Monster Legend: Az’-I-Wû-Gûm Ki-Mukh’-Ti

Article by Cody Ray George

The anomalous shapes drew our attention like a dark beacon amidst the never-ending sheet of reflective, ice-laden water. If we had encountered one, we might’ve turned the umiak away and would’ve left the accursed creature in our wake. There were several — a family, no doubt — each as equally strange as the last. Scrawny bodies bound with tight muscles and dark olive scales, their snouts elongated and curled in a perpetual snarl.

When they spotted our craft, they froze in place to observe us before perking up the closer we drifted. I said to my brother, “They aren’t friendly. They don’t want us here.” He as well as another man from our tribe clutched their freshly sharpened spears and readied them against their chests. “We share this water,” he said with busy eyes flitting from one form to another as they slunk closer to the edge of the ice shelf they’d called an interim home.
“If they wish to injure us, we will surely wound them back.”
“Do you see the others?”
“The other walrus-dogs?”
“Yes! They’re hidden amongst the walruses — camouflaged, acting as though they belong!”

My brother considered my words before speaking something to the man next to him. They carefully lifted to their feet and directed everyone to maintain a slow, steady approach. “They’re demons masquerading as food. We’ve caught them,” he said. “And they’re not happy.”

“What are you planning to do, brother?” I expected an instant response, though I knew him well enough to put the pieces together myself. I wasn’t much of a warrior, nor was I someone who could drive my weapon into whatever looked at me wrong. My brother, however, was the most intuitive soul I’ve ever met, and many looked to him as a shaman of the hunt. The way he and the others prepared their spears certainly looked like they were preparing for another hunt, but when the walruses dispersed and left the walrus-dogs, the Az’-I-Wû-Gûm Ki-Mukh’-Ti, their stances switched as if ready to defend themselves from a potential slaughter.

The Inuits feared the creature known as Az’-I-Wû-Gûm Ki- Mukh’-Ti, a distorted version of the walruses they knew well. This creature was said to be covered in scales and boast large fangs as well as possessing the ability to kill a hunter with one strike of its tail alone.

Though not a common cryptid, it is a fairly well-established monster in the Inuit pantheon of curious creatures. It has been spotted in the Bering Strait and as far as the coast of Greenland by several tribes, however, one-on-one encounters are rare.

There is only one known case of an Az’-I-Wû-Gûm Ki-Mukh’-Ti approaching an umiak — a primitive watercraft — and killing everyone on board.
What made the Az’-I-Wû-Gûm Ki-Mukh’-Ti particularly interesting is its self-imposed role as a guardian of walruses and even hides among groups of walruses to stave off hunters.

We can thank the 18th-century explorer E.W. Nelson for this information! Though he claimed to have never encountered such a beast himself, his writings insist the Inuit people are very aware of the so-called walrus-dog. This information has continued to exist in the public sphere for over one hundred years after the release of his book, The Eskimo About Bering Strait (1900).