Wana-games-ak

Also Known As: also Wanagemeswak, Manogemasak, Manôgemasak, Wonakomehsok, Oonahgemessuk; singular Wanagames, Manogames, Wonakomehs
Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Abenaki Mythology, Native American Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: Their faces are so narrow that they vanish when seen head-on and can only be made out in profile.
Role in Mythos: They are the resident little people of Wabanaki rivers, living in the banks alongside the people who fish and travel the water.
Relation to Humans: They are generally well disposed toward the Wabanaki and leave small clay shapes along the riverbank that bring luck to whoever finds them. When slighted, or simply in the mood, they capsize canoes, tear fishing nets and make a nuisance of themselves in the shallows.

Below the White Mountains, where the Saco spreads itself thin over summer sand, there is a run of cold ledge and green pool that the Penobscot called Oonahgemessuk weegeet, the home of the water fairies. Holidaymakers arrived and renamed it Diana’s Bath. Charles Leland, who copied the older name down in 1884, thought the swap absurd, and he had a point. Every resort town in America had a Diana’s Bath. Only one river in that valley had these particular tenants.

They are small. Every account agrees on that much and then hurries on to the detail that nobody forgets once they have heard it, which is the face. A Wana-games-ak is so narrow through the head that it barely exists when it turns toward you. Seen from the side it is a whole person, with a nose running the full length of the profile like the edge of a hatchet. Seen from the front it is a line in the air. Stand at the wrong angle on a gravel bar and the creature three paces away is simply not there.

Their houses are in the banks. Not on them, in them, in the cracks and cavities where the current has undercut the stone and the roots hang down wet. Leland’s Passamaquoddy tellers described them as half stone themselves, kin to the dwellers under Katahdin, and the description fits the way they are found: not walking into view but resolving out of a rock face that a moment ago held nothing but shadow and dripping moss. On quiet water at dusk they take canoes out, small ones, and are gone before anyone gets close enough to be sure.

The likeliest way to meet one is not to meet one at all. Where the river slackens and drops a shelf of grey silt, shapes come up out of the mud: a bird, a bear, something with a face, pressed and smoothed and left to dry in the sun. These are their work. A person who spots one and takes it away carries the luck of it, and the Wabanaki knew better than to walk a silt bank without looking down.

The mischief runs the other way just as easily. A man paddles a stretch he has paddled a thousand times, in slack water, in daylight, with nothing under the hull but sand, and the canoe goes over anyway. He comes up spitting river and rights it and finds nothing to blame. Later he hauls his net and it opens along a seam, torn as neatly as if a knife had been drawn down it. There is no malice in this that anyone can point to. It is simply what they do when the mood takes them, and it costs a morning rather than a life.

Their homes are marked. Boulders along the water carrying geometric scratches and lines are read as the doorstep of a Wana-games-ak family, and the rule is old and simple: leave them alone. The stone is not a shrine and nobody prays at it. It is somebody’s front step, and a person with any sense does not stand on it.

Nobody wrote down where they came from. The stories that survive are stories of encounter rather than of origin, which is the usual shape of Wabanaki little-people lore, and it leaves a gap that no honest telling can fill. What did get recorded, and recorded well, is how thoroughly they belong to the water. Frank Speck gathered the Penobscot material in 1935 for the Journal of American Folklore, decades after Leland had taken down the Passamaquoddy version of the same beings under a different spelling, and the two records agree on the essentials without agreeing on a single letter of the name.

That is worth saying plainly, because the name is a small chaos. Manogemasak, Manôgemasak, Wanagemeswak, Wonakomehsok, Oonahgemessuk, Wu-nag-mes-wook, W’nag’meswak: more than twenty English transcriptions of one Algonquian word, some Abenaki-Penobscot, some Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, each collector spelling by ear. Wana-games-ak is one of those attempts. It happened to be the one that got copied into an English list and then copied out of it again, over and over, until it became the version most readers meet first.

What they can do is bounded by what they are. The near-invisibility is not a spell they cast but a fact of their build, and it works only along one axis, which makes it both remarkable and easy to defeat by walking a few feet sideways. They know their own stretch of river the way a person knows a kitchen in the dark, and that knowledge is what lets them tip a canoe on flat water and be gone before the paddler surfaces. They shape clay well enough that their work is recognisable as work. They can hand out luck, in the small denominations of luck that folklore actually deals in.

What they cannot do is leave. They are held to the banks and the pools and the marked stones, and there is no story of one following a person home, taking a human shape, or reaching past the waterline into a village. Their anger, such as it is, spends itself in wet clothes and ruined nets. Anyone determined to give offence would have to go looking for it, out to the boulders with the old scratched lines on them, and start prying.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Wana-games-ak?

The Wana-games-ak are small river-dwelling spirit beings from Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet folklore. They live inside rocky riverbanks and are best known for having faces so narrow they can only be seen in profile. The name appears in more than twenty English spellings, including Wanagemeswak, Manogemasak and Oonahgemessuk.

Why can Wana-games-ak only be seen from the side?

Their heads are flattened to a blade-thin profile, so a Wana-games-ak seen head-on is effectively a line in the air rather than a visible figure. From the side the being resolves into a complete small person with a nose running the whole length of the face. The narrowness is described as part of their build rather than a power they use deliberately.

Are the Wana-games-ak dangerous?

No. The Wana-games-ak are generally friendly toward the Wabanaki people, and their worst behaviour is mischief rather than harm: capsizing canoes, tearing fishing nets and making trouble in the shallows. They are bound to the rivers and there are no accounts of one following a person away from the water.

What are the clay figures left by the Wana-games-ak?

When clay or silt along a riverbank sets into shapes resembling people or animals, those forms are said to be sculptures made by the Wana-games-ak. Finding one is considered good luck for the person who picks it up. Boulders near the water carrying geometric markings are read differently, as the entrance to a Wana-games-ak family’s home, and are left undisturbed.

Where does the name Wana-games-ak come from?

It is one of many English transcriptions of a single Algonquian word, recorded by different collectors spelling by ear across Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet communities. Charles Leland wrote it as Oonahgemessuk in 1884 and Frank Speck recorded the Penobscot material in 1935 under yet another spelling. Wana-games-ak is the version that most often reaches English-language readers.