“Less than thirty summers ago, Itaba had been a place of trade for all of the tribes of the south,” he continued. “It was surrounded by a thicket of sharpened trees and a great ditch that had been dug by its people and their slaves. The people of Coosa had also raised a high mound, one basket of dirt at a time, that was as tall as a pine tree. Their head man and his shamans lived atop the mound, amid tens of thousands. Then, it is said, the land was rich with fields of maize and beans and hunger was unknown. But now most of the fields have returned to forest.”
“And what of Itaba today?” Ogaa asked.
“Ah! A long troop of shadow men, the wdjibbons, fell upon it, stealing women and bringing disease. They burned the cornfields and then the towns.” Indeed, he said, the magic of the demons who had no color to their skins had leveled all the towns of the south with a disease that killed thousands beyond count, from the swamps of the Apalachee in the east, all the way to the Misi Sipi and beyond. The survivors were swept into tornados of warfare as the desolate tribes fell upon neighbors who had once been friends and trading partners. “With most of the young warriors dead or enslaved, the chiefs could no longer make order among their people,” the trader said. “It was one dog biting another until there was nothing left to chew.”
The trader had brought back a relic of those days. It was a pot, curved to a point at both ends and made of a strange metal, unlike any copper or silver the Ojibwe had ever seen. It was the gray color of Kitchi Gami, freckled with crusting spots of a reddish brown. The trader said that the demons with hairy faces had arrived at Itaba wearing these pots on their heads and riding on giant dogs. He used it now to stew his meat.
Ogaa knew it was rude to inquire as to a man’s name directly. This was learned only when a man became a friend, or discreetly, at a distance with those who knew him. But in time, Ogaa came to learn that the trader’s name was Animi-ma’lingan, Outruns the Wolves, more often known simply as the Old Man. Old Man helped repair their canoe, leading them north in his own craft across a long traverse between two peninsulas and beyond to the straits of Mishi Mackinakong. They paused on the sacred island of the Great Turtle to give thanks again before pushing on up the river beyond the rapids of Boweting.
While they did not confront any enemies on the way home, it was on that trip that Ogaa fell in love with war. In the battle, he had cut the throat of an injured enemy, who stumbled at his feet, lying senseless from a club wound. Ogaa had taken his hair, and the act of hacking it from his skull filled him with a thrill that was more intense than laying a woman. Indeed, a shudder shot through his groin like a rawhide cord being pulled through a pipe stem as he tore the bloody patch from the groaning man’s head. If it had been the killing alone, Ogaa might have been content to be a sometime warrior. But as they traveled up the coast, word of their great feat in the crossing spread from band to band like a brush fire. Again and again he was asked to tell the story of crossing the big lake Mishi Gami, the fight with the monster Misshipeshu, and the fate of the war chief Ma’linganbawi. He told his tales to so many awestruck bands of the Anishinaabek that his head began to swim as if he might drown in their adulation. Gradually, Ogaa saw the path of a warrior unwinding before him. Not as just another spear carrier or club man, but a great warrior whom the god of war had smiled upon.
Then, after half a moon of constant paddling, Ogaa and his brothers were home again on Kitchi Minissing, the three men astonishing all with their return from the other direction from which they had departed. The survivors of Ma’linganbawi’s raid had filtered home only to be lightning-struck by Ogaa’s tale, holding feasts in his honor. Men twice his age sat in drum circles, singing their praises; songs were composed, meant to be sung for ten generations. Ogaa’s Crossing! Even the grumbling stranger who had muttered insults into his ear the whole time on Mishi Gami came forward and said he had never doubted him.
Ogaa never learned the grumbler’s name, nor even cared to know it. Yet he learned in time that heroes are soon forgotten, even those who keep on being heroes. And thus, Ogaa also learned that he had to keep polishing his legend to stay on the lips of the Anishinaabek. The trickster, Waabooz, could not have set a better trap.
But all that came much later.
