Legend of Atshen - The dreaded forest giant in Ilnu tradition

Long ago, on the territory, a man lived by hunting with his wife.

They had set up their camp near a river, as they had likely done many times before.

However, this time, something was different.

The man did not really know why, but he did not feel comfortable in that place.

A bad feeling.

That strange sensation that something was not as it usually was.

He looked at his wife and told her they had to leave.

Not tomorrow.

Not after the hunt.

Now.

They gathered their belongings, loaded their canoe, and crossed the river to set up their camp on the other bank.

Then the evening came.

The light slowly disappeared behind the forest and darkness enveloped the territory.

The man was still worried.

He watched his surroundings.

He had the feeling that they were going to see something strange that night.

Something that would frighten them.

His wife stayed close to him.

They decided not to move anymore.

Then, in the silence of the night, they heard something.

They looked toward the other side of the river.

Where their camp had been just a few hours earlier.

A glow shone in the darkness.

A fire.

And near that fire, someone seemed to be standing.

The man stared at the other bank for a long time.

Then a memory came back to him.

People had already told him about a being that one could sometimes hear in the forest.

A being that was said to harm humans.

His name was Atshen.

The man understood.

The stories he had been told might have been true.

His wife also understood what this presence might mean.

She was afraid.

Very afraid.

For Atshen was not simply a giant living in the forest.

It was said that he killed humans.

And that he ate them.

The woman now feared that the being on the other side of the river would find them.

But her husband tried to reassure her.

He told her not to speak like that.

Atshen would leave again.

He would move away with the wind.

On the other side of the water, the fire was still burning.

The night was completely black.

Then suddenly...

An immense gust of wind swept through the forest.

A wind so powerful that it seemed to carry something away with it.

The man and his wife listened.

The sound moved away.

Again.

Again.

Until it disappeared in the distance.

They slept almost none that night.

They stayed awake, listening to the forest.

Waiting.

When the day finally broke, everything had become silent again.

No more fire.

No more noise.

No more visible presence on the other bank.

The man looked at his wife.

Atshen was gone.

They then decided to take their canoe and cross the river.

When they arrived at the place where they had set up their first camp, they understood why their instinct had pushed them to leave.

Everything had been turned upside down.

The camp was in disarray.

Objects had been overturned.

Stove pipes were on the ground.

The place no longer looked like the one they had left the day before.

A little further away, some people came toward them.

They explained to them what had happened.

Atshen had indeed come.

But he was not alone.

A sorcerer had confronted him.

The latter was protecting the humans and had managed to lead Atshen far from the camp.

Very far.

Far enough that he could no longer be seen.

The couple had listened to their gut feeling.

They had crossed the river before nightfall.

And when Atshen arrived...

they were no longer there.

A legend transmitted by Anne-Marie Valin

The story you have just read is a faithful narrative adaptation of a version of the Atshen legend told by Anne-Marie Valin in 1978 and now kept in the heritage resources dedicated to the Pekuakamiulnuatsh.

In the account transmitted by Anne-Marie Valin, a man and his wife leave their camp because they do not feel well in that place. After crossing the river, they observe a fire and a presence on the other bank.

The man then remembers the stories he had been told about Atshen.

During the night, an extremely violent wind is heard. The next day, the couple discovers their old camp completely turned upside down. People then explain to them that a protective sorcerer had driven Atshen away.

This origin is important because we are not dealing with a legend recently reconstructed for a book or the Internet.

We are dealing with a story from the Ilnuatsh oral tradition transmitted by an identified storyteller.

Who was Atshen?

Atshen was one of the most feared figures in Ilnuatsh stories.

He was described as an immense, cruel, and dangerous being.

A giant that humans sought above all to avoid.

The Pekuakamiulnuatsh heritage resources explain that when people thought they felt his presence, they tried to flee as quickly and as far as possible.

Confronting him was a last resort.

Atshen represented something that human beings did not seem to be able to control.

People could learn to understand animals, the climate, rivers, and many phenomena of the territory.

But Atshen remained unpredictable.

His cruelty was incomprehensible.

Some elders who lived on the territory even said they had observed marks in the landscape that were attributed to his passage.

Atshen was therefore not just a "monster" used to scare people.

He was part of a much wider universe of stories transmitted about the territory.

