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Stick Indian


Gatofeo

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This isn't merely an Indian legend. I've seen reports of "stick" or insect-like humanoids from all over North America. One made them resemble highly-intelligent praying mantises four of five feet tall while others seem more like tall, spindly-thin humanoids. Some UFOlogists have attempted to link "stick people" with extraterrestrials, but what paranormal creatures haven't been so linked?

Edited by OldTimeRadio
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  • 9 months later...

well im a coeur d'alene and ive lived on the rez for a lot of my life and ive been told this story counltless times. a stickindian is a old indian legend about these shadows that lure people into the woods and made them stay for ever never to be seen again. whisteling in the nigtht would call them to you, and at powwows every one sits in a ring around a drum and plays as a call upon the stickindains. they were kind of like gods, these great mythical creatures that were to be feared and respected. if you called them you needed to have good reason or they would take your shadow away for ever(shadow is your spirit) and you would never see the afterlife. or something like that. the legend gets a little fuzzy from teller to teller until you get strange mutations in the story and then its lost.

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Why would aliens target one particualar race?

Aw heck, you don't know your aliens!

They're crazy about gambling! You go into any Indian casino and you'll see the weirdest people playing the slots -- aliens in a bad disguise! :rolleyes:

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  • 10 months later...

I am a member of a western Washington tribe and I was taught that Stick Indians were evil spirits that will kidnap you and make you their slave if you break certain "rules"

stuff like don't eat food in a cemetery or don't whistle at night...

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  • 11 months later...

I'm of Quinault Tribe and the stick indian story is very well known here on the coast of washingtoin state. Can even find a picture in one of the Taholah school senior class photos

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I'm of Quinault Tribe and the stick indian story is very well known here on the coast of washingtoin state. Can even find a picture in one of the Taholah school senior class photos

Provide the picture please. Surely you didn't join the forum just to say this?

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  • 2 weeks later...

i rem,eber reading something about a "stick man" in the Kaya American Girl Doll books.

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  • 10 months later...

In 1970, my fiancé and I decided on a whim to drive from the University of Idaho over to the Washington coast and go camping. We borrowed a tent from a friend and drove all day and decided to spend the night at Kalaloch Campground. There was only one other camper who left later as a storm started to blow in. We piled into the tent as the storm intensified. Now when I say it got pretty scary let me underscore that by saying the waves pounding the beach were so loud you had to yell to be heard. Then the wind and rain blew through one wall and out the other side of my friend’s tent, that he assured us was water proof. With branches and debris hitting the tent I made the command decision to move into the VW bug. Well anyone who has ever ridden in one know they are not very spacious so I being the bigger body got into the passenger side. We were so tired we did fall asleep in the midst of the storm shaking the car.

Sometime during the night I felt my car door open and I fell out on my back. I was laying on the ground looking up at three human figures that were looking down at me. The storm was gone and it was absolutely still and I could see a starry night. I was looking at the heavens through these transparent figures. They were tall and thin and dressed in Native American clothing so I assumed they were Indians. The tallest one stood in the middle of the other two and wore a more elaborate headpiece of feathers. They never spoke a word that I could remember but I felt no fear and strangely just the opposite. I felt safe and felt the experience as if they were somehow showing me affirmation. Literally that they were proud of me. I don’t know how to describe it any other way. I suddenly awoke to my fiancé asking me what was wrong . I knew if I told her she would not be able to go back to sleep and would want to leave immediately. I sensed we were completely safe and would actually be watched over.

Early the next morning we awoke and she wanted to know what had happened and I told her. She said she was awakened by the sound I made. She said it was strange not like a scream of horror or fear but more like a gasp of awe.

She wanted to just pack up and move on without breakfast. We had to lift large limbs out of the way to get out of the campground. I thought to myself it was a miracle neither we nor the car were hit. So we headed south along the coast passed a car on the side of the road . A short time later we came upon a couple walking along the road. It had been their car that was broken down so we offered to give them a ride to a relative’s house. They asked us what we were doing and we told them we were on spring break and had camped at Kalaloch that night in the storm.

They both then exclaimed with surprise and some horror when they found out where we had camped. We said why what wrong with that other than the storm? They then related to us that the campground was allegedly an Indian burial ground and the locals would never stay there because of things that were reported to happen there. He said they were referred to by the early white men as the stick Indians because they were tall and thin.

That is when my fiancé blurted out OMG tell them what happened. I then proceeded to tell them my story. As we arrived at their destination they both exclaimed that we were very lucky to have gotten out of there unscathed. To this day my experience has never scared me. I have always thought of it in awe that I had seen what I saw.

