The wendigo is believed to be apart of traditional belief system of a number
of Algonquin-speaking people, including the Ojibwe, The Saulteaux, The Cree,
the Naskapi, and the Innu. Although the descriptions of the beast can vary 
somewhat, common to all these cultures is the view that the wendigo is a
malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural being. They were strongly associated with
winter, the north, famine, and starvation. 

Basil H Johnson, an Ojibwe teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives a description 
of a wendigo;

"The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled 
tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out of its skin, its complexion
the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushing back deep into its sockets, the 
Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What
lips it had were tattered and bloody.. Unclean and suffering from suppuration of
flesh, The Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie oder of decay and decomposition,
of death and corruption." 

In Ojibwe, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, Naskapi, and Innu lore, wendigos 
are often described as giants that are many times larger than human beings, a
characteristic absent from myths in other Algonquin cultures. Whenever a wendigo 
ate another person, it would frow in proportion to the meal it had just eaten,
so it could never be full. Therefore, wendiogos are portrayed as simutaneously 
gluttonous and extremely thin due to starvation.