underwater panther

In the Ojibwe language, this creature is sometimes called {{lang|oj|Mishibizhiw}}, {{lang|oj|Mishipizhiw}}, {{lang|oj|Mishipizheu}}, {{lang|oj|Mishupishu}}, {{lang|oj|Mishepishu}}, {{lang|oj|Michipeshu}},{{cite book |last1=Conway |first1=Thor |author1-link= |year=2010 |title=Spirits in Stone |location=Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario |publisher=Heritage Discoveries }} {{lang|oj|Mishebeshu}},{{sfnp|Smith|1995|p=109}} or {{lang|oj|Mishibijiw}}, which translates as "Great Lynx",[http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/ojibwe.html Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary] or {{lang|oj|Gichi-anami'e-bizhiw}} ("Gitche-anahmi-bezheu"), which translates as "the fabulous night panther"."The fabulous night panther" is a translation from Anishinaabe language into French to German, which then was translated into English. The direct translation would be something closer to "The greatly revered lynx." See [http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/ojibwe.html Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary] However, it is also commonly referred to as the "Great underground wildcat" or "Great under-water wildcat".{{cite encyclopedia |last=Gidmark |first=Jill B. |author-link=|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-gLBOIhjsPQC&dq=Mishi-peshu&pg=PA168 |title=Mishi-Peshu |date=November 30, 2000 |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of American literature of the sea and Great Lakes |location=Westport, Connecticut |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=0-313-30148-4 |page=168 |access-date=December 25, 2012 }} It is the most important of the underwater animals for the Ojibwa.{{cite encyclopedia|last1=Lemaître |first1=Serge |author-link=|url=http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/mishipeshu |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120330092035/http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/mishipeshu |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 30, 2012 |title=Mishipeshu |encyclopedia=The Canadian Encyclopedia |access-date=December 25, 2012 }}

Other sources describe instead the deity in terms of the "underwater manito"{{Refn|group="lower-alpha"|Also styled "underwater manidoog".}}, as a composite of the "underwater lion" and the "horned serpent".{{cite book|last=Vecsey |first= Christopher |author-link= |title=Traditional Ojibwa Religion and Its Historical Changes |publisher=American Philosophical Society |date=1983 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Un5uxow5c-UC&pg=PA73 |pages=74–75|isbn=9780871691521 }}

File:Agawa Rock, panel VIII.jpg, Ontario, Canada. Attributed to the Ojibwe.{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=71}}]]

In mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes, underwater panthers are described as water monsters that live in opposition to the thunderbirds,{{cite web |last=Strom |first=Karen M. |author-link=Karen Strom |url=http://www.kstrom.net/isk/art/morriss/art_miss.html |title=Morrisseau's Missipeshu – Cultural Preservation |work=Native American Indian Resources |date=August 3, 1996 |access-date=October 1, 2011 }} masters of the powers of the air. Underwater Panthers are seen as an opposing yet complementary force to the Thunderbirds, and they are engaged in eternal conflict.{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=60}}

The underwater panther was an amalgam of parts from many animals: the body of a wild feline, often a cougar or lynx; the horns of deer or bison; upright scales on its back;{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=207}} occasionally feathers; and parts from other animals as well, depending on the particular myth. Underwater panthers are represented with exceptionally long tails,{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=59}} occasionally with serpentine properties.{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=60}}

{{lang|oj|Mishipizheu}} were said to live in the deepest parts of lakes and rivers, where they can cause storms or squalls and rapids, i.e., shift the direction and force of currents,{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=60}} sink canoes, and drown Indians, often children. The creatures are thought to roar or hiss in the sounds of storms or rushing rapids.

Some traditions believed the underwater panthers could be helpful, protective creatures, for example, it was believed to shelter and feed those who fell through the winter ice. The water manito (water panther and serpent) endowed medicinal power to those (shamans) who accepted its guardianship.{{Refn|Radin c. 1926, no pagination, cited by Vecsey.}}{{Refn|{{harvp|Smith|1995|p=109}} apud Lankford}} It made gifts of copper, that is to say, the Ojibwe believed such rock formation partly submerged in water with copper lode protrusions to be a divinity, which would allow passersby to cut off copper from "its horns".{{Refn|Kellogg (1917), p. 105,{{cite book|editor-last=Kellogg |editor-first= Louise Phelps |editor-link=Louise Phelps Kellogg |title=Early Narratives of the Northwest, 1634-1699 |publisher=Charles Scribners's sons |date=1917 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wuFAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA105 |page=105}} cited by Vecsey.}}

But more often they were viewed as malevolent beasts that brought death and misfortune. They often need to be placated for safe passage across a lake. As late as the 1950s, the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Indians performed a traditional ceremony to placate the Underwater Panther and maintain balance with the Thunderbird.

