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Native American Powers


BrideofDracula

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I'm knew to this board so don't mind me if I am posting in the wrong board.

I remember stories that have been around for ages. Stories of people who are really powerful and that can change form. There are a few very poular stories about people getting into trouble and then shapeshifting into a rock or a tree so they would not be noticed.

The stories always say that is was someone whom was very powerful.

What do you think about This?

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All of the Indians I know call them Tricksters. They are mostly evil spirits(if I remember correctly) and hide their guts in tree stumps or under logs and rocks. If you find and destroy the guts, you get rid of the spirit.

Just what I was told. I'm not about to call a full-blood Choctaw a liar to his face.

I'll see if I can find any more info on it.

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welcome to the forum original.gif

well, i think that was a very interesting topic. alot of the indian tribes had beleived in a chosen one in their tribe. they would beleived that that chosen one would have powers like communicating with animals,spirits, ect.

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Well I'll just clarify my story a bit. I should have just told the story that I heard when I was originaly posting.

My cousin whom is like 30 years older than me. Told me that when the first settlers came around this area, there was a tribe that was settled not too far from a fort that they had built. Anyway one of the Native's went to go and check things out. He had gotten spotted, and not wanting to give the Location of the Camp he turned himself into a Buffalo skeleton. The riders passed over him not even glancing at the Buffalo skeleton. He was never deemed evil or anything, just that he had a very powerful spirit and a very talented gift.

That is one thing that I find so facinating about this and I dug deep to find out if there were anymore stories, and I hit the Jackpot when i asked my Brother if he had heard anything like that. He said that he heard as late as 1970 something. there was a guy that was able to shapeshift.

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Hey,

I do believe this... because in our country, the Philippines, we also have some local tribes, located in theVisayan isalnd, who can shapeshift into animals, and Blood-sucking vampire.

Although in our country this so called "Aswang" pronounced as "Ass Wang" are folklore legends, yet this are True. Because they are not your commonly belief vampires.

This Aswang are daywalkers, who appear to be Human, but changes it's original form at night. Hunting for food.

However, these American shapeshifters, Native American indian are not bloodsucking vampires.

Kindly correct me if I am wrong. My Shaman teacher was taught by a Hopi Indian.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The thing about Native American beliefs and legends is that you can't lump them all into one opinion. Different tribes have different beliefs, customs, and legends. Though many people are learning different things from each other the tradidtional beleifs are still very important. Yes, many tricksters are shapeshifters, and many tricksters can individually be evil, or naughty, or obnoxious, or good. Many by being selfish or naughty bring about something good in the creation stories. It's not necesarily a lesson that being bad will bring good things, it just explains why things are the way they are today. But many shapeshifters are good, and many good people can change shape. It is said at one time there was very little difference between animals and humans.

For example, The story of White Buffalo Calf Woman. The Sioux people at one time were starving and dying. Two men were sent out to find food. They saw a female white buffalo, and it approached them and before their eyes changed into a woman. She taught the Sioux people to hunt her people, the Buffalo, and to use everything from the body, waste nothing or risk starving again. She taught them to pray with the pipe and tobacco (no, marijuana was not used). She taught them the sundance. She taught them how to live.

There are those today who can shapeshift and use their abilities for good, there are others who use it for bad.

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  • 5 years later...
All of the Indians I know call them Tricksters. They are mostly evil spirits(if I remember correctly) and hide their guts in tree stumps or under logs and rocks. If you find and destroy the guts, you get rid of the spirit.

Just what I was told. I'm not about to call a full-blood Choctaw a liar to his face.

I'll see if I can find any more info on it.

I dont know if this is related, but my uncle swears he has seen enemy soldiers appear and disappear before his eyes in the jungles of Vietnam. He said they they appeared to be a small animal and became a man and charged him. He also said that they appear out of nowhere. As a scout/sniper, I know how hard it is to conceal yourself in any situation, but I have seen things I cant explain as well. I am very much inclined to think that this is a form of mind controlled illusion. I dont think it has anything to do with "evil" and more about the power of suggestion and will.

