Makoons

by Louise Erdrich

  “Let’s make bows and shoot some enemy warriors,” said Chickadee.

  He looked admiringly at the knife that Two Strike had given him.

  Makoons had taken sinew to dry and now was twisting it into a bowstring. The calf followed Chickadee down to the stream and watched as his new parent searched for the right wood. It took a long time. They had to find a downed tree, young if possible, but seasoned for a year at least. Ash would be good, and white oak better, but that grew in the hills and back in the prairies. If they settled for the wrong wood, the bow might crack or split. So they kept on looking until they found the right ash tree—then Chickadee worked all afternoon with a hatchet Two Strike had lent them. At last he had long rough blocks of wood that he and Makoons could carve down with their knives.

  They would imitate their grandfather. He was a lifelong maker of bows, arrows, and his were considered the finest in the family. Chickadee brought the wooden blanks. As they worked, the little calf fell asleep at their feet. Makoons imagined how it must feel. When its people had disappeared in the great thunder, and the strange new beings taken their place, all this baby calf could do was squeeze its eyes shut in fear and pretend it was invisible. Now that these beings were feeding and petting him, there was no way the buffalo calf would let them out of sight. He was probably afraid that the boys would disappear in the same way if he didn’t stick to them as closely as possible.

  Only the thinnest cuts of meat had dried by the second day. Omakayas had a large bag of rose hips, and Yellow Kettle had brought Nokomis’s dried wild bergamot for flavoring. Now began the tedious, necessary process of rendering the fleet, brute, astonishing animals into packs of light, nutritious food.

  As soon as any meat fully dried, Omakayas put several strips on a flat piece of wood. She had a stone that she liked so much that she had carried it with her for many years. Nokomis had given her this stone. She had brought it from the beach on Madeline Island, where Omakayas grew up. It was just the right sort of stone to grind things with, the perfect size for a two-handed grip on top, tapering to a gentle rounded bottom. Over the years Omakayas had ground a hill of berries, a mountain of meat. She began to pound and grind the meat with the stone, crushing the fibers, changing the texture until it was light brown, fluffy, powdery. The Juneberries, chokecherries, and pembina berries weren’t ripe yet, or she would have ground them into the meat as well. Then hot buffalo fat would be poured over the pemmican to bind it and preserve it. This food could last for months, even a year. They would take it on trips, or if they had extra they would use it for trading. Yellow Kettle had scraped a hide, dried it out, and made rawhide containers by folding and sewing pieces together. Once the pemmican was finished, they filled four containers. It was a good morning’s work.

  Yellow Kettle sat back to smoke her little pipe and relax. Omakayas poured a cup of the raspberry and bergamot tea she’d made to refresh the two of them. As they regarded the result of the hard work, a shadow suddenly fell over them. It was Gichi Noodin.

  “Here,” he said, dropping a huge stinking buffalo hide in front of the two women. “Finish this by tomorrow!”

  Omakayas laughed and Yellow Kettle made a snorting noise.

  “Why do you laugh, mere women?”

  The two now started laughing together.

  “Do you mock me?” Gichi Noodin stepped back, glowering with sudden anger.

  “Oh no,” said Omakayas, “we are laughing at all the others in this camp who can’t match your good looks.”

  “Ah,” said Gichi Noodin, tossing his head. “Of course. Many people are comically ugly next to me.”

  “And they are weak, too,” said Yellow Kettle, nearly choking, “compared with your strength!”

  “Oh yes,” said Gichi Noodin eagerly, pleased that these two women agreed with his opinion of himself. “I am so strong that I am almost too strong. You know what I mean?”

  “Not exactly,” said Omakayas, forcing a puzzled look onto her face. “Could you demonstrate your powers for us?”

  “Certainly,” said Gichi Noodin, rubbing his hands together. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Many people say that women are weak,” said Omakayas. “If so, it would be nothing for you to take that beautiful buffalo hide on the ground there, and stake it out over there. Then you could probably work the flesh off with this scraper and rub this mixture of brains and liver into the skin until it softens. I’ll bet you could do all of that by tomorrow.”