When ethnographer Johann Georg Kohl visited the United States in the 1850s, he spoke with a Fond du Lac chief, who showed Kohl a piece of copper kept in his medicine bag. The chief said it was a strand of hair from the {{lang|oj|mishibizhiw}}, and thus considered extremely powerful.

{{lang|oj|Mishipeshu}} is known for guarding the vast amounts of copper in Lake Superior and the Great Lakes Region. Indigenous people mined copper long before the arrival of Europeans to the area. Later, during the 17th century, missionaries of the Society of Jesus arrived in the Great Lakes Region. By that time, taking copper from the region was extremely taboo and forbidden by the Ojibwe tribe. It was even worse to take it from the Great Lynx's home, Michipicoten Island; this was considered to be stealing from Mishipeshu himself.{{cite book |last=Godfrey |first=Linda S. |author-link= |title=Weird Michigan: your travel guide to Michigan's local legends and best kept secrets |location=New York |publisher=Sterling Publishing Co. |year=2006 |pages=28–29 |isbn=978-1-4027-3907-1}} {{cite book |last=Godfrey |first=Linda S. |author-link= |title=Lake and Sea Monsters |location=New York |publisher=Infobase Publishing |year=2008|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oi7wQm4mTVcC&pg=PA33 |page=33 |isbn=978-0-7910-9393-1}} citing Godfrey (2006)

There are a few stories of encounters with this great beast. A Jesuit missionary named Claude Dablon told a story about four Ojibwe people who embarked on a journey to the home of {{lang|oj|Mishipeshu}} to take some copper back to their home, and use it to heat water. The very second they pushed off and backed into the water with their canoe, the eerie voice of the water panther surrounded them. The water panther came growling after them, vigorously accusing them of stealing the playthings of his children. All four of the people died on the way back to their village, the last one surviving just long enough to tell the tale of what had happened in his final moments before he died.{{cite book| title= Jesuit Relations, Volume LIV. Chapter XI. Section 26. | editor = Thwaites, Reuben Gold | editor-link = Reuben Gold Thwaites | pages=152–153 | url= http://moses.creighton.edu/kripke/jesuitrelations/relations_54.html | date=1899 }}

File:So-called-alligator-mound-ohio.png.]]

The underwater panther is well represented in pictograms. Historical Anishnaabe twined and quilled men's bags often feature an underwater panther on one panel and the Thunderbird on the other.{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=59}}

The Alligator Effigy Mound (cf. fig. right) in Granville, Ohio has been hypothesized as depicting an underwater panther by archaeologist Brad Lepper (2003). Lepper posits that early European settlers, when learning from Native Americans that the mound represented a fierce creature that lived in the water and ate people, mistakenly assumed that the Native Americans were referring to an alligator.{{cite journal |last=Lepper |first1=Brad |author1-link=Brad Lepper |last2=Frolking |first2=Tod A. |author2-link= |title=Alligator Mound: Geoarchaeological and Iconographical Interpretations of a Late Prehistoric Effigy Mound in Central Ohio, USA |journal=Cambridge Archaeological Journal |volume=13 |pages=147–167 |doi=10.1017/S0959774303000106 |year=2003 |url=http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=187259 |issue=2 |s2cid=161534362 }}

Late 18th and 19th century dragon motif side plates were attached to muskets manufactured at York Factory in Canada, and these dragons were evidently associated with the water panther or "mishipizheu" by the natives.{{cite journal |url=https://www.academia.edu/847109 |title=Dragon Sideplates from York Factory, A New Twist on an Old Tail |first1=William A |last1=Fox |volume=2 |number=2 |journal=Manitoba Archaeological Journal |pages=21–35 |access-date=December 25, 2012 }}

Modern-day artist Norval Morrisseau (Ojibwe) has painted underwater panthers in his Woodlands style artworks, contemporary paintings based on Ojibwe oral history and cosmology.{{sfnp|Penney|2004|p=207}} In the crayon drawing of his early years, he has represented the michipichou naturalistically, giving it brown color and giving lifelike details to its whiskers and horns, bound by the conventions of popular illustrations, but in the early 1960s, he produced Untitled (michipichou) and Water Spirit, which drew from ancient rock art, and rendered in bold strokes.

The Canadian Museum of History includes an underwater panther in its coat of arms.

The title of Underwater Panther was ported over onto a wide range of other similar mythological creatures and deities believed in by tons of Native cultures in the Eastern US.

