The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

  “It isn’t a lot of money,” she said in her letter, “but between that and what Patrice saves maybe she can go back to school.”

  Doris and Valentine let Patrice off and the big car pulled away down the road. Patrice started down the path, the ground spongy. The snow was sagging into the earth. The air was wet and rich. Sap was coming up in the trees and Zhaanat would be out tapping the birches. During the winter she’d carved spiles to hammer into the veins of the trees and saved tin cans to collect the sap. The cold sap was a spring tonic. When you drank it, you shared the genius of the woods. As Patrice drew near the house, she saw that her mother was sitting on a stump near the fire, tending the kettle of sap. Patrice went inside and changed her clothes. When she came out her mother held out a jar she’d dipped from the bucket. Patrice sat beside her on another friendly stump. Zhaanat poked a stick to adjust the steadily burning logs, then lifted her jar.

  “Millie’s going to make you famous,” said Patrice, lifting up her jar of sap. “Someday there will be a book.”

  “I don’t care about that,” said Zhaanat, “but we can use the zhooniyaa.”

  Grinning, she lifted her jar, like the Michifs lifted wine, “À ta santé.”

  Patrice tapped her jar to her mother’s. “À ta santé.”

  Together they drank the icy birch water, which entered them the way life entered the trees, causing buds to swell along the branches. Patrice leaned to one side and put her ear to the trunk of a birch tree. She could hear the humming rush of the tree drinking from the earth. She closed her eyes, went through the bark like water, and was sucked up off the bud tips into a cloud. She looked down at herself and her mother, sitting by a small fire in the spring woods. Zhaanat tipped her head back and smiled. She gestured at her daughter to come back, the way she had when as a child Patrice strayed.

  “Ambe bi-izhaan omaa akiing miinawa,” she said, and Patrice returned.

  Roderick

  Again, he missed the train. But there were so many Indian ghosts in Washington that he decided to stay. For a while, Roderick eddied around the station. When he’d moped enough, he went back to see the sights, which, after all, he’d missed out on, being so attentive to the living. He saw the monuments, he saw the statues, he saw the buildings. In one of the buildings there were so many voices that he could hear them laughing and bickering from the outside. He flowed in, poked around, blustered into the storage areas. Oh my! Drawers and cabinets of his own kind of people! Indian ghosts stuck to their bones or scalp locks or pieces of skin. Some of the holy pipes were singing monotonously. Other ghosts were uproariously gambling with their own bones. There were ghostly ghost-dance shirts, buzzing war shields, gurgling baby makizinan, and sacred scrolls choked with spirits. Indians brought from the top or bottom of the world as living exhibits, then immediately turned to ghosts. For centuries, Indians had gone to Washington for the same reasons as the little party from the Turtle Mountains. They had gone in order to protect their families and their land. It was a hazard of travel for Indians to be lynched from streetlamps as a drunken joke. Ghosts with rope necklaces. It turned out the city was packed with ghosts, lively with ghosts. Roderick had never had so much company. And they were glad for somebody new. Glad he stayed behind. They argued with him. Why go back there? Who’s waiting for you?

  Thomas

  He removed his thermos from his armpit and set it on the steel desk alongside his scuffed but no longer bulging briefcase. His light work jacket and battered old fedora went on the chair, his lunch box on the cool windowsill. He punched his time card. Midnight. He picked up the key ring, a company flashlight, and walked the perimeter of the main floor.

  He checked the drilling room and tested every lock, flipped the lights on and off. He stepped through the reinforced doors of the acid washing room, shone his flashlight on the dials and hoses. He checked the offices, the bathrooms, and ended up back at his desk. A new lamp had been issued to him. Now a stronger power of light charged the surface of the desk. He sat down. He had missed a number of birthdays, which he kept track of in a tiny yellow spiral-bound notebook. He’d picked out a stack of flower embossed cards at Rexall for each grandchild, son and daughter, friend and relative.