  “Ha. You make me laugh, mere woman,” said Gichi Noodin. “Of course I could do that. But it would be much too easy. There are other feats of strength I could show you right now. For instance, behold this rock! I can lift it with my hands and bring it down again.”

  “Not really!”

  Omakayas and Yellow Kettle pretended excitement when Gichi Noodin lifted the pounding stone that they’d been using all day.

  “Yes, it is true,” said Gichi Noodin, putting down the stone. “I could do this lifting and putting down a thousand times.”

  Omakayas had certainly done this two thousand times this very morning.

  “Unbelievable.” She grinned. “What else can you do?”

  “I can also jump into the air, quite high.”

  “How high?” asked Yellow Kettle.

  “This high?” asked Omakayas, holding her hand up.

  “Jumping? It is nothing to me!”

  Omakayas reached over and threw a bundle of sticks onto the fire so that it leapt up.

  “Can you leap over this fire?”

  “With ease,” said Gichi Noodin.

  “If you leap the fire we will tan your hide for you,” said Omakayas. “If you fail, you will demonstrate your strength by tanning your own buffalo hide.”

  “It is done,” said Gichi Noodin. “Only, please do not insult me. Build the fire higher! I am swift as a cougar, springy as the deer, light as the grasshopper . . .”

  “. . . dim as the prairie chicken,” whispered Yellow Kettle.

  “. . . and fearless as the buffalo,” said Gichi Noodin with great satisfaction. He hardly noticed the amount of wood that Omakayas put on the fire. He was looking around to see who was watching. Ah, he spotted Zozie! She was exactly the one he hoped to impress and there she was, walking toward her mother. Gichi Noodin made some loud groaning noises, as if the noise helped his muscles flex. Then he began fluffing his hair out with his hands so that it would fly out behind him during his great leap.

  “Time to prove yourself!” cried Yellow Kettle. “Zozie! Come closer and watch this!”

  Gichi Noodin stepped back proudly and rubbed his hands, flicked out his feet. He then began his lunging run toward the fire. As if to greet him, all of the sticks caught fire at once, and the flames spurted high into the air. At the last moment, just as Gichi Noodin launched himself upon his superb jump, he saw that the flames were really, really, very high. His face changed from a look of proud command. His eyes bugged out, his mouth fell open. Upward, he strained. Downward, he fell. Gichi Noodin landed just beyond the flames then tumbled over, yowling. The women clapped their hands to their mouths, trying to stifle laughter. The magnificent fringe on his pants, the soles of his moccasins, and the fancy beadwork apron he wore front and back all had caught fire. He rolled over, hitting at the flames, then sat up. He began to spit on himself to put out the last of the flickering and smoldering bits. Worst of all, the very ends of his long, shining hair had begun to smoke.

  “Nooooooo,” he cried, batting at his gorgeous tresses.

  “Yessss,” said Yellow Kettle, lifting the stinky hide. She dropped it at his smoking feet. “Finish this by tomorrow,” she said.

  SEVEN

  THE RETURN

  On the way back to Pembina, the oxcarts screeched beneath their heavy load of hides. There were parfleches filled with pemmican and huge packs of dried meat. Omakayas had boiled clean a shoulder blade bone for Nokomis to fix to a strong stick and use as a hoe in her garden. Other bones were hollowed out
to hold pure fat. Buffalo horns had been kept to hold gunpowder or to make ceremonial spoons. Uncle Quill drove his oxcart with Yellow Kettle and Omakayas riding along. Zozie was riding Whirlwind because Makoons was riding Angeline’s horse, Fly. He walked Fly slowly, behind the rest of the trailing camp. She was followed by the lamb and baby buffalo. Both trotted along, trusting and confident, on strong-boned legs. They seemed extremely fond of their mother.