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I dont know if this is related, but my uncle swears he has seen enemy soldiers appear and disappear before his eyes in the jungles of Vietnam. He said they they appeared to be a small animal and became a man and charged him. He also said that they appear out of nowhere. As a scout/sniper, I know how hard it is to conceal yourself in any situation, but I have seen things I cant explain as well. I am very much inclined to think that this is a form of mind controlled illusion. I dont think it has anything to do with "evil" and more about the power of suggestion and will.

I've heard the same story from Ghurka's that I served with, when I was in the Belgian Armed forces. We were on a Nato exercise with British troops. One of them said that they also had such "tricksters" in his home region and that once he had seen one. Most of the others agreed to this, when he told the story. When I asked him if it might have been somthing that projected an illusion,he was adament that this was not the case, because it was not a sorcerer he had seen.

I'm not silly enough to call a full fledged Ghurka a liar, cause I don't want to end up on the business end of his khukuri knife. Besides, these are some of the most amazing warriors I've come across, so I tend to be inclined to believe he has seen something extraordinary.

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Well for one, the only people who ever encounter shape shifters are people who believe in them. What dos that tell you?

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Well for one, the only people who ever encounter shape shifters are people who believe in them. What dos that tell you?

Well, of course they are. If you saw someone change into an animal in front of your eyes, you would be a believer, wouldn't you??

Anyway, I am Native American myself, and have heard most of these stories growing up. Few Native Americans actually believe the stories. They are more like the stories in the Bible, not to be taken literally, but rather to carry a moral lesson. It is a scientific, and physical impossibility for a human to change into anything other than what they were born as. Shapeshifters, tricksters, aswan, and all other mythological creatures were born out of stories that were created by a more primitive people who didn't know rational explanations for the world around them. They created stories, such as these, to explain what was unknown to them at the time. However, in our modern world, where what was once a mystery to them, is now common knowledge in children, the perpetuation of stories such as these as fact is simply ludicrous.

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We shouldnt dicredit possibilities just because the existence of science. There remains things that can't be explained, and shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. There's a whole other side to the world rather than science.

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We shouldnt dicredit possibilities just because the existence of science. There remains things that can't be explained, and shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. There's a whole other side to the world rather than science.

Agreed, but there is a limit to possibilities. A human transforming themselves into other objects is a physical impossibility. Even the things that exist outside of science still have to obey the rules of the universe, i.e. physics and biology. Just because some things remain unexplained does not make them outside of the rules that everything else in the universe obeys, just simply outside of our understanding of how they use them.

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This is all that needs to be said.

I believe it is very possible, however it is within the Eyes and perception of the Viewer, the eye witness, as I believe the Human perception of the ‘viewer’ does at times alter, waver, as far as if other independent person or animal can effect/trick/altar the viewers visual perception, I do not know. :lol:

Edited by Enigmatic Ghost
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All of the Indians I know call them Tricksters. They are mostly evil spirits(if I remember correctly) and hide their guts in tree stumps or under logs and rocks. If you find and destroy the guts, you get rid of the spirit.

Just what I was told. I'm not about to call a full-blood Choctaw a liar to his face.

I'll see if I can find any more info on it.

It depends on what tribe your talking about, Each has a different name and story to go with the shape shifters....... But the basic story is they are evil and can turn into animals...

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I believe it is very possible, however it is within the Eyes and perception of the Viewer, the eye witness, as I believe the Human perception of the ‘viewer’ does at times alter, waver, as far as if other independent person or animal can effect/trick/altar the viewers visual perception, I do not know. :lol:

It is possible, if you are talking about someone being able to alter the viewers pespective. That is simply optical illusion, tricks of light, and distraction. We still see it nowadays with magicians and illusionists. It is physically impossible for a human to change form, but highly possible to make a person think they saw a person change form.

