(urth) Sightings at Twin Mounds

[Robert Pirkola]

Marc Aramini wrote: "Third: he is mistaken as a monster in the past because, if I am not mistaken, that is a cultural myth of the Indians - he is their bogey man. A man from the future who inexplicably appears is named as a Wendigo because that would be one of their few explanations.  Like us seeing someone appear in the closet and labelling him the bogeyman."

I understand the wendigo's place in the story as written, but I guess my real question is, when Wolfe sat down to write this story, why did he make up a Native American story involving a wendigo rather than a story that did not feature a cannibalistic monster?  Surely with the UFOs and time travel, there was no immediate need for the introduction of more sf tropes to get across the point that this is a weird event.  The initial myth (which appears completely made up by Wolfe and not based on some actual tale from the 1300s) could have been written without the wendigo.  For example, it could have read "Encountering a young warrior, she begged him to defend her" etc.  If you then remove all references in the story to the wendigo and replace them with a young warrior, whom the 23-year-old Robakowski could be mistaken for by a frightened girl, the story loses no meaning.  Thus, either the wendigo reference is mere surplusage or it is necessary to the way the story works as a story.  My problem is that I cannot see any reason why it is essential to the story other than to bring up cannibalism so that it is in our minds and allows us to unlock the deeper reading.  Of course, it could just be an example of Wolfe inserting a werewolf into a story for fun, but again seems rather out of character.   

Marc Aramini wrote: "BUT if our narrator is hungry for public attention and wants to make it seem like he has stumbled upon a great realistic mystery, then he has motive for killing: a guy no one will miss becomes a body to justify a crazy story about time displacement that explains the myth ... but he couldn't pass off time displacement with a fresh body - are those remains new or old? modern contaminants could be his modern looking clothes, zippers, etc. even if the body is long since decayed."

Right! That is what I was getting at in my last post with all the sasquatch stuff.  I mentioned the problem of the modern contaminants in my original post on the WolfeWiki and it is another of the facts that led me to believe that he was a cannibal rather than a simple murderer because the most effective disappearance (especially one where one wants to imply temporal displacement) is one where there are no remains, which would be the case if he consumed them.  Thus, what is placed at the mound is the inedible personal effects, like zippers, clothes, jewelry, etc.  Of course this leaves several problems: (1) one grown man eating another in one sitting, (2) what happened to the bones?, (3) the archaeologists would quickly discover the fact that the zippers, jewelry, etc., were not aged appropriately and thus would not be the remnants of an otherwise decomposed person.

(By the way, is there a trick to formatting these posts?)