Cascade Stick Indians

Long before settlers arrived, the Salish, Lummi, Yakama, and Cayuse tribes knew to fear what lived in the woods: malevolent forest spirits so dangerous that many tribes refused to even speak their true name. They are known as Stick Indians. Said to have the power to paralyze, hypnotize, or cause insanity, and in some traditions even eat people who fall prey to them. This week we're diving into one of the Pacific Northwest's oldest and most chilling indigenous legends. What are the Stick Indians, what do different tribes believe about them, and why are people still reporting encounters in the Cascades today?

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Intro music by Don Edwards

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, um welcome back to the podcast and eerie beloved. We are gathered here today with Sierra. We have Sister On the Pod.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Yes. I'm so excited for you to be here. I'm excited to be here. I've been researching. I've been listening. I'm ready. I've listened to almost every single episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Okay, well, I didn't tell you what we were going to be talking about today. So I'm interested to know if you've heard of this before. Or if afterwards you can text your grandma and be like, hey, what do you know about this? Um be super. Mm-hmm. So native voices have been sharing the tales of mysterious beings in the forest for decades, some with the purpose of being cautionary tales and life lessons, others a warning of the dangers that lurk within the trees. Some tales are rarely told as to not antagonize the creatures, like our subject today. Due to taboos surrounding its real name, little to no knowledge of this figure before the 1900s is known. And many were told that beyond saying its real name, simply talking about them could be seen as an invitation or a way to summon these creatures. So I will not be saying the name given by the First Nations, but instead we'll refer to it by its given English name. So today we're going to be talking about stick Indians. They've also been referred to as stick men, stick shower Indians, and some other names depending on the region and the tribe of the Northwest. So have you heard of this before?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

No, I haven't. That sounds super interesting though. Okay. And it doesn't surprise me that their name they're known as the stick Indians. Because I think stick is growing up in nature. No, yeah, because no, I just yeah, because of the like growing up in tribes and nature and being surrounded. They there's lots of meaning that they find in just earthly objects like stones. They have like lots of meaning behind stones and how they use stones in rituals. And I'm sure sticks goes into that too. So yeah, it just doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, and I think the name I can text it to you, I'm not gonna say it. I think the name, like its proper name, it translates to like spirit in the forest or something like that. Spirit in the Yeah. So it's not like a jerk.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

It also doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Do you know what an SW is? I'm not gonna say it.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

But oh no, but isn't that on Game of Thrones? Like I thought that was the name. Oh, okay, okay. I was like, I think I swear the name was okay, but potential connection there. Potential connection there.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

But that's like that's another like indigenous creature, I guess, where they don't say its real name. Because yeah, like folklore.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Mm-hmm. It reminds me of the modern day Bloody Mary.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Okay, because this creature isn't often talked about, there's not really any consistency in the stories of what we do know. So I just want to add that disclaimer. I'm not a historian by any means. So if anything I say doesn't align with something that other people know, let me know in the comments below. But before becoming part of regional folklore, mentions of stick Indians or similar forest dwellers like their less malevolent counterpart, the Sico, were first documented in 1865 by ethnographer George Gibbs. According to him, in their folklore, Sico are large, hairy, wild men of the forest, and there are two different kinds that appear in folklore. Powerful but comparatively benign forest spirits, sometimes referred to as night people, and fearsome, malevolent man-eaters, sometimes referred to as stick Indians. So the appearance of the stick Indians varies based on oral traditions. To the Salish people, it's almost a variation of Bigfoot, which is interesting. And according to their stories, Stick Indians are larger than humans, covered in long, dense hair, and take refuge in the depths of the forest. Some of their other stories say that they are incredibly thin and tall. In both of these variations of them being thin and tall, there's like a hairy one and then a hairless one. Like a Slenderman vibe.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

That's crazy. So are they supposed to be tall vibes? Okay, yeah, just like big. Or it's unsure. We we don't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

