Mugwump (folklore)
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The Mugwump (also: Old Tessie and Monster of Lake Temiscamingue) is a lake monster which has been alleged to live in
Lake Timiskaming Lake Timiskaming or Lake Temiskaming (, ) is a large freshwater lake on the Provinces and territories of Canada, provincial boundary between Ontario and Quebec, Canada. The lake, which forms part of the Ottawa River, is in length and covers ...
, on the border of the Canadian
provinces A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term ''provi ...
of
Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...
and
Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
.


Terminology

The name "mugwump" comes from an Algonquin word, the exact meaning of which is unclear. In a 1979 communication on the creature,
New Liskeard New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 ** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995 * "New" (Daya song), 2017 * "New" (No Doubt song), 19 ...
mayor Jack Dent reported that the name translated to "fearless
sturgeon Sturgeon (from Old English ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''str̥(Hx)yón''-) is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the ...
" in English. The word had already been used many years prior, when
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...
missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...
John Eliot took it to mean "
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" or "
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" in translating the Bible into Anishinàbemiwin in 1661. ''The Vermont American'', a newspaper published in
Middlebury, Vermont Middlebury is the shire town (county seat) of Addison County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,152. Middlebury is home to Middlebury College and the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History and the adjacent ...
, indicated it meant "
leader Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...
" in 1828. In the 1880s the term became a political label for the "
Mugwumps The Mugwumps were History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican political activists in the United States who were intensely opposed to political corruption. They were never formally organized. They famously Party switching, swit ...
", Republican Party politicians in the United States who switched parties during the 1884 presidential election to support
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Charles Anderson Dana Charles Anderson Dana (August 8, 1819 – October 17, 1897) was an American journalist, author, and senior government official. He was a top aide to Horace Greeley as the managing editor of the powerful Republican newspaper '' New-York Tribune ...
, editor of the ''
New York Sun ''The New York Sun'' is an American conservative news website and former newspaper based in Manhattan, New York. From 2009 to 2021, it operated as an (occasional and erratic) online-only publisher of political and economic opinion pieces, as we ...
'' newspaper, popularised the term in this context, deriving it from the Algonquin word or , meaning "important person" or "war leader". Though Dana meant to make a sarcastic jab at the former Republicans who did not support their own candidate, the term was appropriated by the men it had originally been used to mock and became both popular and widespread, to the point that it is still used from time to time in the 21st century. The term also occurs in the 1959
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novel ''
Naked Lunch ''Naked Lunch'' (first published as ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. The novel does not follow a clear linear plot, but is instead structured as a series of non-chronological "routines". Many of thes ...
'' and in the 1962
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children's book ''
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'', both times to describe fantastical creatures. It remains unknown which elements of political and cultural history, if any, influenced the naming of the creature which Dent documented, referencing "a very old Indian legend", in 1979. Another
cryptid Cryptids are animals or other beings whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated by science. Cryptozoology, the study of cryptids, is a pseudoscience claiming that such beings may exist somewhere in the wild; it has been widely cri ...
dubbed "Mugwump" allegedly resides in a
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.