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Sounds like a wendigo. Maybe some kind of spin-off of that legend? I believe the wendigo was native american in origin also.

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  • 1 year later...

Stick Indians

In 1954 I was living at the Colville Indian Agency just south of Nespelem WA. with my mother, Elisabethe, and my three half brothers, Mike, Jim and Gary. My mom was a BIA employee, sent from the area office in Portland OR. filling the position of I.I.M. clerk there. We lived in the first house, still standing, inside the old cattle guard gate on the north side.

I was chosen to be accepted by tribal leaders into the community and I was made privy to some tribal rituals and secrets. I was gifted a orphan colt, that I had to bottle feed, who I named Poco Gris Raton, or in English, "Little Gray Mouse", or Mouse because he was little, and gray, like a mouse. My new Dad, mentioned below, got rid of my horse.

My mom remarried while there, a man named Elmer "Bill" Smith, another BIA employee, an agricultural engineer from Texas, and he drove a wrecked and rebuilt 1941 Ford Deluxe Station Wagon that was made into a pickup truck. My brothers and I had to ride in the back, "Indian Style",save Gary who was only two. Mickey, and Jimmy, my two younger brothers who are identical twins, were around 7 yrs. old, and I, 9 or 10. The truck had a canvas top over the cab and rear bed, which we filled with blankets and quilts to keep warm. North central Washington State, particularly the Okanogan Valley is cold at night in the fall, winter and spring seasons. The old Ford was good for dirt roads and such and "Dad Smith" dubbed it " The Grasshopper."

Now to the "Stick Indian" episode I experienced. I was befriended by a young Indian boy, who's name I remember as Duane DePoe. We were returning from Owhi Lake, in the early evening, riding in the back of The Grasshopper, when I looked out the back and thought I saw "beings" following or peering from the tops of roadside trees. I cried out, "look"! I was told that the seemingly tall thin beings were " Stick Indians" or "It'ste-yaha. It was further explained to me that they could be a benefit to me if I lived "right", or torment and harm me if I was bad. Sort of like The Jinn. I know what I saw and I have a sense of their presence from time to time.

A footnote: By no coincidence, I attended Chief Joseph Grade School In N. Portland Or.,before moving to the Agency and the Colville Indian School at Nespelem, for a time after moving there. My new "Dad", who, in acts, words and thought thinks himself an instrument of Manifest Destiny, and hated the people he served, again took away my new schooling life, and sent me to school in Coulee Dam. I wish to make the point that Chief Joseph, "Hinmatoo la' lot keet" was interred at Nespelem, following his death.

Edited by blanca tatonka
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  • 3 months later...

I was just Googling to see what I could find out about this legend. When I was a kid growing up in a coastal town in Washington, we had some other kids that sometimes moved into town from the reservation (Quinalt) and lived in a condemned house down the street. They usually stayed during the school year or until they were evicted. We played with them a lot and had some fun times.

One of the most memorable things was telling "ghost" stories. They always had better ones. Ours were silly in comparison. Of the several that I remember, the "stick men" was the most fascinating. It turns out that they were sort of telling the story of Pugwis or a similar spirit. Stick men were spirits that could roll in mud, twigs, and sticks to cover their bodies. When you're out in the woods and you catch a glimpse of something, but then can't see what it was, it was likely a stick man. When the stop moving, they blend into the background so that they become invisible.

They tend to be in the woods but in our area they like to be near the beach. The can roll in seaweed and eel grass and sleep in the driftwood. Often a big rolled-up bunch of seaweed is a sleeping stick man. They are relatively harmless, but they will entice children into the woods where their female mates (Dzonokwa) will eat them. It is Dzonokwa that hoots like an owl. She also knows how to imitate every child's grandmother's voice to lure them into her lair.

Anyway, all of their stories were soooooo much scarier than ours. Most of them had to do with making sure kids didn't wander off, or went to sleep when they were told to. I remember it made walking home in the dark really spooky.

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For such an old thread, there are some good stories here. Your's as well, gnome-honey.

Welcome to UM by the way! :)

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  • 2 months later...

  • Perhaps you are referring to "Stickman"? I grew up in Shelton,Wa and up beyond Capital hill there was an old Indian Graveyard in the woods. It was unmarked, but somehow us highschool kids learned about it. Legend has it that there was a "Stickman" GHOST that protected the headstones there of the elderly. We used to go out there at night and scare the girls with us walking through the woods, hearing sticks crack, the feeling of someone watching you. I have heard of headstones turning around after you pass them. I remember once about four of us went out there and got back in there quite a ways and we saw something move, the hair stood up on the back of our necks and arms we heard movement all around us, not just from one direction. We all freaked out and the girls started crying, we just wanted to get out of there. We all sort of huddled and tried to come up with a game plan. I just said stay tight and B line it for the truck so we did. Never again will I go back there, I think it's best to leave them alone. I have heard since then that the person who owned the property has moved all that away. They have paved the road by what used to be a dirt road. I hope that the person who moved all that never got harmed by the "Stickman", I sure wouldn't have done it.