The sons of the war chief Ma’linganbawi had also perished in the raid. Among the villages along the coast of Kitchi Gami, the elders of the Ojibwe wondered who would replace him? Obviously, the youth Ogaa was far too young, but who was to say in time that he would not be ogichidaa, the leader who would both protect and pillage? The women of Kitchi Minissing took it upon themselves to sew him a handsome war shirt of doeskin, heavily embroidered with porcupine quills. Several took him to the woods for their pleasure, and for his. Then came his marriage to the best of them, Niibinkowsiw, Summer Meadow, and the birth of his only son.
A son! What man does not desire a son to honor with his wisdom and guidance?
8.
THE ISLAND
When Ogaa had been a toddler, he had fallen headfirst into the flaming coals of the cook fire outside his mother’s lodge. His own father had watched, impassive, as he thrashed and screamed amid the flames, for it was the custom of the Anishinaabek not to meddle in the lives of their children, allowing them to learn the lessons of life for themselves, no matter how cruel. Nor could the fire be blamed, for it had only been acting of its own nature.
Thus, Ogaa had grown to manhood with only half a face; the right side of his visage had been seared to a hard pan of leather that betrayed no emotion. The dead half of his face gave him a fierce, warlike mien, which served him well during his later years as ogichidaa. In time he grew to accept it as a gift of Kitchi Manito. But because of the lesson in the fire, Ogaa had chosen to ignore his father’s path in life, and to his dismay, his son chose to ignore his own footsteps.
In truth, Misko made a bad start with his father, for he refused to speak until he was three years old. Not a word. His eyes rose like twin moons above his cheeks, serene but distant, when his father yammered at him in frustration.
“He might as well be a possum,” Ogaa muttered to Niibinkosiw when three summers had come and gone without so much as a mama, omaamaayan, or papa, obaabaayan. Ogaa had spent many evenings repeating the words of simple things over the boy’s lingering eyes with no effect. Often, he wondered if the boy should have been left to the wolves or the eagles as a babe when this silence first began.
“He understands you well enough,” Niibinkosiw replied. “He is only waiting until he has something to say.”
“But I am his father. It is his duty to speak to me.”
“Do not curse the boy or say bad things of him, lest the spirits hear you and come to his defense,” Niibinkosiw admonished, for all knew that the manitos were the guardians of children.
Eya, and Niibinkosiw was a prophet in this, at least, for when Misko finally spoke, it was in full sentences, as if he had gone from being an infant to that of an orator at the council fires. No one could say that it was wisdom that tumbled from Misko’s lips, but he was sure enough of his own mind and quick to assert himself. In this, he was his father’s son.
But Ogaa feigned not to notice this marvel, or else was so full of himself that he forgot that his son had been mute as a stone for three years. He found other things to complain about as the years wandered on.
“Why is he so thin?” he demanded of his wife when the boy was seven years on.
“Be patient. Perhaps he needs more food,” she said. “Perhaps you are too lazy in the hunt.”
Ogaa harrumphed. “Perhaps,” he said dryly.
Privately, he suspected his son of being puny and afraid. Watching Misko play with the other boys of the band, he was dismayed to find his son reticent to engage in the rough carousing at times. Often, Misko seemed more content to look on at his playmates, as if considering the odds in a game of stones and bones.
The summer Misko turned seven, Ogaa watched as his son joined in the windigo game, a favorite of children throughout the
lands of the Ojibwe and the Cree. A tall youth named Lone Goose, Bezhigo’nika, called Nika for short, was chosen to disguise himself as the windigo cannibal, plastering his face with mud and leaves and hiding in the bushes. Then, another boy was chosen to lead a line of children in search of the monster, with each child holding the waist string of the child ahead. Ogaa’s own son was last in line, carrying a willow switch.
To Ogaa’s dismay, Misko turned and ran when the boy playing the windigo leaped out behind him with a roar. The other children collapsed on the windigo with cascades of laughter, thrashing at Nika’s legs with their willow switches. But Misko took his time returning to the game with a troubled look on his face.
Why couldn’t his son be more like Nika? Ogaa wondered. He watched the tall, brash youth tossing the other children aside as if they were corn husk dolls.