Description


Anatomy

When interviewed in 1995, a witness recalled the Mugwump as having a round head and nose like an animal. Two ice fishers alleged to have seen a black, glistening head through their fishing hole in 1982; they noted that it had protruding eyes, one of which was trained on them and gave the impression it was sizing the men up. Another ice fisherman reported that he'd seen the creature completely out of the water one winter night, that it had a head similar to that of a dinosaur, and that it was long enough to curl around a number of fishing huts at once. A married couple which claimed to have witnessed the Mugwump swimming in 1978 reported that it had a humped back and no fins. Chuck Coull, the first human to have his encounter with the Mugwump documented and published, claimed the animal looked like a human-sized
sturgeon Sturgeon (from Old English ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''str̥(Hx)yón''-) is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the ...
. The creature is popularly depicted as having the body of a serpent and the head of a horse. Jack Dent claimed in 1979 that a descendant of Chief Wabi (aka "Big Wabi") had informed him of the creature which lived in the lake. According to Dent's source:
... the mugwump was reputed to be the length of four Indian braves. Putting the average height of a brave at about five feet ... the mugwump was probably over 20 feet long.
Others have reported on the creature's size differently, with more conservative estimates putting it at the size of a human and a 1978 account putting it at a minimum length of , and other stories suggesting its scales alone were the size of a
saucer A saucer is a type of small dishware. While in the Middle Ages a saucer was used for serving condiments and sauces, currently the term is used to denote a small plate or shallow bowl that supports a cup – usually one used to serve coffee t ...
. Lake Timiskaming, which is a widening of the
Ottawa River The Ottawa River (, ) is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It is named after the Algonquin word "to trade", as it was the major trade route of Eastern Canada at the time. For most of its length, it defines the border betw ...
with an average depth of and maximum depth of , has been described as a natural habitat for a creature of such a size by enthusiasts. Other lake monsters in the region have been described as being similar to whales and large eels, often with a horse- or dog-like head and measuring between and long.


Behaviour

On one occasion when the animal was spotted outside of water, a snake-like trail was allegedly found in the snow nearby. No other lake monsters in Ontario have been reported to move about on dry land, leading to conjecture that the animal sighted crawling on the land might represent a different animal than the Mugwump. The exact population of the Mugwump is also disputed. Although often referred to as a singular creature, it was suggested in a 1982 interview with Kate Ardtree that there were multiple Mugwumps living in Lake Timiskaming. Regular sightings of the Mugwump in summer months gave rise to the idea that the creature spawns in July and August.


Explanations

The most common explanation for the Mugwump is that it is a large
sturgeon Sturgeon (from Old English ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''str̥(Hx)yón''-) is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the ...
. While sturgeon are already large fish, the
refraction In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one transmission medium, medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commo ...
of light through still or calm water can cause the size of objects to appear distorted, giving them the appearance of being much larger than in reality. As the creature is most often sighted during calm conditions and almost never seen outside of the water, it is possible that many Mugwump sightings are actually misidentifications of large fish. Other suggestions have included descendants of prehistoric animals such as the nautiloid ''Orthoceras'', the Plesiosauria, plesiosaur ''Elasmosaurus'', the whale ''Basilosaurus'', and the early amphibian ''Ichthyostega''; groups of otters swimming in single-file lines; logs floating just below the surface of the water, also known as "dead heads"; and waves created in the Wake (physics), wakes of motorboats or during small earthquakes.