  At the bottom of each card, he signed himself “the muskrat” and drew a small supple little fellow writhing through the water, or curved over, cleaning its paws, or just sunning himself on a log. Thomas had taken to doodling now and then. It had started when he’d encountered some trouble finding his words. He’d been cleared, good to go, after the stroke he’d suffered at the train station. But sometimes his brain skipped. Sometimes his brain hid a tantalizing word from him in its folds. He had to relax his mind and sneak up on the word. The doodles were a way to win the hide-and-seek game he had now begun to play with his memory. Pictures occasionally dislodged a word. Also, sometimes now, a word failed to come to him when he was speaking, and in those times he substituted a descriptive phrase for the word, comically, and got a laugh. Just the other day he’d forgotten the word for car trunk, and said, “automobile cave with a hinge,” which was taken for wit. As with the time he’d asked Rose to wear her “namesake dress” because he couldn’t find the word for the color red in his mind. Rouge, scarlet, carmine. Rose. So many words came later. And from Sharlo he’d requested “a book of twisting ways,” when he’d meant a mystery. She liked his description. Nobody seemed to have caught on to the trouble he was having, and he certainly wasn’t about to make it known. But he knew, and he knew when he was beginning to think first in Chippewa, the language of his childhood. Was he going back? Sometimes, as when he sat in the circle of light drawing little muskrats, he felt the raw dread of further robbery. His mind was everything to him, but he hadn’t the slightest notion how to save it. He just kept diving down, grabbing for the word, coming back up. The battle with termination and with Arthur V. Watkins had been, he feared, a battle that would cost him everything.

  Later, dozing in the lamplight, he saw muskrats everywhere. Their small supple forms slipped busily along the floor at dusk, continually perfecting their burrows. He saw them pulling soft weeds and holding juicy roots in their tiny paws to eat. “What is my name?” he asked one of the little creatures. “Wazhashk gidizhinikaaz,” it said.

  His name. Would there be a time he wouldn’t know himself? Was this bit of paper given to him so that in an extremity he could retrieve his name at least? He put the scrap of paper into his mouth. All of a sudden he and his father were sitting outside the old man’s cabin. Thomas stared at the bright popple leaves, trembling and flashing as they swirled thickly off the branches. Frantic yellows and golden red and orange leaves filled his eyes. But it’s spring, he thought. I shouldn’t be here. Something’s happening to me again. He looked around and saw that the wild prairies were littered with bones thick and white as far as he could see.

  The bones tipped and staggered, assembling into forms, and took on shaggy flesh. The grass rippled and billowed like a green robe and the animals crossed vast and vaster numbers. The earth trembled in a serpentine rush, blew away, and vanished into the sky.

  Thomas remembered the jelly bun in his lunch box. Rose had made his coffee hot and strong. He shook his head, wiped his eyes, settled back into his task, underlining words in the birthday wishes and adding his own greetings, forming his letters with precision, until it was time again to punch his card and make the last round of the night.

  * * *

  The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa was not terminated.

  * * *

  My grandfather recovered from his initial stroke and went on to work on improving the reservation school system, writing a Turtle Mountain Constitution, and writing and publishing the first history of the Turtle Mountains. He was tribal chairman until 1959. He was promoted to supervisor of maintenance and worked at the jewel bearing plant until his mandatory retirement in 1970.

  * * *

  In 1955 the women of the Turtle Mountain jewel bearing plant attempted to unioni
ze. According to my grandfather, this raised a ruckus all the way to New York. “Accusations, allegations, fabrications of the imagination, rumors, prophecies, threats, and counterthreats flew thick and fast. Bribe in the form of dinners were offered from both sides—and accepted.” In the end, unionization was voted down. However, pay increases were immediately authorized. A cafeteria was completed. And the workers regained their coffee break.

  Afterword and Acknowledgments

  My Grandfather’s Letters

  Aunishenaubay, Patrick Gourneau, was the chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Advisory Committee during the mid-1950s, supposedly the golden age for America, but in reality a time when Jim Crow reigned and American Indians were at the nadir of power—our traditional religions outlawed, our land base continually and illegally seized (even as now) by resource extraction companies, our languages weakened by government boarding schools. Our leaders were also answerable to assimilationist government officials: as an example, just look at the “advisory committee” in my grandfather’s designation. He and his fellow tribal members had almost no authority. Their purpose was to advise the BIA, but they seized any opportunity to represent their people. The 1950s were a time when the scraps of land and the rights guaranteed by treaty were easy pickings. With the postwar housing boom, the fabulous Klamath and Menominee forests were especially coveted. It is no coincidence that those tribes were among the first five slated for termination.