  Zozie had grown from an ordinary big sister into a beautiful big sister, but of course her younger twin brothers had not noticed. They did see her shining braids bounce on her straight, graceful back just up ahead of them. They saw how her cloth skirt hugged her legs, how she’d managed to cleverly tie her shawl so that she could carry a large pack of willow wands behind the saddle. She was already a master at making baskets. They knew she had a straight nose, full lips, dark eyes, but the twins were oblivious of the fact that these separate features were put together enchantingly. As a result they did not understand why Gichi Noodin kept galloping his horse just ahead of her. And they really couldn’t tell that he was trying to do fancy tricks to impress her. He kept popping up on one side, then the other, of his irritated horse. He kept looking back at her, arching his eyebrows and flipping his hair around. Once, he craned around so far, trying to catch Zozie’s eyes, that he ran into Two Strike.

  “Do that again and I’ll gut you like a fish!” Two Strike growled.

  Gichi Noodin just pirouetted away on his furious horse, but stayed carefully out of Two Strike’s reach. His saddle had a saddle horn, which could be used to tie a rope. It was the first such saddle anyone had seen. The United States was selling much of its surplus of Civil War army goods. This saddle had been waiting for Gichi Noodin at a trader’s store—he’d given many buffalo robes for it. Because it offered a more stable ride, he had learned some special tricks. Using a loop of his reins, he could ride at his horse’s flank. He could stand on the saddle. He could turn around and around on the saddle while his horse sullenly galloped in a circle. He did a few of these tricks now, in an effort to captivate Zozie.

  “Oh, there he goes again,” said Yellow Kettle, rolling her eyes.

  Omakayas thought he was amusing, but then suddenly he went past amusing.

  Gichi Noodin began to twirl in a circle, legs out straight, holding himself upright on his saddle. Unfortunately, in midtwirl the saddle horn caught the bold red sash at his waist. It caught him from behind. Suddenly, Gichi Noodin was stuck riding backwards on his horse!

  Although his horse put up with a great deal, this odd sensation on its back was too much! The horse bolted forward. Gichi Noodin grabbed its tail in an attempt to balance. His eyes bulged with shock, his mouth dropped open in a desperate hoot, which only motivated his horse to move faster.

  This ridiculous spectacle was the last anyone saw of Gichi Noodin—that is, until everyone arrived back in the settlement. And even then, he kept an unusually low profile, skulking and slinking for almost an entire day before he regained his pride, his chest puffed out, and he began preening boastfully again.

  Nokomis greeted her returning family with excitement, hobbling forward on the cane of diamond willow that Deydey had carved for her. She hugged them and touched their faces. Lovingly, she greeted her great-grandsons. Although the lumps of maple sugar she’d kept in her carrying bags were long gone, she still hoarded little treats for them. Today, she had a comb of wild honey, which she gave them to share. She wouldn’t tell them where she’d gotten it, no matter how much they pestered her.

  In her family’s absence, Nokomis had tended the garden with great contentment. She was very pleased at how lush her beans were growing. Her hills of potatoes were spreading darkly. Her squash vines now sported enormous yellow blossoms. The corn plants rustled with lush energy. Bees, hummingbirds, robins, and Chickadee’s namesake foraged and decorated the garden. Nokomis had waited a long time for this glory. She weeded diligently, setting snares for hungry rabbits and raiding gophers. Every day she added a new stick to her fence, which she bound tight with nettle rope or sinew. Deydey had set up a little arbor where people could sit, and they often rested there.

  “You’ve earned the right to sit and watch your plants grow,” he said to Nokomis. She was so old now that everyone claimed her as their mother and grandmother.

  “Eyeh, gidebwe,” said Nokomis. “You speak the truth.”

  She rested a moment, gave a deeply happy sigh, then picked up her cane and moved into the garden to adjust a stake or pluck a threatening weed.