The Iroquois Underwater Panther is known by several names. It is usually depicted as a serpentine dragon with four clawed feet, a horse like mane of hair, a long tail, copper deer antlers and an uncut diamond in its forehead. Such jewels are treated as sacred relics and believed to hold fantastic power as a totem, with many claims tribes had them before the teachings of Tecumseh's brother, Tenskwatawa, convinced many eastern tribes to give up medicine ceremonies and throw away medicine bundles associated with them.

They live in the Great Lakes, usually associated with dangerous areas of coast, like certain coves, coastal caves and swampy islands. They were said to have some power to create storms. The Iroquois were known to sacrifice dogs and tobacco when passing their homes via Canoe by throwing them overboard to avoid their wrath. It is believed they also have some shapeshifting ability, leading some to conclude that the Horned Serpent and Comet Lion of other Iroquoian stories are also the same mythological creature. Other known names include Blue Panther, Blue Snake and Oiare. The Erie tribe, known as the Cat People and the Long Tail People likely took their name from this spirit. It's also possible that it is the "panther" held on a leash by the Wind spirit, Geha, which represents one of the four winds, alongside three other animals.

In the Midwest, the Underwater Panther is known to the Potawatomi and the Menominee. Its equivalent is the horned Water Spirit of the Ho-chunk aka Winnebago. The thunderbird, bear spirit, and water clans are the three most significant clans of the Ho-chunk Paul Radin's research.{{sfnp|Birmingham|2009|p=32}} Each clan has correspondence to effigy mounds according to Robert L. Hall, and the water spirit is common in the effigy mounds of Wisconsin{{sfnp|Birmingham|2009|p=32}} (cf. Alligator Effigy Mound under {{section link||Alligator Effigy Mound}} above). The Baraboo Hills of Wisconsin resulted, according to legend, from a war between the thunderbirds and water spirits.{{sfnp|Birmingham|2009|p=32}} In Ho-chunk (Winnebago) cosmogony, the water spirit dwelling at the center of the earth sometimes displaces the Hare spirit, grandson of Earthmaker as ruler of the whole earth.{{sfnp|Birmingham|2009|p=25}}

This Water Spirit shares power over medicine with a Buffalo spirit and taught the shamans of the Ho-Chunk how to kill evil spirits with weapons carved from Red Cedar, a trope that seems to also exist amongst some nearby Algonquian tribes, whose legends add the further instruction of attacking such monsters in their shadow.{{cn|date=May 2025}}

The Lakota do not consider Underwater Panther a god or spirit, but a monster translated as Underwater Panther by the writers does come up in some of their stories. Here, it is a giant wildcat with ridges down its spine and a single, giant eye that lives on an island, attacking those who pass too closely.

However, some of the associations likely passed on to a serpentine race of earth spirits honored in their culture called the Uŋkcegila. These are subterranean beings who are fickle and the enemies of the Thunderbirds. Meanwhile, the sacred Buffalo and Water Spirit of the Ho-Chunk seems to have become two Buffalo and bear for the Lakota.

The Cherokee also speak of the True Lynx in their myths, which bears a lot of similarity to the Algonquian one, as a giant bobcat with a long tail and a human face, though it serves a different role in their mythology than the Underwater Panther of the north. Likewise to the Lakota, they also believe in Uktena, which combines elements of the Uŋkcegila and the Iroquoian Underwater Panther/ Horned Serpent.

• Anishinaabe traditional beliefs
• List of lake monsters- many Lake monster myths, including Champ and Bessie, are inspired by the Underwater Panther.
• Agoa- Known in West Virginia, along the Monongahela River, is a story of a man eating turtle monster that lives in a swampy area of river Bank. While largely dissimilar, the name, Agoa, was taken from early bad renderings of the Lenape word for a type of snake, given as Ashgook. Most likely, it was attempting to render the word for the Green Snake, specifically- askask xkuk, xkuk being their actual word for snake. Early settlers probably picked up on the Lenape belief that an Underwater Panther lived there and a name, but didn't know what it was, so made up a new monster themselves.
• {{annotated link|Hodag}}
• {{annotated link|Nguruvilu}}
• Piasa- the legend of the Piasa, though mostly ripping off the Thunderbird, was based on a mural of an Underwater Panther created on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River by the Illinois tribe.
• Horned Serpent
• Wampus cat - has nearly identical backstory to many of the Underwater Panther stories, though the name has confused researchers. Said to be from Cherokee lore, however no analogue to the word Wampus exists in Cherokee language.
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
• {{annotated link|Bunyip}}

{{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}

{{Reflist|2|refs=

{{cite book|last=Birmingham |first=Robert A. |author-link= |title=Spirits of Earth: The Effigy Mound Landscape of Madison and the Four Lakes |location= |publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press |year=2009 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uLl36AP2a9EC&pg=PA29 |page=29 |isbn=9780299232634}}

