IMAGINARY CREATURES IN ROCK ART, THE MER-CARIBOU REVISITED - THE QUINAULT MER-DEER:

 

So-called Eskimo Monster Petroglyph. Source unknown.

While reading a completely different theme I unexpectedly ran across this reference to the mer-caribou image that I posted on April 11, 2020 in a column titled IMAGINARY CREATURES IN ROCK ART - THE INUIT MERCARIBOU. The posting was about a drawing of a petroglyph that I had found years ago online with the name Eskimo Monster. In that column I confessed that with the passage of time (and a couple of moves) my documentation had disappeared so I could not state where I got the image in the first place.

So imagine my surprise when I ran across an unmistakable reference to a like creature from Quinault tribal mythology. The Quinault are a Northwest Coastal tribe residing on the Olympic peninsula in Washington north of the town of Humptulips (that’s right, Humptulips, look it up). Of course where the Quinault live no caribou will be found so their version of the creature will feature the deer found in their area, the Olympic Blacktail.

Olympic Blacktail deer, Internet photo outdoorlife.com, Public Domain.

“Olson (1936:167) has a brief description of a mythological sea serpent in his monograph on the Quinault, but this being is in many respects different from the two-headed serpent (it is described as a “water monster with a head like a deer, but a long body like a snake’s, with feet near the head).” (Van Eijk 2001:188) And with the substitution of Blacktail deer for caribou this is a perfect description of the image originally labeled Eskimo Monster.

This suggests that belief in the Mer-caribou, or Mer-deer, is much more widespread than I knew back on April 11. I repeat I do cannot name the location of the so-called “Eskimo monster” the fact that it was named Eskimo suggests that it originated in the arctic, and the distance from the Arctic Circle to the Quinault reservation is approximately 1,300 miles. So this belief spans pretty much the whole Pacific Northwest coast. I will be happy to hear about other reports of this creature if anyone finds them.

Hypothetical Quinault Mer-deer, drawing by the author.

So here you have my simplified version of the Quinault variation of the Mer-caribou – the Mer-deer. Although we know these creatures are imaginary I will remind the reader that for the indigenous people who possess these beliefs these creatures are real. As with the belief in UFOs in our culture, while most individuals would not claim they had seen it themselves, they either knew someone, or had heard of others who claimed to have seen them – I have never seen a UFO, but I know someone.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Van Eijk, Jan P.

2001 Who Is Súnułqaz'?: A Salish Quest, Anthropolog ((ical Linguistics, Summer, 2001, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 177-97.

SECONDARY REFERENCES:

Olson, Ronald L.

1936 The Quinault Indians, University of Washington Press, Seattle.