“He holds back,” he complained to his wife that evening.
“He is only picking his spots,” she said. “Be proud that he is no fool. Haven’t you always said that it takes a man of judgment and cunning to be a war chief?”
Truly, this is what Ogaa often said of himself, but that was not how he saw his son. When Misko was yet a toddler, Ogaa had given him a panther hide for his bedding, hoping that the cat’s ferocity would enter the bones of his son. Yet in his father’s eyes, Misko seemed to have acquired only the panther’s skill at skulking.
“He lacks ambition,” he said as they huddled before the fire, with Misko asleep in the furs piled on the sleeping platform.
“Fate does not always require ambition,” his mother said.
“No, but ambition is the wood that makes fate burn higher. Ambition is what guides a man’s fate.”
“So does a father who shows by example, rather than harsh words. Does a tree grow any faster when it is scolded?”
“Harsh words?” Ogaa gave a little laugh. “Every man is suckled and weaned on harsh words. How do you think a man becomes a man?”
“I will give you some harsh words, if you wish,” Niibinkowsiw said angrily.
“Ha! But I tell you, if his father would have it, I would trade our son for the youth, Nika. There is a boy who shows promise.”
“Yes, and perhaps I would trade you for Nika’s father in return,” Niibinkowsiw replied.
“Do not sass me, woman, or you will get your wish.”
“You do not know my wishes.”
Lying awake not two arm’s lengths away, Misko listened to his parents argue. His father’s words settled over him like a blanket of snow.
That summer, Ogaa fashioned a small squirrel bow with scalloped edges and a bowstring made of nettle stalk fiber for Misko. He also made a toy war club with a deerskin ball at the end, stuffed with milkweed down. But always Ogaa made a bad face when his son’s arrows went awry and the toy club went neglected. Even when his son bested another at wrestling or hit the mark of a tree with his blunt arrows, Ogaa fumed that he could have done better, much better. Nor did it escape Misko’s attention that while other fathers showered their sons with praise for every small victory, his own father seemed full to the gills with complaints. Ogaa did not seem to notice that Misko practiced with his bow much longer than the other boys, until his bow fingers were as calloused as that of a grown man. Nor did Ogaa notice that Misko’s arrows nearly always found their mark.
As summer faded to fall, and Misko was almost eight, he ran down a yearling buck and clubbed it senseless, an occasion for which his father held a first kill ceremony in celebration, while reminding his son that his own first kill had been a stalking coyote.
“But I am the youngest in the band to make a kill this year, Father,” Misko protested. “What was the time of your first kill?”
Ogaa appraised his son with a cold eye. “Ten,” he said, finally. “Only ten, but remember, my son, to kill a deer is a fine thing, but it is a man that you must kill one day. A man of the enemy to prove your worth.”
To this Misko rolled his eyes and said nothing.
The years rolled by and with them a succession of new bows and countless arrows as Misko’s skill as an archer grew. He had also learned to chip at likely pieces of chert and flint with the tooth of a bear, shaving away the flakes of stone to find the arrowhead within. Eya, and he had a collection of bone points, too, and those of eagle claws, blunt stones and fishing barbs, each with its own purpose.
In time, each bow became one with his soul, lying by his side as he slept at night, imbued with its own manito and the magic that guided its arrows. No one prophesied Misko as a warrior, but at an early age he was allowed to join the game drives with his bow, rather than merely beating the bushes with sticks, as was the task of other boys. In time, even his father was impressed.
Their village was on Kitchi Minissing, the island set midway along the southern coast of Kitchi Gami. The island was a natural stronghold with high cliffs along its shores to the east, west, and north. From the eastern side of the island, one could see the even greater heights of the mainland, a mural of red and tan cliffs that marched along the coast.
Often as a boy, with the cry of a loon trilling overhead, Misko would climb the trails above his village to watch the sun turn the far cliffs a succession of flaming colors, as if a dun rainbow had fallen on the earth. Other times he’d wander to the western coast of the island to stand high above the waves tumbling and foaming far below, watching as the fireball of the sun burned a pathway to the underworld. It set the horizon on fire as it died, the sky flaming red and purple long after sundown.
