A-senee-ki-wakw

Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Abenaki Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A race of colossal stone-bodied beings whose every step displaced soil, crushed living things, and remade the landscape simply by passing across it.
Role in Mythos: The first race created by the Wabanaki culture hero Gluskab, made before the second race and before humans, and abandoned as a failed first draft of the world’s population.
Relation to Humans: The A-senee-ki-wakw lived before there were any humans to harm or help; their relevance to people lies in what their failure taught the creator. They are said to have been laid back into the earth, where they now rest as the ridgelines and mountains of northeastern North America.

A single footstep was enough to leave a crater. In the first age of the Wabanaki world, before there were people or even most animals, the ground rang dully under a kind of being made entirely of stone. They walked because Gluskab had told them to walk, and they walked badly, with the slow heavy gait of bodies whose own mass was a problem they had not been designed to solve. Behind them, forests lay flattened, streams ran turned aside, hares and small deer lay where a heel had come down on them by accident. None of this was malice. They simply could not move without breaking the world.

Gluskab made them first, before anything else, when the land was new and he needed a population to set into it. He took the bones of the earth and shaped them into people-sized figures, except that he had no clear sense yet of what people-sized ought to mean, and the figures he raised stood many times the height of a tall man. Their skin was a single piece of grey stone shot through with quartz veins. Their joints ground when they bent. Their eyes were not features so much as places where the granite went a little darker. Gluskab gave them breath and motion and watched, with the satisfaction of a craftsman, as the first of them took its first step. Then he watched the small concussion of that step travel through the dirt for some distance, and felt the satisfaction begin to leak away.

The stone giants were called A-senee-ki-wakw, and across the Wabanaki Confederacy, among the Abenaki, the Penobscot, the Passamaquoddy, the Maliseet, and the Mi’kmaq, the same outline of their story survives. They were the first race. They were too heavy for the world. The world told Gluskab so, in the bent backs of the spruces and the silenced birds. By the time the giants had been on the land a little while there were paths cut through the forests that nothing else could follow, and waters running where no water had run before, and the small living things were already growing scarce.

What the giants thought of all this is not recorded. The stories do not give them a voice. There is, in fact, no account of an A-senee-ki-wakw speaking at all. They wander through the early world like weather, vast and impassive, attending to whatever business stone might attend to, and the damage simply follows wherever they go. Some stories suggest they were peaceful. Others suggest they were proud. The thread the tellers agree on is that they could not help what they did.

Gluskab made his decision after watching them wear away the country for some time. He did not destroy them in anger and he did not cast them out. The accounts say only that he unmade them, returning them to the form he had taken them from. In some versions he laid them down across the landscape one by one, and they slipped back into the earth as ridges and ranges. In others he simply spoke a word, and the breath he had given them lifted out, and the standing figures folded down into rubble where they stood. The mountains across northeastern North America are said to be what is left of them. Travellers who feel a strange weight at a particular pass or hilltop are sometimes told they are crossing one.

After that, Gluskab tried again with smaller materials. He worked in wood next, and the second race had a different set of problems, lighter ones, mendable ones; later he made humans, properly sized. The stone giants are remembered in the Wabanaki cycle as the first attempt, the draft that had to be discarded. They were too big.

Their powers and their downfall are the same thing. The A-senee-ki-wakw were stronger than anything the early world contained, and they were stronger still than the early world could bear. They could break ground simply by standing on it. They could ford a river by stepping over it. Their stone skin was practically invulnerable; nothing native to the land they walked could mark them. But every stride displaced soil and crushed life, every settling of a shoulder shifted a hillside, and there was no smaller version of themselves available, no way to be a careful A-senee-ki-wakw. Their nature ran in only one register. Gluskab had built them with a switch that only went one way, and the switch was on.

The story is told without bitterness. The Wabanaki accounts do not blame the giants for what they were, and they do not quite blame Gluskab either; he is the one who fixed the mistake. What remains is a quiet, durable lesson about the price of getting scale wrong, and a country whose ridgelines are still understood, in some tellings, to be the patient bodies of a race that loved nothing, harmed everything, and was put gently to sleep.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the A-senee-ki-wakw?

The A-senee-ki-wakw are a race of colossal stone giants in Wabanaki mythology, with bodies of grey granite many times the height of a tall man. They were the first beings made by Gluskab, the Wabanaki culture hero and creator, and their weight made every step a small act of destruction across the early world.

Who created the A-senee-ki-wakw?

Gluskab, the Wabanaki creator and culture hero, shaped the A-senee-ki-wakw from the bones of the earth as the first race to live on the new land. They were his first attempt at populating the world, made before he turned to wood, animals, and eventually humans.

Why did Gluskab destroy the A-senee-ki-wakw?

Gluskab destroyed the A-senee-ki-wakw because their immense weight made them inadvertently destructive — every step flattened forests, diverted rivers, and crushed smaller life. The Wabanaki accounts describe the decision as a craftsman’s correction rather than a punishment; the giants could not help what they were, but the early world could not bear them.

What happened to the A-senee-ki-wakw after they were destroyed?

In some versions Gluskab laid the A-senee-ki-wakw down across the landscape one by one, and they slipped back into the earth as ridges and mountain ranges; in other versions he spoke a word and their breath lifted out, leaving them as rubble where they stood. The mountains of northeastern North America are said to be what is left of them.

Which Native peoples tell the A-senee-ki-wakw story?

The A-senee-ki-wakw appears across the Wabanaki Confederacy of the northeastern woodlands — the Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq. The Abenaki form of the name is the one most often given in printed sources, but the underlying story of Gluskab’s failed first race is shared across all five nations.