Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR WINDIGO MOON

  Winner: First Prize

  Cascade Writers Group, 2014 Grand Rapids

  ArtPrize Competition for the first chapter, “The Raid”

  “…a story about warriors and their territories—a culture and a time nearly lost to those who live on the same land now. It would not be an understatement to say that this should be required reading for anyone with an interest in American history, particularly in the northern Midwest.”

  —Foreword Reviews

  “Fascinating … a novel that keeps you riveted and stays with you.”

  —Hannah Howell, New York Times bestselling author

  “… a gripping, exciting narrative of a tribe of people and their struggle over generations. It is truly an epic story told in the small spaces of human life.”

  —Patrick Sullivan, Northern Express Weekly

  Copyright © 2017 Robert Downes

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Blank Slate Press

  an imprint of Amphorae Publishing Group

  4168 Hartford Street, St. Louis, MO 63116

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from the publisher, Blank Slate Press, LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is merely coincidental, and names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design Kristina Blank Makansi

  Cover art by Elena Makansi

  Interior design by Kristina Blank Makansi

  Cover art: Adobe Stock

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947637

  ISBN: 9781943075362

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For Mike Downes

  and our own small clan,

  Ila, Edwin and Sue

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  When possible, I have used original tribal names, rather than their French or English corruptions. Chippewa, for instance, is a French misspeak for the Ojibwe, even though many tribal persons on the U.S. side of the border still call themselves the Chippewa. In this book, the terms Ojibwe and Anishinaabek (meaning the True People) are interchangeable.

  As for other tribes:

  • The Wendat (or Wyandot) was the union of four tribes that we now call the Hurons, which was French slang for “hoggish slobs.”

  • The Haudenosaunee was the original name of the confederation of five tribes that we now call the Iroquois.

  • The Odugamies was the original name of the Fox tribe when they lived in what is now Wisconsin.

  • The Odaawaa were what we now call the Ottawa or Odawa.

  I have also based my characters’ fictional exploits on true incidents, when possible, drawn from the accounts of Native Americans or historical records. The experience of being chased through the forest by a moose, for instance, was culled from the recollections of a Sioux elder and also that of a modern day hiker on Isle Royale, who both endured that scramble first-hand.

  On the other hand, this is a work of fiction and not historical scholarship. Thus, on occasion I’ve borrowed from different eras and the traditions of other tribes. The source of these incidents is offered in the notes at the end of the book.

  The Ojibwe often had an informal name given in childhood; a formal name given in adulthood as the result of a great deed or a vision quest; and a lifelong nickname, which had a touch of self-deprecating humor. Here are the principal characters, including spirits and animals, in Windigo Moon.

  MEMBERS OF THE OJIBWE (AKA THE ANISHINAABEK)

  Animi-ma’lingan: Outruns the Wolves, also known as the Old Man, an honorific conveyed to a shaman.

  Ashagi: nickname of Ozhaawashko-ashagi (Blue Heron), honoring her lost clan, the Herons.

  Misko: Little Red, the nickname of Miskogiizis (Red Moon), the name given at his birth.

  Miskomakwa: Red Bear, the name given to Misko upon reaching adulthood.

  Nika: Goose, nickname for Bezhigo Nika, Lone Goose.

  Ogaa: Walleye, the father of Misko, warchief of the southern Ojibwe.

  Aabitainini: Half Man, chief killed by measles.

  Amazo-animad: Singing Wind, one of Misko’s supporters.

  Bapakine: Grasshopper, adopted sister of Ashagi, taken from the Dakotas.

  Biidaaban: Comes the Dawn, the natural son of Misko and Ashagi.

  Giigoohn: Little Fish, the shamanic apprentice to the Old Man.

  Ginwaa-okaad: Long Legs, the nephew who accused his aunt of witchcraft..

  Makade-gookooko’oo: Black Owl, wise uncle who saves the Old Man at birth.

  Ma’linganbawi: Standing Wolf, war chief who lead ill-fated raid against the Odugamies.

  Minose: Good Luck Woman, the “chosen friend” of Ashagi.