A good example is the ninja of old Japan. They were once thought to be magical because they could appear and disappear at will, right in front of someones eyes. However, it is common knowledge now that they simply used tricks of light, illusion, smokescreens, and distraction to make people think that they had just seen someone disappear. Same with Native Americans. Some would have figured out some of these simple tricks, and use them to their advantage, to intimidate or hide from their enemies. The people who witnessed this didn't know how to explain it other than that they saw them change form/disappear right before their eyes. Hence, the birth of such stories.

I once saw David Copperfield change himself into a tiger not more than 20 feet from where I was sitting. Did I actually beleive he changed himself into a tiger?? No, I knew from experience that it was a simple illusion. However, anyone who had never witnessed anything such as that, and who had no knowledge of the modern world, and who also was very superstitious, would actually believe they had just witnessed real magic.

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I believe it is very possible, however it is within the Eyes and perception of the Viewer, the eye witness, as I believe the Human perception of the ‘viewer’ does at times alter, waver, as far as if other independent person or animal can effect/trick/altar the viewers visual perception, I do not know. :lol:

It is not possible, the energy needed for such a change would vaporise every organ in your body. There is also issues with the conservation of mass.

As for seeing things in conflict etc. I think the stresses of war are a far more reasonable conclusion.

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How is it impossible for a human to change shape? There are other ways than the cut and dry shift your form into something different. That is difficult as hell to achieve and likely equally as painful, not to mention dangerous and likely fatal. It would also be harder to control and the shift may well be permanent. However, say you have another body waiting in an alternate dimension (which a form of science does actually prove, although only in theory...still, it's something). Native American shamans were generally known for their knowledge of and their travels into the spirit realms. Create a simple switch of the two forms (not that simple..heheh, but simpler than shifting strands of DNA), placing the human one in the other realm as opposed to the wolf or bear or deer, and viola! You've got shapeshifting. The process of switching the spirits could even make it look as though the body was shifting.

The spirit realm, aka, astral realm, is accessed through much practice and meditation, both things that shamans do often.

As I said in my last thread, science used to think the bee shouldn't be able to fly. They were all confounded as to why bees could fly until they realized that bees actually had flexible wings. Scientists said it couldn't be happening, but it was. It wasn't until they because they were looking at it the wrong way that they found their solution. Just because something may not be happening in a certain way, doesn't mean that it isn't.

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How is it impossible for a human to change shape? There are other ways than the cut and dry shift your form into something different. That is difficult as hell to achieve and likely equally as painful, not to mention dangerous and likely fatal. It would also be harder to control and the shift may well be permanent. However, say you have another body waiting in an alternate dimension (which a form of science does actually prove, although only in theory...still, it's something). Native American shamans were generally known for their knowledge of and their travels into the spirit realms. Create a simple switch of the two forms (not that simple..heheh, but simpler than shifting strands of DNA), placing the human one in the other realm as opposed to the wolf or bear or deer, and viola! You've got shapeshifting. The process of switching the spirits could even make it look as though the body was shifting.

The spirit realm, aka, astral realm, is accessed through much practice and meditation, both things that shamans do often.

Just to clarify, you are saying that it is switching bodies and leaving the human body on the "astral plane" and popping into an animal body here on/in this plane.

Gee. How hard would that be to "do". Hold on...

Ok. Back. I spent the last 20 seconds in the body of the deer in the woods near my home. Now I'm back in my body.

What this statement you made has done is give you a way to avoid ever having to provide real evidence. Nice.

As I said in my last thread, science used to think the bee shouldn't be able to fly. They were all confounded as to why bees could fly until they realized that bees actually had flexible wings. Scientists said it couldn't be happening, but it was. It wasn't until they because they were looking at it the wrong way that they found their solution. Just because something may not be happening in a certain way, doesn't mean that it isn't.

I'm sorry. You keep saying this. You know it's an urban legend right?

Paghat's Garden

From the link -

The "science has proved that bees can't fly" urban myth originated in a 1934 book by entomologist Antoine Magnan, who discussed a mathematical equation by Andre Sainte-Lague, an engineer. The equation proved that the maximum lift for an aircraft's wings could not be achieved at equivalent speeds of a bee. I.e., an airplane the size of a bee, moving as slowly as a bee, could not fly. Although this did not mean a bee can't fly (which after all does not have stationary wings like the posited teency aircraft), nevertheless the idea that Magnan's book said bees oughtn't be able to fly began to spread.