Atshen, the man-eating giant

One aspect appears clearly in different sources: Atshen ate humans.

When, in 1732, Ilnuatsh guides told his story to the surveyor Joseph-Laurent Normandin, he was described as a giant who killed and devoured people encountered in the forest.

This characteristic also appears in other Innu stories.

In the legend The Summer Birds, for example, when a young boy spots an immense giant in the distance, he immediately believes it to be Atshen.

Why?

Because in his universe, when one thought of a dangerous giant, Atshen was the one who was feared.

This shows us how well-known the character must have been.

It was enough to catch a glimpse of a gigantic silhouette to think of him.

A trace of the legend dating back to 1732

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Atshen legend is found on the banks of the Ashuapmushuan.

In the summer of 1732, the surveyor Joseph-Laurent Normandin went up the river accompanied by Ilnuatsh guides.

When they arrived near the river now called Pémonca, his guides told him the story of Atshen.

The giant was already presented as a malevolent and cruel being roaming the forest.

Normandin seems to have been sufficiently struck by this story to associate the place with the character. In his observations, he named the Pémonca river the "river of the Atchèmes".

This is remarkable.

We know with certainty, therefore, that in 1732, the legend was already circulating among the Ilnuatsh traveling the Ashuapmushuan.

But this obviously does not mean that the legend was born in 1732.

On the contrary.

When the guides told Normandin about Atshen, they spoke of a character they already knew.

The oral tradition therefore existed before its first known appearance in this written testimony.

For how long?

It is impossible to give it a precise date of birth.

And that is precisely the nature of oral tradition.

For generations, the stories existed before being put down on paper.

When the territory also keeps the stories

In the Ilnu tradition, a story does not necessarily need a book to have a place to live.

It can be associated with a river.

A mountain.

An old camp.

A clearing.

An unusual formation in the landscape.

This is particularly evident with Atshen.

Ilnuatsh heritage resources report that several elders recounted having observed traces of his passage on the territory.

Another testimony collected from Anne-Marie Siméon even recounts the existence of an old site where a bark hut had burned down.

It was said that Atshen was responsible for the fire.

According to her testimony, the vegetation had had difficulty growing back in that place for a long time.

Whether we interpret these marks today as natural or otherwise is not really the core of the story.

What matters is that the territory itself served as a memory.

One could pass by a place and tell what had happened there.

Then someone else could pass on the story in turn.

Thus, the landscape and the narrative became inseparable.

Why were stories like that of Atshen told?

It would be too simple to answer: "to scare children."

The Innu oral tradition had a much deeper function.

The anthropologist Rémi Savard reports that the Innus distinguished, among other things, stories about experienced events from mythical stories, the atanukan.

Regarding the latter, a storyteller from La Romaine explained to him essentially that they were stories that had to be transmitted so that future generations would know what it is appropriate to know.

This idea changes our way of reading the Atshen legend.

In Anne-Marie Valin's story, the man first senses that something is wrong.

He sees nothing yet.

He has no proof.

Yet, he decides to move his camp.

He listens to what the territory and his instinct seem to be telling him.

Then, when night falls, he recognizes the danger because other people had already told him about the existence of Atshen.

The knowledge transmitted beforehand allows him to understand what he sees.

This is perhaps one of the most powerful aspects of the narrative.

Knowledge does not always begin when the danger arrives.

It was transmitted before.

The true power of a transmitted legend

Today, it is easy to read the Atshen legend as a fantasy story.

A giant.

A dark forest.

A fire glimpsed in the distance.

A couple narrowly escaping a dangerous creature.

All the elements of a scary tale are there.

But when one knows that Ilnuatsh guides were already telling stories about Atshen on the Ashuapmushuan in 1732, the story takes on another dimension.

This name has spanned generations.

It was spoken on the territory long before us.

Then elders like Anne-Marie Valin continued to transmit these stories.

That is probably what makes tales and legends so precious.

They do not only tell us what people imagined in the past.

They allow us to hear, even today, an echo of how previous generations talked about their territory, transmitted their knowledge, and gave meaning to the world that surrounded them.

And perhaps the next time you find yourself near a river, alone before the forest as the light begins to disappear...

you will think back to that man who, one evening, simply felt it was better to change banks.

And to the name of the one who appeared after he left.

Atshen.