  Naabese: Bird Man, interim leader of the Amiks.

  Niibin: Summer, natural daughter of Misko and Ashagi.

  Niibinkosiw: Summer Meadow, Misko’s mother.

  Niimi: Dancing Boy, the adopted son of Misko and Ashagi.

  Waabigwan: Cornflower—adoptive mother of the Old Man.

  Wabeno: Man of the Dawn Sky—shaman, sorcerer, teacher of the Old Man.

  Wabun Ahnung: Morning Star—Nika’s wife, saved from banishment.

  Wajiiw: Mountain, a subchief of Standing Wolf’s raid.

  MEMBERS OF THE DAKOTA SIOUX

  Bapakine: Grasshopper, the adopted sister of Ashagi.

  Hiahaa-sapa: Black Owl, War chief of the Dakotas.

  Kesamna’ista: Snail Eye, leader of a small band of the Dakota.

  Mazaskahawihopa: Maza for short, Silver Bark Woman, second wife of Snail Eye.

  Pezhi’yuta: Grass Eater, Dakota youth who desires Ashagi.

  Saya’hupahu: Red Bird, first wife of Snail Eye.

  SUPERNATURAL BEINGS

  Aireskoi: the Haudenosaunee god of hunting and war.

  Animikii: the thunderbird, enemy of the monsters of the underworld.

  Biboon: literally, Winter, also the Spirit of the North Wind.

  Che-bi-ug: vengeful souls of victims.

  Ke-zha-mune-do: the guardian manito of charity and mercy.

  Kitchi Manito: the Great Spirit.

  Maji-Manito: the Evil One, the devil.

  Manabozho: the “Great Uncle” and Hercules of the Ojibwe, a demigod.

  Mis-shi-nah-may-gway: a fish monster the size of a whale with a human head.

  Misshipeshu: the underwater panther/serpent.

  Nenookaasi: the hummingbird, Misko’s spirit guide.

  Nibiianaabe: fish people, mermen.

  Puk-wudgies: fairies, little people of the forest.

  Waabooz: The Great Rabbit, a trickster

  Wakan Tanka: the Great Spirit of the Sioux.

  Windigo: a cannibalistic monster; a person who becomes a cannibal.

  OTHERS

  Mide: priests, shamans, “the Good Hearts.”

  Mide-wi-win: Society of the Shamans, aka Grand Medicine Lodge.

  Wdjibbon: the shadow men—white explorers mistaken as dead men or ghosts.

  Zhaagnaash: white men, recognized as human beings, yet possibly demons.

  THE TRIBES

  Amiks: the Beaver Clan, historically, a powerful clan of the Ojibwe.

  Anishinaabek: the True People, what the Ojibwe called themselves.

  Cree: a tribe of the north woods, extending as far as Hudsons Bay.

  Dakota: the eastern Sioux who lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

  Eries: a neutral tribe living in northern Ohio.

  Ha
udenosaunee: the Iroquois confederation of five tribes in Ohio and New York State.

  Lakota: a tribe of the western Sioux, living on the edge of the Great Plains in 1590.

  Mdewakanton: a sub tribe of the Sioux from central Minnesota.

  Menominee: a branch of the Ojibwes living in northeastern Wisconsin.

  Mundawaek: catbird people, a tribe exterminated and then adopted by the Ojibwe.

  Nipissing: northern relatives of the Ojibwe.

  Odaawaa: famous as traders, from northern Ontario.

  Odugamies: later known as the Fox Indians of Wisconsin.

  Ojibwe: a tribal group loosely united by language and culture across the Upper Great Lakes.

  Potawatomi: one of the “Three Fires” tribes of the Anishinaabek living in southern Michigan.

  Sioux: a nation of seven sub-tribes loosely united by language and culture. From the Ojibwe word, Nadue-Siu, “Little Snakes.”

  Tionnontatehronnon: the Tobacco People, a tribe related to the Wendat.

  Wendat: the original name of the Hurons. A group of four tribes living in southern Ontario.

  Winnebagoes: A Sioux tribe which lived in present-day central Wisconsin.

