Makoons

by Louise Erdrich

  Nokomis watched him go. She got up every morning before sunrise to sit in her little arbor and watch her garden wake up to the day. She leaned on her diamond willow cane—already it had come in handy.

  ELEVEN

  THE SORROW OF THE BUFFALO

  After that first hunt, the buffalo herds didn’t come near again. Time after time, the scouts went out looking. Fishtail, Animikiins, and others from Little Shell’s band traversed the distances. They hunted deer, geese, and antelope and brought these home to their families, along with stories of new lands, but they did not find the buffalo. The Strawberry Moon, Ode’imini-giizis passed. Then Aabitaa-niibino-giizis, Halfway Moon, was nearly past too.

  The little calf was getting big and ranging farther from the boys now, though he always returned. The twins worried that someone would hunt him, but instead, one of Little Shell’s best men, whose name was Shield, came to visit one evening. The young buffalo always slept near the cabin, and was standing in its place with the horses when this man arrived with his sacred pipe.

  “Can I speak with your buffalo child?” Shield asked the twins.

  They agreed, mystified, to be polite. But they thought that Shield might be crazy. They came along with him.

  Shield lighted his pipe and smoked it near the buffalo. He offered the buffalo a smoke, which was a sign of great respect. The buffalo calf snorted and tossed its head—which meant either the smoke was bothering his eyes, or he was honored.

  “What does it mean when he shakes his head so?” asked Shield.

  “It means he is honored,” said Makoons.

  Shield nodded, ahaw, and spoke directly to the buffalo.

  “We have a request. I am asking you to call your people. We miss them. We need them. We will not harm you,” said Shield. “But our people need to live. Please help us. Bring us the generous ones.”

  Shield took some yellow paint from a horn he carried, and decorated the buffalo’s forehead. He gave the paint to the twins.

  “Put this on him every day,” said Shield, “so that the hunters know he is sacred. We have asked him to help us, and I think he will.”

  A few days later, the scouts returned, troubled. They had seen only one small herd of ten buffalo, and at such a great distance that they’d lost them among the gulches of the strange and beautiful carved-up land farther west. One old man said that the buffalo had come from a hole in the earth and could return to live underground at any time they chose. Others maintained that the great herds had stopped traveling up and down the Red River because of something they didn’t like.

  This thing the buffalo did not like appeared. It terrified and mystified Makoons and Chickadee the very next day, as they were pulling in a big catfish.

  They heard a regular pounding noise coming from the south, a great distance away. It sounded like a giant woman was making pemmican with her grinding stone. Their buffalo calf took off like a flash, running back toward the safety of home. Makoons and Chickadee hid on a small overlook, curious but also dizzy with fear. The noise came closer, closer, and then like a mad beast it gave a shriek! The boys tried to run, but their legs gave out. They huddled in the grass and peered at the water. Now it was upon them, and then slowly, grandly, passing them. It was a boat like none they’d ever seen before. Belching blasts of stinking clouds, paddles lashed together into a giant wheel, it screamed again. Upon the huge boat sat a house with people sitting in the windows. Bright flags flew from the sides. Men ran up and down the decks and the boys even saw a woman, clad in an enormous skirt, holding over her head some cloth tied to a pole. Their fear vanished, for obviously the thing did not harm people. Still, they stayed hidden. Makoons and Chickadee looked at each other in wonder.

  “Did you see anything like this in St. Paul?”

  “Not this,” said Chickadee. “There were giant houses, and I heard there were giant boats, but I didn’t see one.”

  Slowly, shrieking, pounding, moaning, it passed them.

  “The buffalo don’t like this thing,” said Makoons.

  “Where’s our calf?”

  “He ran away of course.”

  “I guess that proves what the people say.”

  The boat was gone, just noise and disruption and slow swirling water now.

  Makoons and Chickadee walked home with the fish they’d caught, and they didn’t say much to each other as they walked along. The steamboat was exciting, but also disturbing—if it drove away the buffalo, how would they live?

