Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  “Bless you, daughter, it is a cruel time of year for those of us who have the misfortune of a long life,” an old woman said to Ashagi after enjoying the comforts of her sweat house. “Ah, my old joints feel this cold, wet time more each year.”

  “You are always welcome, mother,” Ashagi replied. “Let me wipe your eyes.”

  She washed the old woman’s face with a poultice of herbs she had found growing bright green in a creek flowing through a snowy valley. “These plants have a power over the winter,” she said.

  “Ah, a long life is more a curse than a blessing,” the old one replied, coughing. “But miigwech, daughter, miigwech, you make me feel young again.”

  “You are still a joy to us, Mother,” Ashagi said primly, “and you have made the long winter journey here. I hope that I will see as many years as you.”

  “Oh, do not wish it!” But she smiled as she said it.

  Like many elders who suffered from rheumatism brought on by a life spent close to wet ground, the old woman was also nearly blind from sitting amid the acrid smoke of the wigwams. Years of enduring the smoke of the winter fires also gave rise to lung diseases. Although the women of the band sought out branches which would burn clean, still, it was not possible to keep the fires at the center of the lodges free of smoke. At best, the elders were offered a place to sleep over the hot stones buried beneath the lodge each night. There was some comfort in that, though the heat did not last for long.

  Only hunger and the eternal need for meat could raise a man from his bed of furs to venture out before sunrise beneath the skeletal trees, there to find the tracks of rabbits, fox and deer sprinkled in the snow in a mocking promise, long gone. At times, the hunters had to dig their way out of the lodges through the snow which had piled against the door frame in the night. Yet this was the bargain the men of the Anishinaabek made with Biboon; they would test their lives against the peril of the north wind so that their women and children would live to see the spring.

  When snow weighed heavy on the pines and the sky turned dour, the men found themselves hunting in a monochrome world of black and white, colored only in shades of gray. Then, the animals themselves became shadows against the white wall of winter; owls, deer, ducks, all drained of color. Only when a man peered into the reddened face of his brother was he sure that the world had not been sucked of its life and buried in shadow. And there were times when all thoughts were driven from a man’s mind except those of food—always food—until the hunters did not think as men at all, but as they animals they hunted.

  Even so, all men loved the winter for it was the best time of year for hunting, with animals easily tracked through the snow or dozing in their hollows. And, despite the cold, there were also days when the men rose to sunshine with jays and chickadees nattering in the trees and a warm wind blowing from the south. Days when the sun warmed their leathers and brooklets ran at their heels with the promise of spring. Days when they heard the first robins of the year and came upon bear stirring from their dens.

  Eya, and also days when the Great Spirit smiled on a hunter. Misko would never forget the winter of his twenty-first year when he came upon three moose huddled chest deep in a ravine. Springing on his snowshoes he fell upon them with his club. They did not die easy; Misko struck glancing blows off the bull’s head four times before it went down, its lungs heaving in sweating gasps, its body bucking and thrashing in the deep snow, attempting with its last stab at life to hook him with its antlers. Yet he took all three, returning to winter camp with the head of a moose cow on a pole, bathed in their blood. It took a team of five men to butcher the meat and pack it home on sledges.

  Often, they hunted as a wolf pack, with a detachment of youths advancing on a marshy hollow and beating sticks together while men with arrows and spears waited on the opposite rise for the deer driven their way in a frenzy of retreat. At times like these, Misko remembered the lesson of his dream quest: that men were not made to live on their own, nor could they survive for long without the help of their brothers and sisters.

  “Only through one’s clan with many hands working together can the Anishinaabek make their way through life.” That is what the Old Man had told him, and often he thought upon it as he fell asleep at night.

  The spirit of togetherness extended to the division of game, for if a hunter brought home a deer, he was obligated to share it out in portions. A haunch might go to his father, a leg to a sister, a tongue to one’s wife, a liver to a brother-in-law, with all these portioned out to other kin in turn until every member of the band was fed.

