapesh had died of fright upon hearing him come.

He started to hit him with his paws.

But Tshakapesh was waiting for something specific.

He wanted Katshituashku to push him with his snout to the place where he had hidden his bow.

The plan worked.

Katshituashku threw him a first time.

Then a second.

With every blow, Tshakapesh got closer to his weapons.

Finally, he arrived exactly where his bow was buried.

He sprang to his feet.

Katshituashku realized he had been deceived.

Katshituashku claims to be impossible to kill

Katshituashku then tried to convince Tshakapesh that he could never defeat the being he was looking for.

He showed him a larch tree.

Katshituashku claimed that his resilience was comparable to that of this tree.

Tshakapesh raised his bow.

He shot.

The larch shattered.

Katshituashku was surprised.

So he pointed to the top of the cliff.

He claimed to be as hard to break as the rock.

Tshakapesh shot another arrow.

The cliff collapsed.

This time, Katshituashku grew afraid.

He tried to flee.

But Tshakapesh had come too far to let him leave.

The death of Katshituashku

Tshakapesh chased Katshituashku down the hill.

Then he stood up and shot.

The arrow struck Katshituashku in the hip.

The being collapsed onto his side.

Tshakapesh then reminded him why he had come.

Katshituashku had killed his father.

He had killed his mother.

And he had left Tshakapesh an orphan with his sister.

Katshituashku finally asked the young hero to end his suffering.

Tshakapesh killed him.

But he was not yet finished.

He opened Katshituashku's body.

He was looking for his parents' bones.

Because Tshakapesh possessed an extraordinary power.

If he found their bones, he might be able to bring them back to life.

But the bones had disappeared.

He only found his father's hair.

Tshakapesh blew on it.

The hair began to move.

But without the bones, he could not bring his parents back.

He then threw the hair into the trees.

And decreed that they would henceforth become the lichen that hangs from the branches.

Tshakapesh's return to his sister

Tshakapesh then brought back to his home the head of Katshituashku as well as some of his meat.

He announced to his sister that he had finally avenged their parents.

Before leaving again, he asked her to cook the head, but recommended that she not eat any of it.

His sister disobeyed.

She detached two pieces of the head and ate them.

Her jaws clamped shut immediately.

She could no longer open her mouth.

When Tshakapesh returned, he understood what had happened.

With the help of a stick, he forced his sister's jaws open.

Then he declared that from now on, for humans to come, the opening of the mouth would be about the width of three fingers.

The encounter with Katshituashku thus becomes much more than a simple fight.

It is part of a long narrative where Tshakapesh gradually transforms certain aspects of the world.

What is the true origin of Katshituashku?

Katshituashku appears in the cycle of stories of Tshakapesh, one of the great figures of the Innu oral tradition.

These stories belong to what the Innu call atanukana, stories passed down between generations and distinct from ordinary stories regarding real events.

The story used here was told in Innu by Charles-Api Bellefleur and transmitted by Production Manitu.

A version of this narrative is now preserved in the resources of Nametau Innu as well as in the digital collections of the University of Ottawa.

It is therefore directly in an Innu story of Tshakapesh that we find Katshituashku killing the hero's parents and then confronting him several years later.

What did Katshituashku look like?

It is here that we must distinguish the documented Innu narrative from the more general descriptions that circulate on the Internet today.

In a contemporary transcription used for teaching Innu-aimun, Katshituashku is explicitly described as a bear with an elongated snout.

The story also places him among other bears and Tshakapesh follows bear tracks to find him.

In several related traditions in northeastern North America, comparable beings are described as immense bears whose joints or legs are stiff.

This is where the modern English term Stiff-Jointed Bear comes from.

Some modern descriptions also give him a gigantic size, a large head, and a body almost devoid of hair.

But not all these details are present in the same way in every version.

In the Innu story of Tshakapesh, the essential point is simpler:

Katshituashku is an extremely dangerous bear capable of killing and devouring humans.

Was Katshituashku a mammoth or a mastodon?