  My grandfather wrote a series of extraordinary letters during 1953 and 1954. They were addressed to my parents. My mother gave them to me to look after because I was born in 1954. Patrick Gourneau had attended government boarding schools at Fort Totten, Haskell, and Wahpeton. The letters are written in graceful “boarding-school handwriting” familiar to those who were schooled in the Palmer Method, and they are packed with remarkable, funny, stereotype-breaking episodes of reservation life. Altogether, they compose a portrait of a deeply humane intelligence as well as a profoundly religious patriot and family man.

  A first speaker of Ojibwemowin, my grandfather was the son of Keeshkemunishiw, the Kingfisher, and the grandson of Joseph Gourneau, Kasigiwit, head warrior of the Pembina Band of Ojibwe. They had lived by hunting buffalo across the plains into Montana. My grandfather was of the first generation born on the reservation. His family made the desperate, difficult transition to farming. Eventually they were successful. Patrick wrote about his magnificent truck garden, delighted in details like the moss roses he grew for beauty, and told stories about how he planted oats but somehow harvested flax. He recounted funny things his children said and avowed love for his wife, Mary Cecelia LeFavor. He confided in my parents and spoke of new anxieties that had complicated his job as chairman of the advisory committee. At the time he wrote, the job paid thirty dollars per month, but the tribe was dead broke so he didn’t collect those wages. He’d received word of the Termination Bill and immediately understood that this was, as it has been called, a new front in the Indian Wars.

  “Most of the pending legislation, if passed, would result in the end of our last holdings on this continent and destroy our dignity and distinction as the first inhabitants of this rich land,” said Joe Garry, then president of the National Congress of American Indians.

  “This new bill is about the worst thing for Indians to come down the pike,” said my grandfather.

  Although I had many times read his letters for solace or inspiration, eventually I thought to read his letters in conjunction with a stack of the termination-era research I’d put aside. Once I did, setting his carefully dated letters against the time line of the bill, which gave tribes only a few months to mount a response to Congress, I realized that my grandfather—along with others in the tribe, astute friends like Martin Old Dog Cross, and non-Indian allies—had accomplished something that altered the trajectory of termination and challenged the juggernaut of the federal push to sever legal, sacred, and immutable promises made in nation-to-nation treaties. Of the initial tribes slated for termination, the Turtle Mountain delegation was the first to mount a fierce defense and prevail. Now I could see the desperation and exhaustion behind my grandfather’s jokes. He was a whirlwind, writing all night long and attending meetings all day long. Sometimes he slept only twelve hours per week. I had as well the knowledge of what his pursuit of a seemingly impossible task, reversing termination, cost him, our family, and Indian Country.

  In all, 113 tribal nations suffered the disaster of termination; 1.4 million acres of tribal land was lost. Wealth flowed to private corporations, while many people in terminated tribes died early, in poverty. Not one tribe profited. By the end, 78 tribal nations, including the Menominee, led by Ada Deer, regained federal recognition; 10 gained state but not federal recognition; 31 tribes are landless; 24 are considered extinct. Ada Deer’s recent memoir, Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice, is great reading on this subject.

  Much of this book was written in a state of heavy emotion as I remembered the grief my grandmother and my mother’s siblings endured as the continued political fights took their toll and my grandfather’s health began to fail. Eventually, he suffered a long decline. Yet Patrick Gourneau never stopped being funny, optimistic, and kind. I hope this book reflects his gracious spirit. Also, I like to think that the efforts of the Turtle Mountain people helped other tribal nations negotiate the long messy nightmare of termination. In 1970, Richard Nixon addressed Congress and called for an end to this policy. Five years later, a new era of self-determination for Native people began.