  Finally, the scouts, Fishtail among them, rode into camp with the news of a vast herd, and the little settlement exploded. The carts were loaded, the horses and ponies packed up, the hunters ready. Again, there would be some left behind to keep an eye on the cabins—Deydey, Nokomis, and Yellow Kettle too. This time the Michif people also came along. They brought their priest. He rode a shambling gray horse and led a pony packed high with all his gear. As the great squeaking, laughing, crying, thundering, living train of people and animals began its journey to the hunt, Makoons and Chickadee took leave of their beloved grandparents. They tried to leave their buffalo calf behind, too, but he insisted on trailing them, grazing as he went. Ever since Shield had given them the paint, they had blazed a yellow mark on his brow and also, for good measure, on his flanks.

  “I am worried he’ll be sad when he sees his people hunted down,” said Makoons.

  “Me too,” said Chickadee. “I plan to tie some kind of cloth over his eyes.”

  “Good idea!”

  Looking ahead, they saw Gichi Noodin, prancing along as usual with his red and blue finger-woven sash flowing in the breeze, stirred by the antics he put his horse through.

  “That sash would make the perfect blindfold.”

  “It would befit our noble little buffalo brother.”

  “We can’t steal, it would shame our father.”

  “Though it would not shame Two Strike!”

  “Geget! She would be proud of us!”

  “Maybe we can trade with him, convince him to give it to us.”

  The days of travel were long. The boys had plenty of time to devise a plan.

  Each evening when the camp stopped, the boys now hunted hard, using the bows that Deydey had perfected. They hunted along the streams and sloughs. Since the winter when they’d had trouble bringing down a partridge from a tree, and Zozie had saved their pride, they’d become so adept with their bows and sharp arrows that they hardly ever missed their game. With the hunters riding ahead to locate the buffalo, the food they killed was important for the rest of the camp. They brought in geese, ducks, muskrats, beaver, rabbits, grouse, prairie chickens, and even gophers. They skinned them all and kept the skins to sell to the trader. Their hopes that Mariette could influence their prices were even better. She was along on the hunt with her family and had left her lovesick trader behind, but they saw Zozie talking with her and nodded sagely at each other. They would make sure the girls were along when it came time to trade.

  Omakayas depended on what her sons brought in for her evening stews. There was trail food, pemmican, but they had to make that last as long as possible. Besides, pemmican could be traded for other things they needed. As the boys fantasized that they were mighty, grown-up invincible warriors and lived in their own world of their own making once the camp stopped moving, Omakayas, Zozie, and Angeline worked ceaselessly. They put the camp up, they took the camp down. They dug roots, picked berries, plucked geese and ducks, stitched clothing, worked on hides and governed the children.

  In their precious spare time, the women beaded. They beautified cradle boards, bandolier bags, moccasins, fancy leather jackets, pants, and of course dresses for themselves, caps for children. Even blankets got special treatment. Angeline loved making dolls, and Opichi had an entire family of them. She even made a small cloth dog that went everywhere with the doll family. Omakayas had a special design that she loved—it featured her favorite food, the blueberry. She put maple leaves in her design to commemorate the maple trees he
r family had tapped in the forests of Minnesota. Sometimes she added the outline of a wildflower that captivated her, or the leaves of a plant that presented an irresistible symmetry.

  When the buffalo were killed, the camp work would be intensified. Everyone would labor at such a pitch that the women would have no time to talk and bead, so they enjoyed being on the trail.

  Even Two Strike left the men and joined the women occasionally, whittling knife handles or repairing arrows. Though she had a gun, she also used her bow. Her lamb had grown into a young sheep, and with its shorter legs had trouble keeping up when Two Strike galloped her horse. For a while it would call after Two Strike, baa, baa, the strange cry of the maanishtaanish. Then it would give up and join the slow-moving camp horses and stay close to its mother, Fly, who had grown to love her lamb and was always happy to have it near her even as it grew and grew.