It spread at first as a joke in European universities, at Sainte-Lague's & Magnan's expense. But later it became a "fact" among the gullible or the uneducated not smart enough to get the joke. Later still it became a "fun" experiment to develop complex mathematical theories both to explain how insects fly, or why they can't -- scientific intellectual sophism.

This is just silly.

You seem to be dismissing science on the basis of urban legends you have heard about in order to allow your fantasy to continue.

Nibs

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How could you not provide evidence that way? The body still shifts, simply with much less energy expended and that also clears up the whole mass issue. You could still videotape the change, regardless of whether or not it is the body changing or a body switch. And I don't know about the rest of you, but if I had managed to shift into something else, I'd spend more than 20 seconds in that form. It is a theory regardless, so please don't jump to conclusions.

And no, I did not, thank you for pointing out that fact for me :) The point I made with it still stands, however. Just because you expect something to happen one way and one way only, doesn't mean it will.

Edited by wolfy23
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How could you not provide evidence that way? The body still shifts, simply with much less energy expended and that also clears up the whole mass issue. You could still videotape the change, regardless of whether or not it is the body changing or a body switch. And I don't know about the rest of you, but if I had managed to shift into something else, I'd spend more than 20 seconds in that form. It is a theory regardless, so please don't jump to conclusions.

And no, I did not, thank you for pointing out that fact for me :) The point I made with it still stands, however. Just because you expect something to happen one way and one way only, doesn't mean it will.

Ok. Video tape what exactly? Videotape a person going into a "trance" and then coming to and telling everyone what happened?

If you are talking about a human body changing in any way other than what is perfectly natural over the natural life span, it cannot happen.

Oh, it's not a theory. It's a story.

Nibs

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How is it impossible for a human to change shape? There are other ways than the cut and dry shift your form into something different. That is difficult as hell to achieve and likely equally as painful, not to mention dangerous and likely fatal. It would also be harder to control and the shift may well be permanent. However, say you have another body waiting in an alternate dimension (which a form of science does actually prove, although only in theory...still, it's something). Native American shamans were generally known for their knowledge of and their travels into the spirit realms. Create a simple switch of the two forms (not that simple..heheh, but simpler than shifting strands of DNA), placing the human one in the other realm as opposed to the wolf or bear or deer, and viola! You've got shapeshifting. The process of switching the spirits could even make it look as though the body was shifting.

The spirit realm, aka, astral realm, is accessed through much practice and meditation, both things that shamans do often.

As I said in my last thread, science used to think the bee shouldn't be able to fly. They were all confounded as to why bees could fly until they realized that bees actually had flexible wings. Scientists said it couldn't be happening, but it was. It wasn't until they because they were looking at it the wrong way that they found their solution. Just because something may not be happening in a certain way, doesn't mean that it isn't.

Which they reached with the help of hallucinogenic drugs.

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How is it impossible for a human to change shape?

Well because you body is pretty rigid thanks to a strong skeletal structure. The energy required to allow this to change shape is so high it would vaporise the rest of you. It isn't complicated.

As I said in my last thread, science used to think the bee shouldn't be able to fly. They were all confounded as to why bees could fly until they realized that bees actually had flexible wings. Scientists said it couldn't be happening, but it was. It wasn't until they because they were looking at it the wrong way that they found their solution. Just because something may not be happening in a certain way, doesn't mean that it isn't.

No, that is wholly untrue. Not knowing the mechanism is not thinking they should not be able to fly. Learn some basic science will you.

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Ok. Video tape what exactly? Videotape a person going into a "trance" and then coming to and telling everyone what happened?

If you are talking about a human body changing in any way other than what is perfectly natural over the natural life span, it cannot happen.

Oh, it's not a theory. It's a story.

Nibs

Correct it has absolutely no scientific value what so ever.

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