Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
By Katharine Fletcher
British Columbia has the Sasquatch. Loch Ness has its own watery monster. The Ottawa River has Mishipashoo (various spellings: Mishipishu, for instance).
Our lesser-known creature has been described variously as part wild cat, part horned beast, which lurks in the water waiting to capsize canoes with a flick of its tail.
What proof is there that Mishipashoo existed? Unlike various modern-day sightings of Sasquatch which keep this creature alive in our mind’s eye, Mishipashoo is remembered through First Nations art and legend.
Perhaps best known through the paintings of the late First Nations shaman and artist Copper Thunderbird (Norval Morrisseau), some dismiss the existence of Mishipashoo as fanciful nonsense. Morrisseau painted several images of the horned, four-legged creature with a ridged back: some resemble a water buffalo – others depict a ferocious-looking beast.
Others believe First Nations peoples who paddled the Great Lakes, Ottawa River and other watersheds thousands of years ago encountered creatures now extinct. Such fanciful-sounding animals are dubbed “monsters,” they claim, because they don’t exist today. Indeed, some postulate Mishipashoo spiked back and tail suggest it could have been a stegosaur (www.bearfabrique.org/evolution/mishi/mishi.html ).
Certainly, when Samuel de Champlain wrote his journals documenting his explorations in the 1600s along the Ottawa, he described his First Nations guides’ tobacco ceremony at treacherous spots such as the Chaudière Falls. Champlain explained that while prayers were spoken, a wooden plate was passed among the group onto which everyone placed offerings of sacred tobacco. At the close of the ceremony, the tobacco was thrown into the river.
In such a manner, Champlain wrote, prayer was employed to grant safe passage from Iroquois attack, here at the Chaudière Falls. (Today, you can imagine this ceremony at Gatineau’s Voyageur Park, at the western confluence of Brewery Creek, the watercourse which makes an island out of Old Hull.)
However, others suggest these sacred ceremonies were to appease river spirits: in return for sacred gifts plus ongoing reverence for nature, paddlers hoped their canoes wouldn’t capsize. The website www.bearfabrique.org explains ceremonial offerings to Mishipashoo, an Ojibway name it says means “great water lynx”:
“Native legends say that this water spirit inhabits large bodies of water, like Mazinaw Lake. Natives would offer tobacco to this spirit before embarking on a journey across such waters. The tobacco was offered with a prayer to appease this spirit with the hope that it would not whip up its great spiked tail and tip their canoe.”
As all paddlers know, overturning in rapids or flatwater is not only a fuss: it imperils our gear, provisions – and sometimes, our lives. And after we’ve capsized, sometimes there are scratches resembling clawmarks on our canoe’s keel or sides…
No wonder Mishipashoo was thought to lurk below the surface of the water, in wait for hapless paddlers.
Being of this century and time, however, many of us look to science to prove the existence of such life forms. And there lies the problem for fact-lovers: as far as I know, science hasn’t proven Mishipashoo ever walked the earth – or swam in the Ottawa River.
However, many of us are aware of pictographs, graphic images left on rocks by First Nations and other people throughout the world. For example, on a sacred rockface overlooking Harrison Lake in B.C., I was shown a pictograph of a Sasquatch by Chehalis First Nations Willie Charlie. He explained to me that he and his people believe in Sasquatch: they need no proof.
And perhaps you’ve heard of Agawa Canyon, at Lake Superior National Park in Ontario, which is famous for its red-ochre pictographs. Here we can find the river spirit Mishipashoo: its horned head and spiny back and tail is drawn in the cliffs for passers-by to wonder at.
The website www.chi-manidoo.com explains the Anishinabe people’s view of Mishipashoo:
“He is the ultimate metaphor representing the power, mystery and innate danger that comes from these sacred waters. With razor like spikes on his back, the face of a lynx or panther, and the body of a sea serpent, this creature demanded respect. The Anishinabe offered tobacco and prayer to the creature spirit before they embarked out onto the waters in their canoes. The calm waters of Lake Superior can be quickly transformed into raging squalls and huge waves from the northern, north-eastern, and north-western gales that often suddenly crop up. These gales sweep over the open water, quickly picking up momentum and causing huge waves, some up to 40 feet high”.
Closer to home along the Ottawa River near Deep River, Oiseau Rock towers 150 metres or so above canoeists and kayakers paddling by. Although Mishipashoo is not seen here, the river serpent is. Friends of Oiseau Rock website (www.friendsofoiseaurock.ca) explains the serpent “was believed to be in a struggle with the Thunderbird Spirit. Often they are depicted in pictographs as having horns which signify its power. The serpent especially the underwater one is a common figure in Ojibwa, Cree and Algonkin stories.”
Fact or fancy?
Who among us, when in our canoe and facing a fierce wind, thunderstorm or rapids, hasn’t prayed to stay safe and not capsize?
To me, whether Mishipashoo, Yeti, Sasquaatch and other creatures ever truly existed matters not. To me and I expect to many of you, such spirit creatures teach us to respect nature and to walk lightly on the earth.
Mishipashoo in art
Norval Morrisseau’s images of Mishipashoo
Katharine Fletcher is a freelance journalist and author of several historical and ecological guides. Her latest book is Capital Rambles: Exploring the National Capital Region – find her guides at regional bookstores or at MEC.