  EIGHT

  ENEMIES

  The twins were trying to hide from work. And when they couldn’t hide, they insisted that training their buffalo ponies was crucial, the most important thing in the world. Yet there was so much to do. The buffalo hides still had to be scraped down. Omakayas and Yellow Kettle had staked them up where the best breezes blew to carry away the flies. Opichi watched over the meat racks, using a willow switch for the flies and a stick against the hopeful dogs. Tiny though she was, she took her job very seriously. Makoons and Chickadee wouldn’t have minded looking after the meat, especially since they knew they would not be allowed near the pounding and grinding process, which their mother did in a particular, perfect way. Yellow Kettle also was a perfectionist about the texture and flavor of the pemmican she made. So the boys were saved from any involvement because they always made mistakes.

  But the hide tanning job was more difficult to evade.

  The boys lit out at dawn, sneaking a cold bannock and some dried meat. All morning, they rode their horses at a dummy made of twigs and bark that was supposed to be a buffalo. They had even stolen some bits of hide to stick on it. Riding past the buffalo, they raised their bows and sank their arrows deep in the spot just over the shoulder where the arrow would reach the heart. They had decided to practice this way first, since it was unlikely they’d have the use of a gun at the next hunt. As they hunted their pretend buffalo, their real calf, who couldn’t be without them for a moment, cropped grass nearby. To the mare Fly’s relief, at least one of her strange children had grown up. As the boys rested from their labor of killing buffalo, the calf walked over and put his head down near them, nuzzling them, trying to chew on their sleeves.

  “Here we are practicing how to destroy his relatives,” said Makoons.

  “Don’t tell him,” said Chickadee, scratching the buffalo calf’s head. “He might hate us.”

  “But a man must live,” said Makoons.

  “You sound like Gichi Noodin.” Chickadee laughed. “A man must do what he must do! A man must keep his pants clean! A man must toss his hair! A man must show his chest!”

  “A man must ride his horse backwards holding the tail!”

  They collapsed with laughter, which made them hungry. Hungry, they imagined how they might slip back home without alerting their mother, who would force them to help tan hides. How they loathed that laborious and stinky process. And it would be impossible to argue their way out. With no pity in her voice their mother would say she’d loathed the job all of her life, too, but had to do it anyway. They had never yet succeeded in complaining their way out of it.

  “We have to slip back in, steal the food.”

  “We will pretend they are the enemy.”

  “We are raiding the enemy camp!”

  “We must stake our horses near to get away swiftly.”

  “And slink in under cover of the buffalo calf.”

  This seemed an excellent idea. First, they painted their faces with stripes of white and black clay. This would make them terrifying if they had to confront an enemy. But they believed their plan would work. They would be mystically invisible. The women were used to the buffalo calf roaming here and there around the cabin, sometimes butting heads with the lamb, sometimes trying to get through Nokomis’s fence. Several times she had smacked her cane over the calf’s head. Diamond willow is one of the hardest woods that exists, so it must have hurt. The point was, if the buffalo calf wandered into c
amp the women wouldn’t even notice, and if it had eight legs instead of four, they might not notice either. The boys would crouch low next to their calf, steering him with a rope harness until they came near enough food to snatch it with their hands.

  Next, they scouted the camp. They tethered their horses and crept close, the buffalo calf on a rope behind them.

  “Ah, the enemy is doing just as we predicted,” said Chickadee, speaking in a tense whisper.

  “They are pretending to prepare hides, while their warriors lay in wait to ambush us.”

  “Yes, that is their plan. They will pretend everything is normal and take us by surprise.”

  “We will take them by surprise,” hissed Makoons. “We will raid their food supply. Our spirit buffalo will help us become invisible.”

  Closer and closer they crept, while the buffalo innocently munched what it could snatch from the grasses that hid them. The boys agreed to be very careful passing near the garden.

  “A very dangerous old warrior watches there,” said Chickadee, thinking of Nokomis’s cane.

  “One with sharp eyes who will warn the others,” said Makoons.

  They would try to avoid another dangerous warrior, their mother. Sometimes they disobeyed grandmother Yellow Kettle because they were used to her scolding. But they never disobeyed their mother, not only because it was so disrespectful but also because of their father. Animikiins was not to be trifled with either.