Algonquin Sunset

by Rick Revelle

  As Zhashagi talked, I watched as he glanced over my head toward the west shore. I turned and saw a large hare sitting on its haunches. It appeared to be waving at us.

  Zhashagi stopped talking and paddled his canoe to the shore where the hare was. As soon as the canoe arrived on the shore, the animal vanished into the forest and a tall warrior emerged to greet Zhashagi.

  “Zhashagi, you’ve been caught in the open and things don’t look good for the future of your raid.”

  “No, Nanabozho, they don’t,” Zhashagi replied.

  “Well, my friend, take your warriors and their boats across this narrow piece of land. You’ll come to the other river and from there it will take you to an island that protects their village. They’ll be expecting you down this river, not the other one. Use your knowledge wisely. Good luck, my friend.” Nanabozho then turned and was swallowed up by the forest.

  Zhashagi waved us to shore, and we carried our boats across the narrow division of the two rivers. Putting the canoes in the Gaagaagiwigwani-ziibi, we quickly came to the big island shortly after the noon sun started to bring down the afternoon heat.

  Our force of more than three hundred was able to surprise the defenders on the island. They had their backs turned to us as we charged them at the treeline along the shore. The fighting was brutal. I fought alongside Mitigomij, Makwa, Wàbek, Pangì Mahingan, and Ki’kwa’ju. Along with Nìj Enàndeg and Makadewà Wàban, we raced from our boats and came upon three Nadowessioux warriors. When they spotted us, they turned and ran in the direction of where their main force was expecting us on the east side of the island. I watched as the trio of fleeing warriors sprinted into the clutches of Crazy Crow and his Mi’kmaq friend, Jilte’g. The two of them easily handled the shocked enemy warriors. Crazy Crow twirled his weapon made of two rocks joined by a leather strap around his head and took the legs out from under the first warrior. Running past him, he crushed the man’s head with one swing of the huge club-spear he carried. Jilte’g then fired two arrows that dispatched the second Nadowessioux.

  The final enemy warrior met Crazy Crow head-on, and the two of them crashed to the ground. Both men’s weapons had flown from their hands upon impact and they engaged in a vicious hand-to-hand fight. They tore at each other like wild animals. The Nadowessioux warrior was a match for the Mi’kmaq legend. We were too many steps away to help, so I sent Nij Enàndeg. The huge dog hit the Nadowessioux in a headlong run, tearing him away from Crazy Crow. They rolled on the ground and the dog came out on top, but the enemy now had a knife and was about to plunge it into my dog when he was hit by a black blur hurtling out of the forest. It was over in a flash. The dog stood beside the big cat and howled while the panther screamed deafeningly. Both animals’ muzzles were covered with blood from the day’s events. Crazy Crow picked himself up from the ground, approached the two animals, and bowed to them. Then he turned to Mitigomij and me and thanked us.

  The battle raged on. Other Nadowessioux from a smaller island in the channel to the east of this one had come to their fellow warriors’ aid, increasing the defenders’ numbers.

  Zhashagi and his brother rushed by us and confronted two enemy warriors and a boy. Omashkooz struck the boy on the shoulder with his war club, spinning the youth to the ground where he rolled in pain. I then heard Zhashagi yell, “Óta Heȟáka, I’m here to kill you!”

  At that moment the sky started to darken, and I gazed at the clear sky and saw the face of the sun begin to disappear behind a black shadow. Then there was a blow to my head and everything turned black.

  When I woke, I was lying in a canoe on fur robes. My head throbbed and my dog lay beside me. Opening my eyes to the bright sunlight, I saw E’s sitting there with a big smile on his face.

  “He’s awake!” E’s cried, making my head pulse even more.

  Then I felt a hand touch my shoulder and my mother’s voice say, “I’ve been saving this for you. Remember I said we’d share tea together if we lived? It’s cold, but it’s tea.”

  I stared at her, then laughed. “Mother, what happened?”

  “You took a blow on the head from a Nadowessioux who had snuck up behind us. Nìj Enàndeg tore a chunk from his arm, but the man escaped. At about the same time the sun started to disappear from the sky. Warriors from both sides became scared. We picked up our dead and wounded and ran for our boats. Mitigomij carried you. We thought you were dead, but once we got on the water and picked up E’s and the others, we realized you were breathing but asleep.”

  “The sun disappeared?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes, and we were well clear of the Nadowessioux village before it came from behind the darkness. It was a sign from Kije-Manidò that we had to leave while we could.”

  “How many suns did I sleep?” I asked.