Where did the sun go, he wondered? Only the Mide-wi-win priests knew, but it was the same sun that set for the Blackfeet, the Crow, and the Shoshone, tribes that lived far beyond the land of the Sioux and the endless plains to the west—and it was the same sun that set for a little girl who would someday be known as Ashagi. But Misko didn’t know that then. He did know that a great chain of mountains rose up from the land of Blackfeet, beyond which the sun lay down each night, but no member of the Anishinaabek had ever ventured that far to see where it went.
9.
OUTRUNS THE WOLVES
As the manitos would have it, Misko was blessed with two fathers, for the trader who had guided Ogaa home adopted the village on Kitchi Minissing as a way station between the copper mines to the west and his trade routes to the south. Renowned as a storyteller, and sometimes even as a medicine man for those in a pinch, the Old Man, whose true name was Outruns the Wolves, often called at Niibinkowsiw’s lodge to visit Ogaa, where he was received as a good friend.
Over time, the Old Man grew fond of Ogaa’s boy. “You have an old spirit, like me,” he told Misko when the boy was eight. “You are your father’s son, but you are my son, too.
“There’s nothing I can teach you of the bow or the fishing net,” he added. “But if you listen, I can tell you the ways of men and perhaps even how to lead them.”
Above all, the Old Man taught Misko patience and observation, two things his natural father, Ogaa, never knew, and two things to which Misko was naturally inclined. “These are what it takes to create wisdom,” the Old Man said.
“Only that, father?” Misko looked up.
The Old Man thought a moment. “Ah!” he said, “failure and disappointment, those, too, bring wisdom.”
The Old Man had been born into the Makwa clan of the bear more than forty summers before with a club foot, which twisted cruelly away from his body on his right side. After his father had uttered groans of despair and rejection, he had been presented to the elders of the village to decide his fate.
At that time, his father’s band had been living on Manitowaaling, the Spirit Island east of Boweting. Unfortunately, the band was large and there were many mouths to feed. A man who could not contribute to the band’s fortunes was an intolerable burden.
A decision was made to leave the babe for the wolves and coyotes that lingered by the refuse pile a short way from the village. Such was often the fate of a babe cursed by the manitos with imperfections.
Waabigwan, Cornflower, hid the baby for two days before it was discovered. The old men of the village were not pleased. But who can control an irrational woman in the grip of a passion? She clawed, hissed, and screamed like a she-raccoon when they tried to pull the baby from her arms. In truth, Waabigwan had a reputation as a crazy woman as a result of her barren womb, for many men had laid her without result, and the failure of each lover only left her more dejected and desperate.
It was the head man’s brother, Makade-gookooko’oo, Black Owl, who came to a solution. He was the kind uncle to every member of the village, always quick with a joke, a smile, or words of encouragement.
“Stay, brothers,” he counseled. “Let us think on this, for who can say what the Great Spirit knows? Perhaps this clubfoot has some purpose we cannot understand?”
No sooner had the words left their uncle’s mouth than the whole village heard the far-off clap of the thunderbird’s wings out of the dull sky. It was a long, rolling rumble that echoed from the cliffs beyond the village. At the sound, the babe began to gurgle and laugh, waving his tiny hands to the sky.
“Ooh!” Wonder formed on the lips of all in the village as they looked from side to side upon each other.
“Kitchi Manito has spoken,” Makade-gookooko’oo said gravely. No one could deny it, nor did any among them note that Waabigwan was Black Owl’s niece.
It was soon agreed that the babe was blessed by the spirits, destined to play some powerful, if mysterious role in the fate of the band. It was Makade-gookooko’oo who blessed the clubfoot with a name in a gentle jest. “Let him be called Animi-ma’lingan—He Who Outruns the Wolves,” he said. And Outruns the Wolves he was, suckled first by a bitch dog, and then by a succession of nursing women who hoped to gain a touch of his magic through their teats.
Windigo Moon Page 10