It's a little unknown because also, according to the Yakima people, they're considered to them, stick Indians are considered a group of little people or forest dwarves. But because like they're so scared of talking about them, there it really isn't a history of them that's widely known or kind of accepted as the the norm for this. So while appearances may differ, much of the known behavior of these creatures is very much aligned, which is also interesting. So, regardless of their size, stick Indians are to be feared. They haunt and hunt within the Cascade Mountain region and are rarely seen due to being nocturnal. But reports say that they look like quote-unquote wild men wearing a variety of animal skins and other items fashioned from resources in the forest. So under the cover of night is also when they begin their trickery, mild pranks on local villages, or, if you're unlucky, revenge. Nusquali mythology calls them the most dangerous of the Indian demonology. It states that he is quick and stealthy, he inhabits the dark recesses of the woods, he sleeps by day, but sallies forth at dusk for a night of it. He robs tracks, breaks canoes, steals food and other portable property. He waylays the belated traveler and is said to kill all those whose bodies are found dead. His wicked and malicious cunning is credited all unfortunate and malicious acts which cannot otherwise be explained. He steals children, brings them up as slaves in his dark retreats. He is a constant menace to the disobedient child and is an object of fear and terror to all.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

This is just one popular night person. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I fully believe that too. Believability score a hundred thousand percent right now.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Oh she's worse in New York. Who knows what to say? So it's also widely believed that stick Indians possess some level of supernatural abilities like mental persuasion or hypnosis. Do communicate by mimicking animal and bird noises, and in addition to that, use these skills to confuse and disorient solar travelers. So an account from the Yakima peoples to LV McCorder in 1916 stated that a man whose delayed or loss from the trail is very apt to receive their attention. He may hear a signal, perhaps a whistle, ahead of him. Should he follow the sound, it will be repeated for a time. Then he will hear it in the opposite direction, along the path he just passed. If he turns back, it will only be to detect the mysterious noises elsewhere, leading to utter confusion and bewilderment. So have you ever heard of that thing where it's like if you hear whistling in the woods, no you didn't. So I wonder if that's like kind of where this came from. Or like don't whistle to the in the woods, don't. I don't know. I feel you, I've I've heard that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

I think it's really interesting because in this book that I read, essentially they were like comparing his analysis to Native American culture, and they were just comparing them side to side to say like what would he have thought about their beliefs and the things that they believe in. And one of the things that they talked about was how much they appreciate nature and really respect nature and try to make friends with animals, stories that they would tell or that have been passed on that were essentially like they realized animals were important because they saw that they nurtured and took care of their young, just like we did. And so they were like, obviously, these guys are smart, we need to treat them with respect. And so they did, and they would commonly make friends with them, and then like they would say that after they gained trust, the animals would start showing them things and start leading them to like food sources that like they'd be really needing and things like that. But then they also said that there was animals that did not want to be found, they said had some sort of power to them that made them untouchable essentially. It was like a deer or something that they really wanted to kill because they had they had a dry season and they just needed some animals and they were basically starving. But there was this one deer that they would always see, and they were never able to kill, like it would be 10 feet above, like in front of them, but they would shoot a shot and it would miss every single time. And so they were like, These animals have powers, they were essentially like these animals have abilities to decide whether or not we can kill them or not. And because of that, we also believe that animals probably are like playing games on us and probably are tricking us and just like doing things, like they just believed in a natural order to like animals showing them things that were important, and or if they didn't like them, they would shove them out. So, like, I I just feel like that story that you're telling of like the whistles just makes me think of like honestly, it could have been an animal. Like, I I wouldn't discredit that animals are smart enough to like cue a sound when they don't want someone near or something like that. Yeah, and something that they talked about in the book a lot was just for the like a lot of people discredit these Native American stories because of science and you know, things like we don't know enough, and so it's easy to discredit because it just happened so long ago, and we're we're basing it off of these stories, right? But like we really don't I mean, we really don't know because we don't spend enough time in nature, and they spent all day in nature, like every single moment in nature, and they use nature to decide how they were gonna live their life, like with the weather and like natural disaster, like avoiding natural disasters and things like that. So I don't know, I just feel like they knew nature more than any of us could ever know to this day, and for that reason, they probably knew did know like see things or like know things about animals that maybe we're not able to see just because we don't have time anymore. We don't have time, we have jobs, yeah. Like life made us work.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Well, and even like as I was doing research for this, there was a lot of like Bigfoot overlap because like some people refer to the stick Indians as like being a potential Bigfoot entity, and then I saw this list and it was like 58 different native tribes, and it's like they all had a name or multiple stories about Bigfoot. It's like okay, if there's 57 tribes that are saying this is out there, and they had no way to communicate with each other the like we do today, then like there's no way that they all didn't experience that, you know? Like it has to be some sort of truth there.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, exactly. But and even now, Bigfoot's still a hot topic for people. Like we have Bigfoot conventions now. It's become a full-on, oh it and it's so true because I used to be that type of person where I'd hear those stories about Bigfoot and I'd be like, Oh, that's just definitely a person, right? And even now, when I hear you, I'm still like this seems like probably a person, but it's interesting. But I don't want to discount the fact that it, you know, could be a demon or whatever. I hope that it's not. Yeah. But you know, it it does feel like from what you've told me so far, that it's just a cope for trying to make sense of all of these horrible tragedies that these people had to experience from these walkers. They're like, oh, these people are terrible. They're freaking they're just labeling them at that point. Yeah, they're like, like, I don't, I a thousand percent believe it. I guess that's this is a hot take, maybe for people watching this. This might be a hot take.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

