Do we have werewolves in Michigan? Unlikely, but we have a regional history of werewolf stories that go back to the Native Americans and early French fur traders. More recently are tales of a large, strange-looking dog with black fur that walks on its hind legs! In Michigan it's known as dog-man, but over the years the creature has gone by many names.
    The Ioway Indians of Iowa and the early settlers in the region of the Upper Midwest named the wolf-like animal the "shunka warak'in", an Indian name meaning "carrying-off dogs" The Ioway were part of the Oneota Indian Culture, that combined the prairie and woodlands lifestyle and relied on both hunting/gathering and agriculture. The Indians claimed that the shunka warak'in would come into their camp or village at night and steal dogs. The Ioways first made European contact with French explorers and fur traders in the 1600s.
    The French fur trappers, or "coureurs, de bois" brought stories about the "loup-garou" or devilish werewolf. The loup-garou can manifest itself as almost any animal including bears and cougars, but the wolf seems to be the most popular type. The basic story goes that some loner, living in the early settlements, stops attending church and renounces religion. After backsliding and living a sinful life for a while, they become the classic werewolf. They would transform at night, regardless of the moon's phase, and run with wild dogs and wolves. They are aware of what is happening but appear and act like a wolf. A human could release them from their curse by drawing as little as one drop of blood. No one could talk about it until a priest was consulted and the werewolf was absolved of his sins.
    I found a couple of recently published reports in Michigan that correspond with similar ones in Wisconsin that occurred around the same time. A report in 1987 claimed that some animals attacked a cabin near the town of Luther Michigan. Tracks found around the cabin and teeth marks on some molding caused DNR officers to conclude that a dog had done the damage. This report caused another person in the area to give the following report. In 1937 or 1938, on the banks of the Muskegon River, near Paris, Mecosta County Michigan, a Cadillac man named Robert Fortney was attacked by a pack of wild dogs. Here is a quote from the Record-Eagle on April 25, 1987; "Fear gripped Robert Fortney as he shot and killed one of five dogs that lunged at him . . . But fear escalated to cold terror as the only dog that didn't run off reared up on its hind legs and stared at Fortney with slanted, evil eyes and the hint of a grin." Fortney said he wouldn't want to call it a dog-man. One unofficial report from the eastern Upper Peninsula in 1997, has a "brown hyena-shaped dog with large white spots" living in the Hiawatha National Forest. The witnesses claim to know the local wildlife and this animal is like nothing they've ever seen before.
    The first two incidences happened about the same time as two other ones occurring in Southeast Wisconsin, commonly referred to as the "Bray Road Beast". In 1936, two or three years before the Paris Michigan sighting, Mark Schackelman reportedly encountered a wolf-man on Highway 18, east of Jefferson, Wisconsin. As he was driving, he noticed a figure digging in an old Indian mound. A closer look revealed it was a hair-covered creature that stood erect. Its face had a muzzle and features of both an ape and dog. In the late 1980's a dairy farmer from Delavan Wisconsin (near Elkhorn) named Scott Bray reported a "strange-looking dog" in his pasture near Bray Road. The beast was larger than a German shepherd, and had pointed ears, a hairy tail, and long gray and black fur. It was built heavy in the front as if it had a strong chest. The sightings in this region continued from 1989 to 1992. These later Bray Road sightings sound a lot like the U.P. sightings in 1997.
    More twentieth-century reports of the wolf-like shunka warak'in, or ringdocus, have come from Montana and Idaho. One mounted specimen, which was last seen at a tourist museum near Henry Lake in Idaho, was shot by the family of Naturalist Ross Hutchins, as told in his 1977 book "Trails to Nature"s Mysteries". An old grainy and faded black and white photograph is the only proof of the mount's existence. People have used the hyena-like appearance of many reports and this particular picture to put forth the theory that this odd-looking animal is a survivor of the Pleistocene era and maybe a relative of the dog-like Borophagus, and Hyenadon or the pig-like Mylohyus. Of course, crypto zoologists often use extinct animals to explain many reports, but that is about as far out as UFOs coming from extraterrestrial sources. The animal in the photograph is obviously a mangy wild boar that may have come from introduced wild stock or from feral pigs. NEW INFORMATION - This mount was located! This is no mangy boar!
    Looking at the Ioway Indian folklore, and the fact that they held a sacred ritual that involved eating dog meat, it seems likely that late-night raids by related clans gave rise to the shunka warak'in tales. Other sightings, like the ones in Michigan and Wisconsin, may be an inbred wild dog with strange characteristics or birth defects. Perhaps highly recessive genes for an earlier, more primitive canine form resurfaces after a certain combination of factors, such as environmental stress and a shrinking gene pool, bring it out. This might explain why dog-man sightings in Michigan are said to occur every seven years, long enough for a mutant-mixed breed to sire at least one more of his or her kind. Accordingly, if you ignore the 1997 report, the next occurrences should happen in 2008 and again in 2015.