History

The earliest reports of the creature for which there is documented evidence came in the 1970s, but reports of the Mugwump are said to go back much further. Chief Wabi, aka "Big Wabi", was a resident of Murray City (present-day Notre-Dame-du-Nord) on the Quebec side of Lake Timiskaming in the late-19th century and early-20th century. According to former Mayor of New Liskeard Jack Dent, a descendant of Chief Wabi recounted his nation's encounters with the Mugwump going back generations. In an 1879 canoe voyage along the Ottawa River and across Lake Timiskaming, the Voyageurs, voyageur Sha-Ka-Nash described how his Anishinaabe guides made offerings of tobacco at sites like Devil's Rock to an otherworldy creature living in the lake:
So we put off and sailed down the big Lake Témiscamingue. When we came down to the big steep rocks on the west side the Indian crews had a great talk in their own language, and everyone who used tobacco, put a little in the water in front of the steep rocks, the writer adding his quota with the rest. I never learned the real significance of the performance, but anyone who passed on the lake with a loaded canoe in front of those rocks will know that such practice was very advisable to court the favor of the water sprite.
European traders and European colonization of the Americas, settlers reported in the 19th century that when out on the lake in canoes they would regularly hear unexplained noises coming from the underside of their boats, explained as being fish following the shadows of the canoes from one end of the lake to the other, keeping tabs on them for the supernatural creatures which also resided there. One account suggests that locals collected saucer-sized objects from the lake in the 1920s and 30s which were believed to be the Mugwump's scales. Reports of other cryptids, such as Bigfoot, also began to emerge in the region around this time. The first written documentation concerning the creature is from Jack Dent, reporting on the assertions made by his unidentified source in the ''North Bay Nugget'' on 20 April 1979. In the same article, Dent claimed that he had first been made aware of the creature ten years earlier in the late-1960s, and that the presence of such an animal in the lake could provide a boost to the town's tourism industry. Weeks later, journalist Mike Pearson published an account of Chuck Coull's early-1960s encounter with the Mugwump across two articles in ''The Temiskaming Speaker'', sparking a brief local obsession with the creature that would last several years. Though no official scientific investigation was done on the Mugwump, local newspapers attempted to capitalize on interest in the Mugwump by featuring many news articles and columns centred around it. The publications, including ''The Temiskaming Speaker'' also engaged in tabloid journalism to sensationalize the mystery, the most blatant being the 1982 article 'Tessie the monster stirs scientific world' which featured three explanations for the creature presented by three fictional cryptozoology, cryptozoologists. The journalist most central to reporting on the Mugwump was Ada Arney, who usually wrote about the creature under the pen name "Alice Peeper" but also used other pseudonym, aliases including "Dr. Pablo von McDonell" and "Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Wollstonescraft Sheltey". Arney occasionally claimed to be in contact with an anonymous biologist, who offered suggestions that the Mugwump was a palaeontology, prehistoric animal. Arney briefly ran a column, 'Of monsters and things', in ''The Temiskaming Speaker'' as the media cycle began to move on and interest in the Mugwump died down. Running from 10 February to 31 March 1982, Arney signed off on her final column about the mysterious creature with the following:
So if you follow the path of the flowers to Devil's Rock, chances are you may well see the monster as she swims by, forever seeking for her beloved.
Even after the initial media interest waned, sightings of the Mugwump were reported regularly in the Baie-des-Pères on the eastern side of Lake Timiskaming in the 1980s, particularly in Ville-Marie, Quebec, and along Vieux-Fort Road in the summer months. Sightings of the monster have continued into the current day. A video capturing a possible sighting of the creature was uploaded to YouTube on 28 July 2015.


Timeline


In popular culture

Author Joël Champetier uses the Mugwump as a central plot element in his 1994 horror fiction, horror novel ''La Mémoire du lac''. In the book, the "monster of Lake Temiscamingue" is a creature imprisoned in Lake Timiskaming which can be released if a father Child sacrifice, sacrifices his three children in exchange for the monster's freedom, inspiring the novel's antagonist Bowman to murder his two sons and attempt to kill his Illegitimacy in fiction, illegitimate son, Eric, to complete the ritual. The novel features several Algonquin people, Algonquin Anishinaabe traditional beliefs, traditional stories invented by Champetier to serve the plot of his story, and according to these fictional myths the monster's true identity is Ungak, the child of Nuliajuk who migrated to the lake at a time when sea levels were higher. In spring 2009, the band La Baie du Sauvage from Témiscamingue Regional County Municipality released their debut album ''Le monstre du lac'' (English: "The Lake Monster"). Musician Philippe B, who is also from the Abitibi-Témiscamingue List of regions of Quebec, region, also referenced the creature on his 2017 album ''La grande nuit vidéo'' with the song "Le monstre du lac Témiscamingue". The Mugwump is the subject of the 2018 poem "Mugwump" by Richard Stevenson (poet), Richard Stevenson. Stevenson depicts the Mugwump as a white sturgeon that has grown bitter over being misidentified.


See also

* Champ (folklore) * Memphre * Old Yellow Top * List of lake monsters


References

{{reflist Canadian folklore Canadian legendary creatures Mythological aquatic creatures Lake monsters