  Although the hunters went out each day in search of game, there were often times, especially late in the winter or early spring when the marshes were utterly empty, or when the deer and other game grew wary and hard to track. Thus, starvation was too often a guest of the Ojibwe. Too many days without a kill brought on gloomy thoughts of the windigo monster as members of the band contemplated their dwindling supply of food. The windigo was a cannibal that visited desperate souls at the black ebb of hunger.

  “Yes, we knew of them,” Ashagi said when she was asked one night by the fire, for all knew that the windigo came from the far north. “There was a poor hunter from a village of the Crees who turned windigo one winter and was killed by his clan.”

  “And did he eat another man?” a woman asked.

  Ashagi pursed her lips and stared into the fire. “Sister, you know as well as I what he did. Yes, he was starving and he killed a brother of his band and ate his flesh. May the spirits keep us from walking his path.”

  “Ah, but that was just a man who ate another. What of the monsters? Have you ever seen one?”

  “Oh yes, sister,” Ashagi said gravely. “One came peeping in the entrance of our lodge one night when I was only four and I drove it off with a switch broom.” After the laughter had died by the fire, Ashagi told the legend of the race of windigo giants who lived on an island in the great saltwater bay far north in the land of the Cree. “They are a tribe of monsters, forever on the move in the winter,” she said. “It is said that they are twice as tall as a man and hunger without end for human flesh.”

  “But how would we know if we saw one?” a child asked.

  “Oh, you would know, daughter. The windigo wears a tangled crown of antlers and its skin is yellow and black, stretched tight as its skull across its face. It is forever starving, forever hungry.”

  Then, drawing herself up, she made her arms as if claws and flared her eyes, shouting, “It is hungry for you!”

  With this last bit, Ashagi made all in the lodge jump in their seats with nervous laughter. But then the mood turned somber, for all knew that the cannibal giants traveled far beyond the hunting grounds of the Cree; they also stalked the lands of the Ojibwe wherever hunger lived. A hunter who came upon a windigo in the dark of the forest likely never returned.

  And all knew that men could turn windigo too, and women as well.

  At times like these, the most valued member of the band was the storyteller, and the Old Man went from lodge to lodge throughout the winter, unraveling his tales of heroes, monsters, animals, tricksters and faraway places to relieve the misery of the long nights. He spoke until he was hoarse, telling stories of giants, war parties, faraway tribes, men who turned into animals or trees and animals who turned into men. Bawdy stories, too, and jokes that made young maidens blush and old women chuckle and nod in remembrance.

  Then the wigwams would fill with laughter, awe, or shivers of horror in turn as the Anishinaabek contemplated the visions that Animi-ma’lingan’s stories conjured. His stories reminded them that life was exciting and full of mystery. He reminded them of who they were and where they had come from. He reminded them that they would always prevail. And even when the windigo came creeping past their doorways and they were reduced to boiling leather for broth, the Anishinaabek held festivals, singing, dancing, and drumming to keep the darkness at bay.

  Then, when the last of their stores of nuts, dried fish
, and sugar had vanished with the retreating snow, the people of the north saw the first green buds creeping from the limbs of trees. This, often as not, was the bleak time of the Starving Moon, for though there were signs of life and abundance everywhere, the snows that were the friend of the hunters had vanished, and with them the easy prey. And the forest plants which might sustain the Anishinaabek were tender and laughing in their youth, with many moons until their harvest.

  By this time, often as not, the Amik clan was living on the bitter carcasses of deer and other game still frozen in the snow. Struggling against the chill rains of spring and its muddy tracks, they gathered their wigwams and set out for their island home, Kitchi Minissing. With the rivers running high and fast with the snow’s melt the band boarded their canoes and sped in a riot of whoops and laughter back downstream for home.

