Tuesday, September 18 2001
WILD MAN
Before I start in on this story, I would like to offer my condolences to the families of the victims of the four jets that crashed in the United States. My prayers for the victims and their families, prayers for the emergency workers, the fire men, the security, the hospitals, the cooks, the heavy equipment operators... Everyone who was affected I wish you good health and love.
It was extremely shocking to open the TV and watching the scenes. I watch ktLA pretty well every morning now. I saw burning buildings. Since this was ktLA, I assumed it was Los Angeles, but it was not. It was New York City and DC and Pennsylvania. It is a sad day for Americans and a sad day for humankind.
It struck another cord in me as I watched the TV and thought of my Thunderbird story of a couple of months ago on this very website. I did not know what to think. After being told it was a coincindence, I felt better.
I write my stories according to what the spirit inspires me to talk an write about. I know people are reading them... my hit counters and trackers and my guest book tell me to keep going. I was going to hit delete on my website, but I feel after careful dilberation I must speak and people need to see and read my words. It is not by accident that I learned to become a webmaster at this time. Things are meant to be. Somethings more than others.
Today, I will talk about a man. He is a big man, some call him Mesabi, the Saskquatch, Bogey Man or locally he is "Munistogan". Roughly translated 'Munistogan' is munsi meaning unknown and togan meaning creature or animal. I will call him as I have always called him 'munistogan' (pronounced mun-si-ti-awe-gun).
As I was growing up in the Lake of the Woods region, I was noticing a pattern. Every two years a man would be seen lurking about the community at night. He was a big man, with clothes stolen from the clothes line. He was seven feet and he was ten feet. A lot of times he was seen wearing army clothes. People of the area would report seeing him in one area and then another report come in saying he was at another area at the same time.
My friends grew up with this presence, we called him the MUNSEE as a short form. I think the people who knew him had a special connection with him. He did not hurt anyone, he was just around. People knew he was around. People tried to scare people about him. People tried to catch him. It was soon realized that he must be a spirit.
Sometimes he would steal from people gardens. My grandparents had a garden in the back of the house and along the river. It was a very nice garden that had plenty of black planting earth trucked in. My grandmother had a beautiful and full garden. At times when the Munsatowgan was around plants would go missing. Potatoes, carrots, peas, corn… I remember when we, the children would often get the blame for missing vegetables.
One night, I slept over at my Grandmothers house. We slept in the room with my uncles, they were just a bit older than us. We were awoken by a lot of commotion in the living room. I got up as did some other kids. We saw the older ones watching out the living room window. They were looking at something. They were very scared. They closed the light so they could not be seen from the outside. They watched the bus parked out in the driveway. My grandfather drove the school bus in those years. They closed the curtain and told us to go to bed. Of course we did not listen. We went back into the room and watched from the doorway.
What they saw scared the children. It was a man, a very big man sitting in the middle of the school bus. He was sitting there looking forward, not looking at the people trying to be very quiet in the house. Anyone could tell there were people watching, with all that noise they made. The guy, who we called Munsatowgan was sitting in the bus. In a flash he was gone. It was only a black figure they saw, a shadow.
They scrambled towards the front door and they watched the doorknob. They wondered if they should open it. In a freak second, the door knob started to turn left then right, left then right. Someone was trying to open the door. All the people standing around the door were petrified. But they were ready to protect the house and people in the house.
The knob stopped turning and in a split second they group rushed to open the door and they looked around the front door. It was a long house, about 30 feet on each side of the front steps. To reach the corners. There was nothing to see outside. What ever turned the knob moved with lightening speed. It disappeared into the darkness. After a good search of the area, everyone returned into the house.
We at in the living room, people taking turns talking about what had transpired. We all agreed it was the Munsatowgan. The morning after, we found a huge shoe print of a work boot or army boot by the bus. The trace of evidence we had.
In the days ahead, we investigated the bushes and bull rushes by the river. I was walking with my aunt of the same age. We checked out the garden and there were fresh marking that someone had been in the garden again the night before. It was becoming routine to check the garden at dusk and then at dawn again to see for any changes. We found a well beaten path behind the garden. We followed it along the shoreline for sometime. It was in shoreline weeds about 3 feet high. It was dry and the path was being used on a regular basis.
