Skin-walkers

A little known legend of the Navajo people is that of the Skin-walkers, people with the power to transform themselves into animals. They are quite similar to the legends of werewolves popular in European mythology with a few key distinctions. The biggest difference between the two is that the skin-walkers are completely in control of their actions while werewolves are compelled by the curse. The other difference is that werewolves only become wolfs while skin-walkers are able to become any animal they chose depending on the job.

Creation of a Skin-Walker

Skin-walkers are said to be witches who have preformed some kind of dark ritual in order to obtain the power to transform into an animal by wearing its pelt. The rituals to gain the power of becoming a skin-walker include crimes such as incest, killing of a blood relative, necrophilia, and cannibalism. It is believed that committing these crimes was such a heinous act that it would destroy your humanity allowing one to gain supernatural powers. The vast majority of these witches are said to be men though they can be women as well, some stories say that only women without children can become a witch. It is said that if a person encounters a skin-walker and knows who they are they can later say their full name and doing so will cause the person to fall gravely ill or die three days later.

Rituals

The rituals preformed by the witches are often very similar to those the tribe healers would preform only changing a few things such as using ash rather than sand to change it from a blessing to a curse. Another similarity to European traditions is that the rituals would often be a blessing chanted backwards to make it into a curse.  One important ingredient in these rituals was the ground bones of a dead infants fingers and skull. It was believed that by having another inhale these they would go into convulsions and die. 

Purpose of the Myth

Much like the wendigo story we looked at earlier it appears that the skin-walker legends are warnings against breaking cultural taboo. A notable difference though is that while the wendigo myth is specific to one taboo one can become a skin-walker through breaking one of many taboos. 

Modern Influences

Skin-walkers have appeared in a variety of television shows, most notably The X-files, Supernatural, and Smallville. They also appear in several other lesser known series and books, and a similar character is featured in the Mortal Kombat video game series.