  In the early spring came Iskigamiige-Giizis, the Maple Sugar Moon, when the manito of winter melted before the sun. Ashagi joined an encampment of women on the mainland where sap was collected from a grove of more than a thousand sugar maples and then boiled and rendered to sweeten the fish and game eaten throughout the year. It took a full cycle of the moon and more to collect and render the sap while the men scrambled after fish and game. Each morning the women rose with the frost to collect the precious sap, often working on empty stomachs, grateful to sip at the sweet blood of the trees. First, they bored a series of holes into the tree trunks using wooden hand drills that were tipped with sharpened chert. Then, the hollow leg bones of various animals served to tap the trees, collecting the precious sap one drop at a time into the birch buckets hanging below.

  Long ago, they had built a lodge at the heart of the grove where they stored the buckets, drills, and bones. Once emptied of its tools, the lodge also served as sleeping quarters with everyone crammed tightly together each night for warmth against the still-freezing season.

  Boiling the sap was difficult in those days. The Anishinaabek did not yet have the iron kettles of the Zhaagnaash, which made the rendering easy; indeed, they did not yet know that the Zhaagnaash or iron even existed. Instead, they had wooden vessels, as long as a tall man’s arm, which they had fashioned as trenches with fire and stone. These were filled with the sweet, clear sap. Then, rocks were heated until they glowed like cherries, to be lifted with wooden tongs and placed within the sap. Slowly, ever so slowly, the water bonding the sap was evaporated by the smoldering rocks, leaving a sweet slush of maple syrup in its wake. As the syrup thickened, bits of animal fat were added to smooth its texture. Then, with the women laughing and crying in exultation, the slush was poured into wooden molds to be fashioned into cakes.

  For many days Ashagi labored over the sap until she was dizzy with the effort and hunger. “Take a taste,” a merry woman said to Ashagi as she licked a sap-tipped finger. “But not much as this must last the full year.” Hesitantly, Ashagi did as she was told, dipping the tip of her finger in the sugary sludge. At this, the woman threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t you know I was joking? Come, don’t be a fool, sister, eat as much as you like! It is yours, you have made it!”

  During her first year with the Amik clan, Ashagi found that life was little different than with her father’s band to the north.

  Early summer brought a torment almost as severe as winter’s cold; a plague of biting flies, mosquitoes and no-see-ums which ranged all through the country surrounding Kitchi Gami. When the weather was cool, the band camped on the shoreline as the flies stayed inland, trading places when the flies sought the shore during the heat of the summer. The people also smeared mud or bear grease on their bodies and dabbed themselves with the juice of wild onions in the hope of defeating the flies. And always, there were smudge fires burning in the village and smudge pots gathered round the perimeter, tended by the elderly. Smoke, and lots of it, was the only way to keep the tribe of biting flies and mosquitoes at bay.

  By summer, the fishing season was well underway, with the men of the band balancing on their canoes, spearing or netting nahme, the sturgeon, often by torchlight. Many of the fish were as large as a full-grown man and Misko often gazed upon their eerie faces peering up from the depths, attracted by the blazing pine knots dangling from the gunwales of their canoes. Eya, and the women fished too, and were often better at it than the men.

  Although the Anishinaabek lived mostly on the bounty of fish, still the men prided themselves most of all as hunters. They often slept out in the open during the summer in order to be up before dawn to check their snares and search for game. That, and to guard against raiders who might come creeping in the night. All night they lay under the stars in the same restless half-sleep that their grandfathers and grandfather’s grandfathers had endured for eons, waking at the slightest suggestion—the rustling of a twig or a squirrel—to probe the darkness with eyes and ears. A man’s eyes might flutter open a hundred times or more in his fitful sleep, straining to see if an enemy hovered over him, dark against the sky. Once as a youth, Misko had awakened to find a deer nuzzling his face, an antlered shadow against the stars, and for all the rest of his life he lay uneasy, wondering if some night his guest might be a wolf, or even a panther.

