The Wendigo

The Main Legend

The Wendigo is the name of a popular mythological creature in Native American folklore. The creature is basically a kind of hunger spirit:
Sam: Wendigo is an Indian word. It means "evil that devours".

This episode gives a rather misleading impression about the Wendigo. Typically humans can "become" similar creatures to those depicted on the episode, but we wouldn't say that they become Wendigo so much as the Wendigo "becomes" them - they get possessed. The "evil that devours" is the spirit/demon possessing the person, rather than what the person turns into because of this spirit's influence.

For that reason, this sort of thing is misleading too:
Hailey: How does a man turn into one of those things?
Dean: Well it’s always the same. During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help. He becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp.

I'm afraid this is another one of Supernatural's overspecificisations. It could happen this way, but equally, any cannibal runs the risk of being possessed, and not all cannibals will be possessed. That means we run into some problems with this speech too:

Dean: They’re hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian, other times a frontiersman or a miner or a hunter.
Of course, this is also generally correct, (although I've never heard anything about the Wendigo life expectancy.) since not many people practice cannibalism anymore, but it is probable that not all the Wendigo would be this old. Further, since a Wendigo gets taller and thinner with every human it consumes, the older ones should be really massive by now.

By the way, just to clarify the map above...
Dean: Oh come on, Wendigos are in the Minnesota woods or northern Michigan. I’ve never even heard of one this far west

Other Minor Legends