There was also like some reference, like stick Indians was kind of a blatant term given to people who were like of tribes that were in like the inner regions of the state, like they weren't coastal people, and so like they referred to people who lived in the forest as that. Did that turn into this? Like, is that where this came from? So because they were warring with these people, I wonder if there was some animosity that caused these stories to happen, but we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

It is really interesting because I really don't doubt that it happened, just from the fact that it's their story, they're living out there in the wilderness. And it's just one of those things where it's like there's not enough people there to discredit it because the only ones that would know are the people there experiencing it. And I just don't doubt that someone somehow made their way out there and became a type. Because I could so see someone getting kicked out of the tribe and then like people kind of forget about him, and then he grows old. I don't know, just things like that were I mean, people get displaced all the time just in modern day society, so it probably happened back then too. Like so true.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah, it makes you wonder. And then there's the whole thing of them being scared to talk about it because they don't want to like bring on this bad these bad experiences to themselves because I think that's gonna happen. So it's like if only they talked about it more though, we would know more.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Exactly, exactly, exactly. And that's the I feel like it's like that with a lot of philosophy, even or just beliefs that that groups of people have, they like to keep it a secret for as long as possible. Not even in like a we're scared to talk, or actually, yeah, I think it is in a scared to talk about a way, because it can happen with like but these people in New Mexico, like ancient Aztecs, they had this philosophy and knowledge about life that they just did not want to share with the village, and they would only keep it with the elders. And then the knowledge was just like live your best life, like live your values, like like that. Was the knowledge it was like Buddhist type philosophy type knowledge, but they were like, we can't let anyone know this, and we're and they kept it a secret like for centuries, and they just recently started sharing their knowledge, like within the past 20 years, I think. Like this same, yeah, this same village. Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