  As was custom, the men rose in the mists before dawn, wandering the forest paths and wading through groves of wet ferns like ghosts in the morning fog, seeking the deer before they retreated to their day beds and hiding places. More often they found rabbits, possum and the like in their snares, thin meat, but always welcome. By late morning they returned, hopeful of something roasting on the fires outside the lodges, while the women, in turn were hopeful their men had brought something to cook. And throughout the day, they sat over their pipes with friends or busied themselves making canoes. There was always fishing gear in need of repair and snowshoes to make for the winter. Then, at dusk, the hunters melted into the forest again as prey began to stir for the evening.

  While the men fished and hunted through the season the women planted gardens of maize, squash, and pumpkin, hacking at the soil with their digging sticks. Gardening was new to Ashagi, whose people living on the north shore of Kitchi Gami scorned the earth-diggers of the south.

  “My father’s people had no use for planting,” she told the merry one, whose name she learned was Minose, Good Luck Woman. “We ate only meat, fish, and what we could gather.”

  “That is because your people lived too far north for planting,” Minose sniffed. “Even we are further north than the squash would like. It is said that the gardens of the Potawatomi are large enough to feed their entire tribe all year long. But they live far to the south where the sun is kinder.”

  “Why don’t we move there, too?” Ashagi wondered.

  “What? So you could be some Potawatomi’s chattel? We were planted here because this is the place where Manabozho led us.”

  Manabozho, Ashagi knew, was the go-between for the Anishinaabek and the Great Spirit. He was not a man, but not a god either. He was the Master of Life, appearing in the guise of both animals and men and always working on behalf of the Ojibwe as their kind uncle.

  “Manabozho could have done better for us,” she shrugged.

  “Hush woman! It would not do for him to hear you!” Minose replied, gazing around the garden patch as if Manabozho himself might be lingering behind a tree.

  “He has better things to do than listen to me, sister,” Ashagi laughed.

  “Who knows what things a spirit might choose to do?” Minose muttered. “He might make you his sweet, sister. Think on that.”

  Minose was Ashagi’s chosen friend as the result of a dream. Good Luck Woman was a member of the Moose clan, which lived on the mainland. Her husband had been a man of the Amiks, and when he died in the red sickness, Minose had chosen to stay with his clan.

  Although she barely knew her, Ashagi had been commanded in a dream to take Minose as a friend. As was customary, she had given Minose a number of gifts to seal their friendship: a pouch of tobacco, a deer hide and a load of firewood among them. Then, sh
e had hosted a feast in her lodge to announce to all that Minose was her dream friend and that they would be with each other for life.

  Pleasant though it was, summer was also a fearful time because it was the raiding season. It was the time of year when the foliage of trees gave cover to the enemy, allowing them to creep in unseen. Raiders might come in the night, with only the band’s dogs to sound the alarm; or they might lay in ambush on the trails beyond the village. Who could know when a raiding party of the Dakota, the Haudenosaunee, or some unknown and unexpected enemy might strike? Other seasons provided safety from raiders. In the winter an enemy’s footsteps could be followed in the snow and frozen rivers made it impossible to travel by canoe. In early spring or late fall there were no leaves on the trees for concealment. Only summer brought war parties cloaked by the forest.

  The men of the Anishinaabek were not as warlike as those of other tribes, but they had their temptations, especially those young bravos who were eager to prove themselves and hungry for adventure.

  Often, their raids were the children of revenge. All winter, men griped over their grievances with the enemy and worked themselves into a fever with talk of avenging lost relatives or friends. Summer brought the chance to gather scalps or to dip a relic of a dead brother in the enemy’s blood. “Blood for blood” was the only remedy when the enemy had killed one of their own.

  The threat of a raid tormented Ashagi with endless waves of anxiety as she lay trembling in her dreams at night. No matter how hard she pushed against the visions, she could not forget the howling men painted black and red, bursting through the entrance to her family’s home in her lost village. At times, she cried out like a child in her sleep, and then Misko would rise from his own robe outside the lodge and creep past the sleepers to gather her in his arms.