A modern theory often comes up when talking about Katshituashku.

Some researchers and authors have proposed that the stories of giant, stiff-legged bears might preserve a distant memory of large, extinct animals like mammoths or mastodons.

The idea comes in particular from the resemblance that some have thought they saw between the descriptions of these beings and the bones of large prehistoric mammals discovered in North America.

This hypothesis is fascinating.

But it remains a hypothesis.

There is nothing to suggest that the Innu told stories of Katshituashku because they had seen live mammoths or interpreted their fossils.

It is therefore better not to transform this possibility into a certain explanation.

The most important source remains the story itself and the place Katshituashku occupies in the story of Tshakapesh.

Katshituashku is not just an isolated monster

Presenting Katshituashku alone can give the impression that it is an independent creature comparable to Bigfoot or a modern cryptid.

But in the Innu narrative, his place is different.

He is part of the story of Tshakapesh.

He is the one who causes the situation that will shape the hero's entire childhood.

Without Katshituashku, Tshakapesh would not lose his parents.

His sister would not have to save him and raise him.

And his first great quest for vengeance would not take place.

Katshituashku therefore constitutes one of the first major dangers that Tshakapesh must face.

The story does not merely seek to describe a strange creature.

It also tells the birth of a hero.

Who is Tshakapesh?

Tshakapesh is one of the most well-known figures of Innu oral tradition.

His adventures form a cycle of stories in which he faces different beings, goes through trials, and transforms certain aspects of the world.

He possesses exceptional strength.

He grows in an extraordinary way.

And he often refuses to listen to his sister when she tries to keep him away from danger.

This boldness leads him continually toward new adventures.

In the Katshituashku episode, his goal is deeply personal.

He wants to understand what happened to his parents.

Then, he wants to avenge them.

His victory against Katshituashku already displays several characteristics that will be found throughout the rest of his adventures:

• extraordinary strength;
• great self-confidence;
• the ability to use cunning;
• and the refusal to back down from a danger that others deem impossible to overcome.

Why do the father's hairs turn into lichen?

After killing Katshituashku, Tshakapesh hopes to find his parents' bones.

If he had found them, the story implies he might have been able to bring them back to life.

But he only finds his father's hair.

He blows on it, and it begins to move.

Unable to go further, he throws it into the trees, transforming it into usnea, those filamentous lichens seen hanging from the branches.

This detail is important.

The story thus links one of the hero's adventures to an observable element of the landscape.

When someone sees these lichens in the forest, they can become a reminder of an event recounted in the atanukan.

The landscape and the story come together.

A story passed down so that generations may know

In the Innu oral tradition, atanukana are not simply old stories meant to entertain.

They belong to a much broader mode of transmission.

Researchers who have worked with Innu storytellers have emphasized that these stories were passed down so that future generations would know what it is appropriate to know.

The adventures of Tshakapesh thus serve to convey images, relationships with animals, places, dangers, and different ways of understanding the world.

Katshituashku belongs to this memory.

His presence in the story is therefore not that of a simple "indigenous monster" added to a list of fantastic creatures.

He belongs to the much larger story of Tshakapesh.

Conclusion

Katshituashku is certainly one of the most impressive beings in the Tshakapesh cycle.

But his true story is far more interesting than that of a simple monstrous bear hidden in the forest.

It is he who kills Tshakapesh's parents.

It is because of him that the young hero grows up alone with his sister.

And it is by going in search of him that Tshakapesh undertakes one of his first great confrontations.

He does not win solely thanks to his strength.

He also uses cunning.

He makes Katshituashku believe he is dead.

He waits for the moment when he can retrieve his bow.

Then he demonstrates a power capable of breaking a tree and causing a cliff to collapse.

In the end, Tshakapesh succeeds in avenging his parents.

But he cannot bring them back to life.

He only finds his father's hair.

And it becomes the lichen hanging from the trees.

The monster disappears.

But his encounter with Tshakapesh leaves a mark on the world.