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Shawn Smallman, Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History. Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2014.221 pages. ISBN 9781772030327. $19.95 paperback.
Dangerous Spirits is an ethnohistorical contribution to the ongoing conversation about the Windigo in all of its many forms. In the book, Shawn Smallman draws on his expertise as a historian to render a variety of sources from across Canada into a coherent narrative about this well-discussed, often misunderstood being. In the final chapter of the book Smallman provides a narrative of Oblate missionary Roger Vanderteene's accounts of the Windigo in northern Alberta. In it a woman is quoted as saying "The whiteman cannot understand the Witigowin... because among them it does not exist" (168). This line nicely summarizes the treatment of the Windigo in the Western accounts within Dangerous Spirits: the Windigo is stripped of its status as a being and converted into a myth in the eyes of the traders, missionaries, and colonial powers whose accounts form the backbone of the book.
Divided into four chapters, plus an introduction and short conclusion, Smallman's argument attempts to move readers through four contexts in which the Windigo is present. Chapter one deals with the Windigo as it appears in traditional narratives and contemporary retellings. Smallman does an excellent job in covering the many versions of Windigo narratives...