So in 1954, Lucy Armstrong and Nez Pierce, she was part of the Nez Pierce tribe, she shared her stories of the stick people that her father and an elder passed on to her for Ella Clark's book, Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies. So, according to her, stick Indians could make themselves invisible at times by rubbing themselves with a certain grass, and they would hoot like owls and howl like coyotes. So, like similar to what we already heard. People would hear whistling in their home and know that it was these stick Indians. They would put out bits of salmon for intruders, and in the morning the food would be gone. While according to the Naz pierce, they were small, they were incredibly strong as well, and were known to take off with entire sheep.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Not them taking the sheep and the salmon. Ruh, just take the whole building. Like you're taking the my whole will to live at that point.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Here, take this. This is my this is my offering for you. So Yeah, so you'll leave me alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's kind of like all of the all of the stuff about stick Indians and everything that we know, basically. But I have some stories of encounters. People think they've encountered stick Indians. This person says, I am from the Muckle Shoot tribe. We are not allowed to say the name of these creatures under most circumstances. I've seen some of them in the woods, and one time I chased one around my car in circles at my parents' house before it ran unnaturally fast into the woods. So far, they seem more afraid of me than I am of them, but they are scary. I've seen two black ones that are seven feet tall and a little one that was maybe four feet tall. They are not to be messed with and are responsible for strange deaths and fires in our area. We know it's them due to their handprints and other signs they've been around. My mom told me that one of the handprints had six fingers. What? The other person said, Yes, you don't whistle at night unless you're trying to call them to you. They are known to have distinct whistles to communicate with each other, especially in the springtime at night along rivers. If you really listen, you can hear their distinct whistling to each other along a river at night.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Someone else said, I've heard of these in the northern cascades, but here they called but here they are called stick men. We were told to never pick up or take any handmade objects we found in the foothills. These woods were historically avoided by local tribes for generations before white settlers arrived. The forest there is considered to be haunted and filled with evil spirits and dark ancient entities. The elders tell us that the stickmen are evil spirits. They come in many forms. Sometimes they look like a shaman, other times they can present as a half human, half deer, or a demon with long, spindly limbs. Unlike Sasquatches, he can be good, benign, or mean, but not evil, as they dutifully watch over the forest. Stickmen are malevolent, evil beings that delight in terrorizing their victims and seeming to gain strength from inflicting suffering from the many curses they spread. We were told to never whistle while hiking or visiting in the woods, and that we should leave the forest immediately if we ever heard whistles from the depths of the forest. They will sometimes throw sticks and rocks at trespassers in their woods. There was even a recent story I read on a local Reddit about some hikers who found a strange doll made of hair and twigs and bark at the side of a trail when they were hiking. They brought it back home only to be immediately faced with a flurry of paranormal activity, rocks being thrown at them, objects being thrown and moved around the house, eerie whistling and sightings of humanoid apparitions at night. After many months of intensifying terror and weirdness, the hikers eventually decided to return the doll to the place in the woods they found it. But it was too late. They had been cursed and had suffered many unfortunate accidents and illnesses until they moved. This person says that nine tribes all speak of hairy cannibalistic giants known to inhabit certain valleys up in the Klamath Siskiyou Mountains. To my mind, it's pretty pretty unequivocal that they're all talking about the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I I wouldn't be surprised if there is multiple groups of we call can call them things, a group, a group of things, some like yeah, a group of things out there somewhere and doing similar things, or to natives especially, and them coming to these conclusions, because it's like they live in such a anxious state of mind, I think, because of how they look to their environment for how to live their life that they kind of have to live in that mindset of like we need to be scared of things that we don't know or don't understand. And so it just makes sense if like they came across this group of things that didn't make sense to them and we're terrorizing them, they're like, that's a demon. Like we don't want anything to do with them, don't come near them, don't interact with them, like don't go to that side of the woods. It just makes sense. Believability a thousand percent still. I think I've said a hundred thousand before.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

It's interesting that, like, obviously, these aren't these aren't all from the same, like one area, you know. These are kind of from all over the Pacific Northwest. And so even though they're all a little bit different in tales of like how they look, or I don't know, even how they act sometimes differs a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

They're all still similar stories, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a PNW, which is very forested. It just makes sense that we would experience something like this maybe more than other states would. This person says, I live happens in the woods.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Crazy stuff happens in the woods. I don't like going in the woods.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

As we found out on this podcast. Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

This person says, I live on a reservation in the northwest, and ever since I was young, I was worn not. To whistle in the woods or say their name, especially at night. But I heard them described as very thin, like skin and bone, and sometimes with long hair. Unlike Bigfoot, where he's supposed to be big and hair all over. They will lure you out with tricks and whistling. So if you hear whistling in the woods, run. So back to whistling again.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Maybe that was like a call. Maybe because I feel like the times that they've mentioned that are all times where they've been near them and obviously, or not obvious, but in an area where it seems like they can see them. And so maybe it was just their way of trying to alert the their other people or things that this person's near.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