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    From Native legends to modern sightings, these giant birds of lore continue to cast a shadow across the landscape of our imaginations. The legends of the Native Americans tell us that thunderbirds are beneficial to mankind by bringing spring rainstorms and renewing life. Flying high above the clouds, the thunderbird's giant wings cause the thunder and blowing winds. Lightening or fire is said to shoot from the eyes of these powerful and supernatural creatures. As beings of the sky, they were natural enemies of the malevolent underwater beings, most of who were destroyed in a great war long ago, before the time of mankind. More than myth or legend, the thunderbirds are still an active force in the Indian pantheon of nature spirits. Given the occasional reported sightings of an incredibly large avian raptor, the thunderbird may be much more than a mix of native religion and modern myth.
    If the modern reported "thunderbird" is an actual bird, it may be the living inspiration for the native legends, however, it doesn't fit the general description of the thunderbird in many ways. The thunderbirds of Indian lore were benevolent supernatural beings involved in the natural cycle of life while the modern thunderbird is a real bird claimed to carry off children and livestock. Some Native American legends do tell of large predatory birds whose diet changed from deer to people, but these are more like stories of legendary events, rather than parts of a religious ideology.
    One compelling legend comes from the "Illini" tribe that tells of a giant bird-like creature living in a cave in the bluffs along the Illinois River (or the Mississippi, or Missouri, the exact location is debatable). Able to carry away an adult deer, the "Piasa"(pronounced pie-ah-saw) was a giant bird that could surprise a native hunter and carry him off to be devoured in its cave. A rock painting once existed on one of the rivers north of St. Louis, near Alton, Illinois, traditionally believed to honor Chief Ouatago and his band of braves as the heroes who killed the beast. These lost pictographs were described by Father Marquette in the late 17th century as follows . . .
    "While skirting some rocks which by their height and length inspired awe, we saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are as large as a calf, have horns on their heads like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like a man's, a body covered with scales, and a tail so long that it winds all around the body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three colors composing the picture. Moreover, these two monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author, for good painters in France would find it difficult to do so well. And besides, they are so high up on the rock that it is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them."
    After being lost for many years, the rediscovery and study of these pictographs in the 19th century lead some experts to believe that these, and other nearby pictographs, were created by the earlier mound builders sometime between 600 AD and 1500 AD. Some explorations of the area include a nearby cave, believed to have been the nesting place of the Piasa, containing countless ancient human bones scattered around the cave floor. In 1836, Professor John Russell of Bluffdale, Illinois, published that, "The floor of this cave throughout its whole extent was a mass of human bones. Skulls and other bones were mingled together in the utmost confusion. To what depth they extended I was unable to decide, but we dug to the depth of three or four feet in every quarter of the cavern and still found only bones. The remains of thousands must have been deposited here: How, and by whom, and for what purpose, it is impossible to conjecture." No report of these bones tells of any signs that might indicate the bodies were eaten by a monster bird or simply deposited in a ritual burial of some kind.
    Although modern reports range from all over the continental U.S. (the Midwest region mainly), a large number of reports have these Piasa-type thunderbirds inhabiting the Pennsylvania Black Forest region. Once known as the 'Forbidden Land', the Black Forest has had reports of giant eagle-like birds, large enough to carry away a deer, from the early 1800s to as recently as the late 1990s. Known species, from condors to Steller's sea eagles, have been put forth as possible candidates for many sightings, but no known living species of the bird reaches the huge sizes of these thunderbirds (most commonly was reported a bird with an average wingspan of 18 feet). The largest known eagle, the Harpy (10-foot wingspan) in South America, has a ruffled neck and feather horns and might be said to most resemble the Piasa cliff paintings. Perhaps an unknown northern relative of the Harpy eagle is the thunderbirds of modern and ancient lore. The largest fossil birds known to have been in the Americas are the 'teratorns' that survived until about 10,000 years ago, just after the Native Americans are thought to have arrived. The largest teratorn was the South American Argentavis maqnificens. This monster bird stood 5 to 6 feet tall, weighed around 160 pounds, and had a 25-foot wing span. Perhaps the thunderbird is the cultural memory of a now-extinct (or incredibly rare) teratorn. It might be a good idea for skywatchers to keep an eye out for this giant bird while they look for UFOs, flying rods, and the like.

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