  There are many people to thank. First of all, Patrick and Mary Gourneau and the remarkable family they raised, including my mother, Rita Gourneau Erdrich, an artist who meticulously saved my grandfather’s letters and the mimeographed chairman’s reports that included his articles and jokes. Thank you to my dear aunt and friend Dolores Gourneau Manson, my aunt Madonna Owen, and my uncle Dwight Gourneau, who has served Native people all of his life, notably as the chairman of the boards of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Thank you to my uncle Howard Gourneau, our family’s Pipe Keeper, and to Roberta Morin. My sister Liselotte Erdrich, writer, poet, and our family historian, gave me invaluable advice and support. I’d like to thank Judy Azure for dancing for us all. Our tribal historian, Professor Les LaFountain, gave this manuscript an invaluable early read that was full of brilliant suggestions. Denise Lajimodiere also made important changes. I am very grateful for the response and reminiscences of Zelma Peltier, whose mother worked at the jewel bearing plant. Gail Caldwell bucked me up when I had doubts. Brenda Child, Northrop Professor at the University of Minnesota, listened at length to the evolution of this book, and gave me fireside pep talks, generous advice, and introduced me to the joys of research at the National Archives. My mother talked at length about her life on the reservation in the 1950s. It was a joy to share her memories.

  The Turtle Mountain delegation really was partially funded by a benefit boxing match. The work of Chippewa scholar Millie Cloud was based on a combination of people, including Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin and Sister Inez Hilger. Dr. David P. Delorme authored the actual economic study that surprised and impressed the congressional committee. The meeting with the BIA in Fargo relies on the transcript of the actual meeting, as does the testimony in Congress. Leo Jeanotte, Edward Jollie, Eli Marion, and Theresa “Resa” Monette Davis Revard were some of the members of the original advisory committees. It is moving to me that Martin Cross came to lend his expertise, considering the devastation his tribe was suffering at that time with the inundation and destruction of their beloved homelands by the Army Corps of Engineers. For his support of the Turtle Mountain people, Cross was threatened several times with termination during testimony. He was a strong and principled advocate. On the other hand, Senator Arthur V. Watkins was indeed a pompous racist. But to give Watkins his due, he also was instrumental in bringing down Sena
tor Joe McCarthy and ending an ugly era in national politics.

  Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota, authored by Melissa Farley, Nicole Matthews, Sarah Deer, Guadalupe Lopez, Christine Stark, and Eileen Hudon, was the source for Vera’s story. Divena, a mermaid working in a large fish tank at the Persian Palms in Minneapolis during the 1970s, was the inspiration for Pixie’s waterjack.

  Disturbingly, the memory of termination has faded even among American Indian people, and it was my sister the poet and artist Heid Erdrich who encouraged me to write this book to keep the knowledge alive. (Indeed, the Trump administration and Assistant Secretary of the Interior Tara Sweeney have recently brought back the termination era by seeking to terminate the Wampanoag, the tribe who first welcomed Pilgrims to these shores and invented Thanksgiving.) My sister Angela Erdrich, M.D., helped greatly by passing on to me the research materials on termination that she collected long ago through Baker Library at Dartmouth. I’d like to express my deep appreciation to Joyce Burner, a librarian at the National Archives at Kansas City, who told me she loved a treasure hunt and proceeded to find my grandfather’s boarding-school files, letters in which he argued his way into boarding school, as well as the actual ballots cast during one of his elections. I would also like to thank National Archives librarian Elizabeth Burnes for her devoted work. As always, I am most grateful to Terry Karten, an editor who offers inspiration as well as critical reports, and Trent Duffy, a copy editor of unequaled skills. Thank you also to Jin Auh and Andrew Wylie for steady work on behalf of all my books. My daughter Pallas provided technical support and is our family’s guardian angel. Kiizh lights our way. Netaa-niimid Amookwe, Persia, Ojibwe immersion teacher at Waadookodaading School in Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin, is my consultant in Ojibwemowin, but all mistakes are mine. This book included a difficult editing transition handled with patience by Amber Oliver, John Jusino, and Lydia Weaver. Thank you! As always, thanks to Milan Bozic for cover design, Fritz Metsch for interior design, and Aza Abe for her creation of this book’s cover art, which is based on the spectrum of the northern lights.