We followed the trail around the bend and we could not see the house anymore. We felt safe in the day time, since we knew the Munsatowgan did not move during the day.
As we walked, our eyes were peeled for any signs of danger. We focused on the bushes we walked along and the bulrushes on the other side. The trail came to a abrupt stop around low lying willow tree. In front of us was flattened area of reeds. It measured approximately 8 feet by 8 feet. It was an immense area. We knew it was a bed of some kind. We knew how deer made their beds, and we knew this was not a deer bed. This was way to large and, this had a trail to the house. We stood there in shock, I noticed another trail leading into the bush at a 45 degree angle from the other trail. It went straight into the bush and headed for the highway.
We looked down the trail through the bush only to be frustrated by the many trails in the bush. The forest had a muddy floor, with many willows and a high ash tree canopy. There was not much shrubs or undergrowth. We noticed the main trail had splintered into many trails. In every single direction, there was not a single main trail anymore.
We stopped and decided to go back to the house and tell the others. We back tracked and followed the shoreline and went home.
Another time, I was with my brother and aunt. We were playing by our house in the garden. It was dusk on a beautiful hot sunny day. The sun was slowy disappearing into the horizon and it was cooling down. We sat by the garden pulling carrots and snacking on them. We heard a car go by and it was the old lady from across the river with my grandmother on the passenger side. They drove by very slow, as old people do. We watched intently at the car.
We looked and then we noticed a guy on the other side of the highway. He was sitting on a boulder up on the ridge. He wore a white t-shirt and faded blue jeans. We stared at each other for what seemed like forever. We touched each other for support and to realize that the other kids were seeing the same thing. We realized that he may have been watching us for a long time. Fear took a good grip on us and we ran behind the garden to hide. We then snuck towards the house and ran behind the house to the back door. My mother was standing there wondering what was going on.
We told her of the Munsatowgan. When we went to the door and living room window to show her where we seen him. It was not there. We were pretty darn scared and we stayed in the house for the rest of the evening and night.
The next day, we walked up the ridge and found the boulder the Munsatowgan had sat upon. It was boulder we usually played on. We can see the road, the house the garden from that boulder. One thing stuck in my head as we sat on the boulder wondering what was in the eyes of that Munsatowgan was that it took all three of us to sit on that boulder to cover it completely. We looked at each other because we saw that the Munsatowgan had sat here and covered the rock as he sat. We knew he was a huge person because it took three of us to cover the same area as he.
I go sit on that rock every now and then and wonder what he thought that evening when he saw us from up there.
I am told to place food offerings for this Munistogan. He comes around no more. He used to break into peoples houses and he has stopped. He used to feast on dogs tied to a tree in the bush. He would sleep in unfinished houses around the community, he left when some one came. People would place food and drinks for him to try to see him...only to have an empty bottle of beer or missing sandwich, when the treat is in a wide open place. No one can see him, only when he choose to be seen.
I left the community when I was a teenager. I moved to another community. The munsitogan would be seen closer and closer to where I lived. Soon it footprints could be found at a dump behind my new home in my new community. I was pretty darn scared because this thing was following me around. One time I smelled this smell when I climbed Mount Mackay by Thunder Bay, Ontario. I was waiting for my friends to catch up and this smell came to me as I waited. A bear smells a certain way and this was no bear. I could feel the presence of the Munsitogan again. We climbed the mountain and placed our offerings and left. This was on our way home from a Mohawk crisis in Kanesatake Quebec, the time of Oka. We were being protected during our trip, especially when the Quebec Police held us at a road blockade outside Oka. The machine gun that cop held in the middle of the highway made us fearful for our lives. Meanwhile it was exciting.
Anyways, I honor this wildman and accept him as my friend and helper. He comes to me and shows me where i will go in the days to come. He shows himself in crowds, but others can not see him. I never know when he comes. I am only grateful to have such a nice friend. He likes my offerings of brown sugar and berries and tobacco.
The wildman is a keeper of the forest. He protects us and we should protect him. We must protect the forest.