  The light lasted and glowed on the endless grasses of the plains. In the wind, the grasses waved in a mesmerizing flow. The twins didn’t notice because they were painting their buffalo for the next day. But Omakayas, who often missed the lakes and trees where she’d passed her childhood, began to find a special beauty in the waves of grass. She missed the old birchbark houses she’d grown up in, but loved the peace of the tipi. She and Angeline had used tough sinew to stitch together the well-smoked hides. She began to love this new life, and to wonder how she’d lived without the constant presence, the vast mystery of ever- changing sky.

  Yet, as they drove on into the great plains, the buffalo seemed to vanish before them. The days were droningly hot, then cooled so fast it felt good to cuddle down in blankets. Manoominike-giizis was upon them, the moon when in their old home they’d picked canoes full of wild rice, their winter food. Still, no buffalo. Now they were becoming scared—the fear could be seen on the grim faces of the hunters. They needed this hunt desperately. Their survival would depend upon it. At night the hunters smoked their sacred pipes and spoke in low tones to the Gizhe Manidoo. The Michif people prayed with their priest. The boys listened to the sounds that their buffalo made, and imitated them. They had decided to learn to speak buffalo, so that they could tell their little brother which way to run. He was now bigger than the two of them put together, and becoming rough, so they begged more paint from Shield, because they were increasingly worried he’d be shot.

  Shield was a tall, intelligent, ugly man. His big nose and drooping lips had once made him despair of finding a sweetheart. But he had married a jolly, good-natured woman who gave him two daughters and two sons. He liked children, and when he brought over the yellow paint he stayed to watch Makoons and Chickadee. As they painted their huge little brother, they spoke to him in his language. The sounds were odd and came from deep within the boys’ bodies. They also had begun to move in ways that the buffalo understood. They plucked at his new hump and scratched the way a buffalo bird would. They always stood beside him so he wouldn’t have to swing his massive head to see them. The buffalo had his ways; they had their ways. But the three of them knew how to get along.

  Shield went back to his camp and sat long, smoking his pipe, thinking of what he had just witnessed. Late that night, he went to speak to Animikiins.

  TWELVE

  CALLING BUFFALO

  The next morning, as they ate leftover stew from the night before, Animikiins sat his sons down for a talk.

  “Shield has told me you are learning your buffalo’s ways, even how to speak with him. Is this true?”

  The boys nodded with their mouths full. What was so special?

  “Shield thinks that what you have learned could help us, help the hunters.”

  Help the men who the boys idolized? They gulped the stew down.

  “How? We can? You want us to help? How? Really?”

  The twins spoke over each other, they were so pleased and excited.

  Makoons and Chickadee mounted their horses. As always, their buffalo calmly traveled along with them. Together, they followed the hunters. They knew that if they sighted buffalo, there would be a strategy meeting so that the hunters could approach the herd quietly and bring down as many animals as possible. They would have time to make certain that their buffalo was safe, but they hadn’t yet acquired Gichi Noodin’s sash to blindfold him. As they traveled along, an inspiration came to Makoons. He rode up close to Gichi Noodin.

  “What do you want, little insect?” said Gichi Noodin to Makoons. “Be sure you don’t get in the way of my powerful hooves.”

  “Your hooves are indeed powerful,” said Makoons.

  Gichi Noodin looked at him suspiciously. But Makoons was ready.

  “My sister says you are a great warrior,” said Makoons.

  “She does?” Now Gichi Noodin was much more polite. He slowed his horse so that they could ride along and talk.

  “A magnificent hunter, too. And a most unusual man who can do tricks on his horse that put the ordinary man to shame.”

  “I must admit,” said Gichi Noodin, “that she is perfectly right. I am amazing in so many ways ordinary men are not.”

  Gichi Noodin stroked his hair as they rode along, and sat higher in the saddle. He had been teased without mercy since his last so-called trick on his horse. So these words were a soothing oil to his spirit. He wanted to hear more.