  PLACES

  Boweting: Sault Ste. Marie.

  Gakaabikaa: Kakabeka Falls, western Ontario.

  Kitchi Gami: Lake Superior.

  Kitchi-gaugeedjwung: Niagra Falls.

  Kitchi Minissing: Grand Island in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

  Kiwewina: Keeweenaw Peninsula in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

  Manitowaaling: Manitoulin Island, “Spirit Island” in northern Lake Huron.

  Mde Waken: Spirit Lake in Minnesota.

  Ministigweyaa: Manistee River, Michigan.

  Miniswiigob: Bois Blanc Island, in the Mackinac Straits.

  Mishi Gami: Lake Michigan.

  Mishi Mackinakong: Mackinac Island, “Turtle Island.”

  Misi Sipi: Mississippi.

  Oisconsin: Wisconsin.

  Tima Gami: Lake Huron, “Deep Lake,” Lake of the Wendat.

  Was-wa-gon-ong: Torch Lake, Michigan.

  Zhewitaganibi: the great salt water, Atlantic Ocean.

  ANIMALS

  Amik: beaver

  Esiban: raccoon

  Waawaashkeshi: deer

  Gaag: porcupine

  Ga’iingan: wolf

  Moos: moose

  Nika: goose

  Atikameg: whitefish

  Nahme: sturgeon

  Gwiingwa’aage: wolverine

  Makwa: bear

  A FEW WORDS

  Eya: the feminine form of the Ojibwe word, “yes,” en’. Eya, as used here, is a discourse particle of speech, which indicates the speaker’s frame of mind. Examples include, “like,” “well,” “oh,” and “now,” as in “Now, then . . .” or “Like, you know. . .”

  Ehn: the masculine form of “yes.”

  Gaawiin: No.

  Gaawesa: No way!

  Giimaabi: spy.

  Goonikaa giizi: snow moon—another term for January.

  Kinnikinnick: tobacco & herb mixture.

  Manoominikegiizis: the ricing moon, August.

  Manitogiizis: Manito moon—January.

  Miigwech: thank you.

  Mihopeca: a woman of unusual beauty.

  Ogichidaa: war chief.

  Omaamaayan: mother

  Obaabaayan: father

  WINDICO MOON

  “One is left to wonder, which version of history is correct? Or, even more to the point, what difference does it make?”

  —Charles E. Cleland, Rites of Conquest

  Pitch your tent on the shores of the Manitou islands in Lake Michigan on a summer night and let your senses fill with the breezes off the beach. There are spirits moving here—manitos—the powerful shapes and memories of those who walked these sands and sat, loved, and sang beneath these trees for hundreds, even thousands of years.

  Those who came before watched the same sunsets and played along the same beaches that we love today, their canoes coursing along a lakeshore that is hailed as one of the most beautiful places in America.

  They were the Ojibwe, a tribe which once lived, and still does, in an immense area ranging from Hudson Bay to the northern Great Plains. Their lives were entwined with nature in every sense, believing that every rock, animal, and man-made thing had a spirit. Their world was full of magic and mystery in which animals gave their lives so that the True People, the Anishinaabek, might live.

  Generous and kind to their friends and family, they could be unspeakably cruel to their enemies. They danced, sang, drummed, and lived free, traveling through the seasons in an eternal quest for food.

  This is a story of those times, years before the “shadow men,” the wdjibbon of Europe touched their shores. This is the story of Ashagi, Blue Heron, and Misko, Red Bear, and of the Windigo Moon.

  BOOK I - SUMMER

  1588

  1.

  THE RAID

  While picking berries with her sister-wives in a glade east of the village, the girl from the north country fell into a dream of revenge.

  Ashagi savored what she would do to her husband, Kesamna’ista, if the chance arose. Just before dawn, she would lift the nutting stone and hammer old Snail Eye’s brains out as he lay snoring in the lodge. She would mash them like a woman pounded squash while her husband kicked his life away.

  But what then? She would run and her sister-wives would wake screaming. And then old Saya’hupahu would demand that she be put to the slow fire. As the chief’s first wife, that would be Red Bird’s right, for Ashagi was nothing but a captive and a slave and Kesamna’ista nothing but her master.