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  • 1 year later...

I live on a reservation in the northwest and ever since I was young I was warned not to whistle in the woods or say their name. Especially at night. But I heard them described as very thin, like skin and bone, and sometimes with long hair. Unlike Bigfoot where he is supposed to be big and hair all over. They will lure you out with tricks and whistling, so if you hear whistling in the woods, ****. 

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  • 1 month later...

Stick people are not Sasquatch.

I saw stick people in 1963 when we lived in Grand Rapids, Manitoba.

They came inside our shack when I was young and left after they tickled me.

My sister saw them do this from the other room.

We told our mother the next day and she called them boogeymen.

Stick people are exactly how they are described. They are very skinny, have flat heads. They are perfectly black.

Their heads were almost perfectly round and they do have a face, 

I was too young to catch any facial expressions.

They were looking in the window and I actually let them inside.

I don't know what they wanted with me, but I remember being tickled while I was on the floor against a round tub un the room at the time.

My sister talked about these creatures all of our lives but never came to any plausible explanation. 

That's what I know.

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On 1/30/2012 at 11:33 AM, RhymesOrange said:

I'm of Quinault Tribe and the stick indian story is very well known here on the coast of washingtoin state. Can even find a picture in one of the Taholah school senior class photos

i remember that! i'm still unsure if those were actual "stick Indians" or if they were dolls. They sure looked like dolls. The uncle said he went up there after the picture was taken and said that the photographer got lucky(or whom ever). Something about the way the brush and such had grown and made it look like there were stick Indians there....

Sadly, i don't remember much of Stick Indian "lore".

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  • 2 weeks later...

From what i have heard they are the angry spirits of native people who died tragically or were not given proper burial thus never felt capable of moving on. Supposedly they are illusive and dangerous and according to what i have heard they know when people speak of them and it is thought that they may torment those who do speak of them. This would be the main reason they are so unheard of. I believe in the afterlife and the occult and think the existence of the "Stick Indians" to be very likely though i do believe they are specific to a certain people or land. My sister and mother have worked closely with some of the Washington state tribes and have heard many stories.  

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  • 4 months later...

Mr_Nobody

 and SoLLiZ are right. LadyHawke75 doesn't know what he or she is talking about. They are not called Stick Inidians, they are called Stick People and they will help you if you are lost in the forest, a common occurrence in the forested areas of the Pacific Northwest. One thing though, is that you have to understand that Warm Springs is a reservation filled with a few different cultures. Warm Springs are just one of many. Some of us are still arguing about things that happened long ago. Stick people blend into the forest, like tree limbs or branches, thus the name stick people. It can be spooky to walk in a forest and things are moving all of the time, so this native myth is not an urban myth, but one formed a long time ago by a natural fear and respect for the sublimity of Nature. With this, you can understand that the stick people are predominately from tribes west of the Cascades. The east side is more of a desert. The kidnapping element of Stick People is a bit stretched in its modern form, but you have to understand that a lot of tribes in this area were fighting with one another and would take prisoners, placing prisoners in a form of servitude. So, getting kidnapped was a real threat, not from a mythological fear. The politics between two tribes fighting would be difficult to explain to a young one.

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i live near the yakama indian reservation and it is a well known "legend" among the Yakama people. it is almost taboo to even talk about it. It would be nice if that could be investigated with depth to hear some of the stories about it.

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On 3/2/2010 at 7:43 PM, N8iveR3Zbird said:

well im a coeur d'alene and ive lived on the rez for a lot of my life and ive been told this story counltless times. a stickindian is a old indian legend about these shadows that lure people into the woods and made them stay for ever never to be seen again. whisteling in the nigtht would call them to you, and at powwows every one sits in a ring around a drum and plays as a call upon the stickindains. they were kind of like gods, these great mythical creatures that were to be feared and respected. if you called them you needed to have good reason or they would take your shadow away for ever(shadow is your spirit) and you would never see the afterlife. or something like that. the legend gets a little fuzzy from teller to teller until you get strange mutations in the story and then its lost.

I have heard this from Warm Springs people too.  Sometimes they become like the bogeyman for little kids, but adults have told me a few stories too.

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On 8/22/2016 at 9:29 PM, Tundra said:

From what i have heard they are the angry spirits of native people who died tragically or were not given proper burial thus never felt capable of moving on

I never heard that.

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