Googling in Twilight movie

Correspondent DMarks described the Indian portions of the Twilight movie, including the phony Quileute flashback. Now here's more on the subject.

In the movie, Bella Googles something--perhaps "Quileutes Legends"--and gets a hit list that includes the following:

Quileute Sources >> folktales
The Quileute have many folklore legends. A wolf called "The Beast" is said to
Another wolf called, "Midnight," named for an incident with a dark,
www.heathcliff.info/?page_id=117

(The screen cuts off the lines so we can't read the rest of them.)

She then clicks on the following:

Book results for Quileutes Legends
     Legends of the Slapping Beaver - by Patty Sanchez - 350 pages

This book is made up and it sounds a bit facetious, but never mind. Bella clicks on the book link and goes to the website for the fictional Thunderbird and Whale bookstore.

Bella locates the bookstore via Google, then goes there and buys a book. In it she finds a picture of a "Cold Ones" mask done in a Pacific Northwest art style. All these bits contribute to the idea that Meyer's fictional vampires are real.

Searching for Cold Ones

Next she Googles the phrase "cold ones" and gets a hit list that includes the following:

the cold ones Apotamkin: the only defense against the fanged Apotamkin
the dark is known to sink his long fangs into
www.freezerstorageDs.comXYZsdasd adfl561 -123k

She then goes to a mythology site and skims through pictures with the following captions:Demons of the night: Origins and C….

Egypt - India - Japan - Pacific Northwest - Asia

Egyptians: the immortal drink: the care the Egyptians took…graves manifested itself in

India: source of the Ganges

Peru: the demon's dismembermentThe Peruvian page shows what looks like four Mesoamericans (Maya or Aztec) cutting out a victim's heart. The victim is presumably a vampire. Although it looks like Mesoamerican-style art, it's undoubtedly made up.

This scene implies that killing vampires is what led to the Mesoamerican practice of human sacrifice. Not true, of course, and attaching the caption to Peruvians implies they sacrificed people too. In fact, it implies that South and Central American cultures were interchangeable and that everyone practiced human sacrifice.

A Native vampire?

I've never heard of the Apotamkin mentioned above. What exactly is it?A hairy "bogey-man" figure with long fangs. This myth is used to instill fear into children from venturing into areas alone and without parental guidance.

[Northeast Woodlands, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet]The two tribes listed live in Maine, not Washington. So Meyer is mixing and matching legends--conveying the idea that all Native cultures are the same and interchangeable.

Another posting tells us a bit more:

Beyond Twilight:  The Truth About the Quileute, La Push, Cold Ones, and Apotamkin

By Allison ShellAccording to the native-languages.org's page on Quileute Legends, "There are no Quileute legends about "Cold Ones" or other vampires. Stephenie Meyer, the author of the "Twilight" books, has stated that she made this fictional vampire legend up herself and only had her Quileute character tell it for the purposes of her plot." The site goes on to explain that other parts of the book do come from true Quileute legends and myths, and that one Quileute legend is that the tribe is descended from wolves that then changed into men.

In a blog post about New Moon, Stephanie Meyer further herself addresses the issue: "The Quileute (Quill-yoot) legends Jacob tells Bella in chapter six of Twilight are all genuine Quileute stories that I learned when I was researching the tribe (which is a real tribe with a truly fascinating and mystical history). All actual Quileute legends, except for the vampire myth about the 'cold ones.'" She goes on to say that she realized that she could really work with the Quileute wolf legends because of her existing beliefs based on what she had always heard--that vampires and werewolves were enemies at heart.

The Apotamkin, however, is very real in Native American legend. According to the book Vampire Universe by Jonathan Maberry, the Apotamkin is a legend of the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy tribe. The creature is hairy with long fangs, and some consider it to be the Native American version of a vampire.This posting nicely summarizes the misinformation Meyer is spewing.

From what I've read, the Quileutes have a legend about a wolf giving birth to the first man. Period. That's different from a race of wolves that changed into a race of men--a race that can change back and forth.

Moreover, in New Moon, Meyer spins a whole spiritual and cultural history of the Quileute tribe, with the Indians releasing "spirit warriors" from their bodies like Dr. Strange's astral projections. This is before she gets to the part about the Quileutes adopting wolf forms to fight the Cold Ones.

So Meyer is fibbing when she says her werewolf legends are true. What she means is that the source of her werewolf legends--a wolf giving birth to the first man--is true. The rest of her Quileute and werewolf legends are false and have no basis in genuine Quileute lore. She's fabricated the Quileutes' history and religion to tell her story.

In addition, Shell seems to have gotten the message about the Apotamkin. She doesn't say it's a Maliseet-Passamaquoddy vampire, she says it's a "Native American" vampire. If Maine's Indians believe in it, Washington's Indians must too.

For more on the subject, see Quileute Werewolves in Twilight.

Below:  Someone's drawing of an Apotamkin.