{{cite journal|last=Dewdney |first=Selwyn |author-link=Selwyn Dewdney |title=Ecological Notes on the Ojibway Shaman-Artist |journal=Arts Canada |volume=27 |date=1970 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8GdUAAAAMAAJ&q=mishipeshu |page=21 |quote=mishipeshu, an underwater monster whose dragon-like tail could lash a lake into a vicious squall , or treacherously shift a current in the rapids, to swamp the canoe [of the less than respectful]}}

{{cite book|last1=Hill |first1=Greg A. |author1-link=Greg A. Hill (artist)|last2=Morrisseau |first2=Norval |author2-link=Norval Morrisseau |last3=Phillips |first3=Ruth Bliss |author3-link= |last4=Ruffo |first4=Armand Garnet |author4-link=Armand Garnet Ruffo |collaboration=National Gallery of Canada |title=Writers: Their Lives and Works |publisher=National Gallery of Canada |date=2006 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s9zA34pAQg4C&q=Michipichou+crayon |pages=74 |isbn=9781553651765}}

{{cite book|last=Lankford |first=George E.|author-link= |chapter=2. Some Cosmological Motifs in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex |editor1-last=Reilly |editor1-first=F. Kent |editor1-link=|editor2-last=Garber |editor2-first=James F. |editor2-link= |others=Foreword by Vincas P. Steponaitis |title=Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography |location=Austin, Texas　|publisher=University of Texas Press |year=2004a |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/ancientobjectssa0000unse/page/29 |page=[https://archive.org/details/ancientobjectssa0000unse/page/29 29–34] |isbn=978-0-292-71347-5}}

{{cite book|last=Lankford |first=George E.|author-link= |chapter=5. The Great Serpent in Eastern North Amierica |editor1-last=Reilly |editor1-first=F. Kent |editor1-link=|editor2-last=Garber |editor2-first=James F. |editor2-link= |others=Foreword by Vincas P. Steponaitis |title=Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography |location=Austin, Texas|publisher=University of Texas Press |year=2010b |orig-year=2004b|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HeDkqLlJNEIC&pg=PA123 |page=123 |isbn=9780292774407}}

{{cite book|last1=Williamson|first1=Ronald F. |author1-link= |last2=Bitter |first2=Robert von |author2-link= |chapter=Chapter 10. Iroquois du Nord Decorated Antler Combs: Reflections of Ideology |editor1-last=Williamson|editor1-first=Ronald F. |editor1-link= |editor2-last=Bitter |editor2-first=Robert von |editor2-link= |title=The History and Archaeology of the Iroquois du Nord |publisher=University of Ottawa Press |date=2023 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Esz1EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA220 |page=220 |isbn=9780776639826}}

}}

{{refbegin}}

{{void|* {{cite book |last=Dewdney |first=Selwyn |author-link=Selwyn Dewdney |url=https://archive.org/details/indianrockpainti00dewd |title=Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=1975 |location=Toronto |pages=149 |last2=Kidd |first2=Kenneth E.}}

• {{cite news |last=Lore |first=David |author-link= |url=http://farshores.org/alimound.htm |title=Man pounces on panther theory about mound |newspaper=The Columbus Dispatch |date=January 21, 2001 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070311053426/http://farshores.org/alimound.htm |archive-date=March 11, 2007 }}

}}

• {{cite book |last=Penney |first=David W. |author1-link=|title=North American Indian Art |location=London |publisher=Thames and Hudson |year=2004 |isbn=0-500-20377-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/northamericanind00penn }}

• {{cite book|last=Smith |first=Theresa S. |author-link=|title=The Island of the Anishnaabeg: Thunderers and Water Monsters in the Traditional Ojibwe Life-World |location=Moscow |publisher=Univ. of Idaho Press |date=1995 |url= |page= |isbn=978-0893011710}}

{{refend}}

{{Commons category|Underwater panther}}

• [http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/mythic-creatures/water-creatures-of-the-deep/mutating-myths American Museum of Natural History on Mishepishu]
• [http://www.americanindian.si.edu/searchcollections/item.aspx?irn=151435&catids=1&objmat=Twine/string/cord|Basswood%20fiber%20cordage&src=1-4 Odawa twined bag with images of the Underwater Panther, NMAI]

{{Anishinaabe}}

{{Mississippian and related cultures}}

{{Pre-Columbian North America}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Underwater Panther}}

Category:Anishinaabe mythology

Category:Ojibwe legendary creatures

Category:Algonquian legendary creatures

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Category:Legendary creatures of the indigenous peoples of North America

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Category:Great Lakes tribal culture

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Category:Water deities