  As she picked, thoughts of her mother and father arose in her mind and then drifted away, mere wisps of cloud she could no longer fully grasp. She remembered the raid on her own faraway village two years before. She remembered how her family had trembled in their lodge in the chill darkness before dawn when the dogs had begun howling outside, their voices intermingled with that of a wailing baby and the cries of the marauding Dakota. The enemy had come running from the gray mantle of the forest like ghosts gliding through the fog.

  Their village had been on the river below the Gakaabikaa waterfall, not far from the freshwater sea of Kitchi Gami. Once, the legends said, a chief’s daughter had died saving her people by paddling her canoe over the falls, chased by a war party of Dakotas. But there would be no saving this time.

  There had been no time to react. As was custom, her grandfather and decrepit uncle slept nearest the lodge door, the first line of defense against attackers. She heard them crushed beneath the weight of a flaming log hurled through the doorway as the warriors poured in, tripping over their flailing bodies in the mists of dawn filtering through the opening. Her brothers had been speared and clubbed straightaway by the wrestling tumult of warriors, and then her father rose up fighting like a wildcat with only a fletching stone for a weapon, struggling to sing his death song amid his gasps and sobs.

  Even amid the swirling soot and embers, even through the screams, grunts, and wild yells, through the flailing limbs and bodies tangled together like the shadows of demons in the darkness, even through all that, she saw her father deliver a death blow to a towering Dakota whose club caught on a lodge pole. Then her brave, loving father had gashed the leg of a stripling before disappearing under a storm of blows.

  As for her mother, the clouds revealed nothing but a vision of what Ashagi had been told. On the long march of captivity, her sister-cousin had whispered that her mother had clawed her way beneath the bark wall of the lodge and was last seen running for the river with three men chasing her, their laughter ringing in the cool morning air.

  “She was too old to keep,” her cousin said.

  Theirs had been an old village, settled four generations ago when the Northern Ojibwe split off from their cousins who lived on the southern shore of Kitchi Gami. There had not been an attack on the village in more than twenty summers, longer th
an most had been alive. The people of Ashagi’s clan had lived so long in peace and security they had lost their warlike ways. Their southern cousins called them waub-ose. Rabbits.

  And that morning, the waub-ose were caught in the teeth of wolves.

  Though the battle was over before the morning sun cleared the trees, the men of Ashagi’s clan did not die easy. Many had been sleeping outside under the stars, as was the summer custom, and these had heard the war whistles before the first Dakota raced into the village. Far outnumbered, they had risen in a last stand on bloody ground at the heart of the village, joined by many of their women who had only stones for weapons.

  Long after, Ashagi remembered nothing but the legs of men crowding around her as she buried her head in her knees outside her mother’s lodge. The hard-muscled legs of young men, greased red and black with paint, the colors of life and death. And she, thin as a willow, barely a woman of sixteen summers. All her life, she would see the forest of legs crowding forward in her dreams, unable or unwilling to remember what came after she had been tossed and tumbled among them. She remembered that there had been screams then, but they had remained silent in her dreams since then.

  Afterward, the women and children were hustled into the long house at the heart of the village. They did not see the dismemberment of their men, but through the walls they heard the stone axes chopping meat and cracking bone. They heard the groans of those being butchered and knew the voices among them. Their men called to them, cursed the enemy, and sang their death songs before their voices were extinguished.

  All this amid the enemy’s screams of exultation.

  It was well known that a man without eyes or a head could not find his way in the spirit land, nor could a man without limbs hunt the shades of its ghostly animals. A man whose eardrums had been pierced with a sharpened bone could not hear his dead brothers calling from the shadows. A man cleft of his penis would never enjoy the maidens who waited in the afterlife. And what was a man in the spirit land if the hair had been torn from atop his head? All of these blessings were taken by the enemy. Above all, the Dakota knew that a man who was dismembered upon his death, with his bones scattered and eaten by animals, could not wreak vengeance upon his killers when they met again in the afterlife.