  “Other remarks? Does she speak of me often?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

  “She speaks of you so often that nimaamaa has asked her to try and think of something else besides Gichi Noodin!”

  “Oho! It’s hard for me to think of anything else,” said Gichi Noodin, “so imagine how difficult it must be for her!”

  “Yes, she does go on and on . . .”

  “Tell me more—”

  “She speaks of the shock she experienced when she first saw your face.”

  “It probably thrilled her to the core,” said Gichi Noodin tenderly.

  Now Chickadee had ridden up with the two, and he added his observation. “She couldn’t breathe!” He didn’t say that Zozie had been laughing so hard that she started choking. He knew Makoons was getting Gichi Noodin softened up to make his pitch.

  “Poor woman, back there with the others,” mused Gichi Noodin. “She is probably thinking about me this very minute. I wonder what her thoughts might be.”

  “I can probably tell you,” said Makoons.

  “Please do,” said Gichi Noodin.

  “She had a wish,” said Makoons slowly. “But it is probably too much.”

  “A wish? Haha. How could she wish for anything but me?”

  “That is exactly it,” said Makoons.

  “Well,” said Gichi Noodin pridefully. “Here I am in all my resplendent glory.”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Makoons again. “But to show that you return her affection, my sister wished that she might have a sign, perhaps your red sash, which she would wear as a sign of her adoration!”

  “But my red sash is extremely special,” said Gichi Noodin. “It is not only gorgeous, made by my own aunt’s weaving fingers, so it cannot be duplicated, but there is another thing. . . .”

  “What is that?” asked Chickadee.

  “It holds up these pants of the latest fashion, which I bought from the trader on a day when he was looking the other way.”

  “Looking the other way? You mean you stole it?”

  Shocked, the boys glanced at each other.

  “Gichi Noodin? Steal? Never. I just borrowed it secretly, until this hunt is over and I can pay him back, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Makoons. “But think of it, Gichi Noodin. That sash could win you the heart of our sister. And as you are riding on your horse, your pants won’t fall off unless you fall off.”

  “Funny boy, that is highly unlikely! In fact, impossible. Gichi Noodin does not fall off his horse!”

  “When you dismount gracefully, then,” said Makoons.

  “Yes,” said Chickadee in a respectful voice. “When you leap bravely off your horse, after the hunt we hope, you c
an reach down with one hand and hold your pants up until you find a different sash.”

  “True,” said Gichi Noodin. “I have another sash, of course, in my tipi. It is not quite as spectacular. But it will do the job.”

  “Then you could give us the sash now,” said Makoons. “Just in case things get confusing. Then we will have this sure mark of your favor, to give our sister this evening.”

  Gichi Noodin frowned, pursed his lips, and gazed into the distance. Finally, he untied his sash as they rode along and flung it, with a magnificent gesture, to Makoons. As he galloped ahead of them, the twins looked at each other and grinned.

  Not long after Makoons obtained the sash from Gichi Noodin, Shield called the boys and their buffalo to the front of the group. They had come to a ridge that overlooked a great expanse of grass. Here, they stopped.

  Animikiins and Shield took the boys aside, and gave them a pinch of tobacco. “Do you know what the buffalo sounds like when he wants you to come to him?”

  The boys knew that he usually made a long drawn-out sound somewhere between a groan, a grunt, a moan, and a belch.

  “Can you make that sound?”

  The twins made the sound and sure enough their overgrown calf came straight to them.

  “Very good,” said Shield. “Now will you please stand on this ridge and make that sound over and over to call the buffalo?”

  From that moment, until the sun was low in the sky, the twins made the buffalo call over and over. Their calf curled up beside them, for the sound was very pleasant to him. They were hoarse and tired by the time their father told them it was enough. There were no buffalo in sight, and the camp had caught up with the hunters. Tipis were pitched and oxcarts made into shelters. The night had come, the hunt was off, and after eating and talking everyone lay down to rest.