There's all been different types of ways that they describe them, but I also wonder, like, in the original like oral stories of this, if it was there was supposed to be like a life lesson or something to avoid, if it wasn't just like there's a scary thing in the woods. I I think a lot of those stories that we kind of know of are parables where there's like I said a life lesson or something at the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

So exactly speak up. No, I I think it's good to talk about because as we're talking about these, then it's like people are just aware of the people's experiences. It's just good to be open to what people experience. We have no reason to discredit them. Like, why would they lie about this? Why would they lie about these things coming to terrorize them and steal their sheep and salmon? Like they don't want to make their people starve.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I'm interested. I'm just I'm so interested to know if your grandma has anything to say about it.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

I know. I wish we should have got her on because she would probably have so much to say about this. And she lives in Yakima too.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Just the stuff that you've sent me about her stories and all of her experiences.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Like I has so many stories and she sees orbs all the time. It's wild. She has videos of the orbs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

So is she like very spiritual then?

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Like does she Yes, absolutely. I would say so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

I just think that people in the older generations, they probably have so much knowledge that they kind of think is unnecessary. Like we don't need to know, but like I said, if they don't tell somebody, it just it goes with them. So I'd love to know all of her stories.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

I think you would really love it. And she talks that she talks in parables too, honestly, a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Like okay, and sister, I know you kind of already did believability, but what's your official like believability score of I believe it 100%?

SPEAKER_01 25:08

I know I went down because I went from a hundred thousand to a thousand to a hundred, but like how about a stream of like one to ten?

SPEAKER_00 25:16

So then you'd be at a ten then? Yeah, I'm at a ten. Okay. Yeah. Okay, but what about you? I don't know. I do think there is a level of truth to it. And like people have claimed to have run into these, so I believe them too. I don't know. I think it's seven or eight. Because I also think that maybe these things can get confused with other things just depending on how they look.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Mm-hmm. So yeah, some of them sounded very animalistic. Like would that that person that said they were crawling towards them would run away really fast or whatever? I was like, that does not sound like a woman.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

I'm scared. So then creepiness level, like how creeped out are you by stick Indians?

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Oh, I'm I mean, on a scale of one to ten, ten, a hundred percent. Like, I do not want to come anywhere near these so-called stick Indians because I don't even want to say what I'm thinking because it's not PG. I am getting my behind out of there. I am I'm out the door, I'm already home. Like if if I hear whistling, I'm out. Now that I now that I know whistling is a sign, if I'm somewhere in the woods and I hear that, I'm freaking out.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

No, I would too. I would 100 and even if even if it's a person, no, I'm still scared. Like, why are you whistling in the woods?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Exactly. Why are you whistling in the woods? Yeah, we don't we don't need to be doing any of that. No, the birds do that for us. Right. Now that you said your believability believability score, I don't know if it'd be like I believe everything 100%, because I do agree with you. I I just meant that I agree, like I believe that there's some truth to the the stories, but I don't know if like a hundred percent of them are true because it just seems like a very missing pieces everywhere, and no one really knows like a hundred percent even that story to tell about these people, like there's no like one narrative around them. So, how could we even be a fair judge at that point? But like for from what we know, yeah, there was probably some exaggerations there too from how different the stories were, or I think there could have been just because I don't want to believe that there's like a demon out there just terrorizing right, right? I don't want to believe that that's either an animal or a person.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Someone going through a rough time.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yes, going through a rough time, not a demon, not something out of this world. I would hope. Yeah, I would really hope.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Okay, well everybody for listening. And follow us on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Early Beloved Podcast. And if you have a story or a case or anything like that that you'd like us to look into, email early belovedpodcast at gmail.com. And we will see you next Thursday. Bye.