  “Almost two,” my mother replied. “We’re now almost at the spot where we have to travel overland to get back to Zhashagi’s village.”

  “How many more of our group died or were wounded?” I asked. “What about the rest of the war party?”

  “Achie was slain on the island, but no others except those you already know about. Overall, from the whole group, we lost forty-seven warriors and sixty-two suffered wounds. The Nadowessioux must have had as many losses as us. The fighting was bloody until the sun disappeared. We buried all the dead the first day we stopped. We had no fear of our enemy following, so we took our time and did it properly. By the time everyone arrives home, there will be many wives, sisters, and mothers mourning in the Anishinaabe and Ouendat camps.”

  That night we stopped and the mood was very sombre. The women were waiting on the shore when we arrived and the hunters had eleven deer hanging to feed us. We would stay here for several suns to help the wounded heal and to regain our strength for the trip back to the Ouendat village, which would now take longer than two suns because of the extra burden of the wounded.

  The day before we were to return to Zhashagi’s village he stepped forward and said, “A few of my warriors, some of the women, and I have decided to go to our friends, the Omashkiigoo. From there we’ll head toward the setting sun. Our Omashkiigoo friends have told us there are lands of tall grasses and then beyond that wajiwan (wa-chew-wan: mountains). If anyone wants to come with us, they’re welcome.”

  That night we sat around the fire and talked about the future. In the end, it was decided that Crazy Crow, Jilte’g, E’s, Pangì Mahingan, Ki’kwa’ju, and I would go with Zhashagi and his people. Crazy Crow said he only decided to go because if he and Mitigomij stayed together there wouldn’t be enough enemies to share between them, and besides, he said, these young Omàmiwinini needed him and the two Mi’kmaq warriors to watch over them.

  Mitigomij decided to return to our Omàmiwinini people because they needed him and he wouldn’t leave the twins, Makwa and Wàbek, alone while their wives were with child. They were family, and the children they had coming would need guidance in the future.

  Kìnà Odenan and Kànìkwe were still mourning the loss of Agwanìwon, and they said they needed to tell her family how she had died.

  My mother, Wàbananang, decided to let us go. She said she was getting old and needed to be with her people along the Kitcisìpi Sìbì. She wanted her spirit to be near my father, Mahingan, when her time came to leave Turtle Island.

  The next day there were hugs and tearful goodbyes, and we set off to the land of the setting sun.

  On a bluff overlooking a small lake, two figures stood. Nanabozho turned to the tall hairy one whom the Lakȟóta called Čhiyé Tȟáŋka and asked, “Why did you do that with the sun?”

  “There was an Ouendat warrior in the battle who needed to live. His granddaughter will give birth to a great-grandson who will be named Dekanahwideh (deck-aknee-wi-day).

  Nanabozho looked at him and said, “I never knew you could talk!”

  “I didn’t know how to sign the name Dekanahwideh,” he answere
d, “so I had to.”

  They nodded at each other, turned, and went their separate ways.

  Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

  We were here long before you knew us. We were not strong enough to hold our lands. Guns and disease and alcohol were our demise. However, it was the white man who drew up the treaties for us to sign. All any of us ask now is for you to keep your word on what you asked us to sign.

  Afterword

  The solar eclipse that stopped the vicious battle portrayed at the end of this novel actually took place in that area on July 16, 1330. It took two hours and seven minutes for the moon to travel across the sun’s face from 1:03 p.m. to 3:10 p.m.

  The final battle in the book occurred at the junction of the Crow Wing and Mississippi Rivers. More than four hundred years later a pivotal two-day battle also happened there between sixty Ojibwe warriors and a party of five hundred Lakȟóta returning down the Mississippi River from a raid on an Ojibwe village at Sandy Lake with female captives. After two days of fighting, the Lakȟóta retreated and most of the women escaped. The Ojibwe gun pits are still visible in the park there.

  The Anishinaabe who left the Lake Superior region and settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta became known in the nineteenth century as the Saulteaux (soh-toh) Nation. This was a name given to them by the French and means “people of the rapids,” in reference to their origins in the Sault Ste. Marie region.

  In this novel, the Lakȟóta youth Tȟáȟča Čiŋčá’s (later Tȟatȟáŋka Kat’à) parents were killed by a grizzly bear. These bears have been proven to be able to smell an animal carcass from eighteen miles away.

  Readers might be surprised to learn that the yellow swallowtail butterfly (ozaawaa-memengwaa) eats from dead carcasses. They obtain important amino acids essential to their survival and colour pigmentation and are mentioned in this book when Zhashagi returns to find the bodies of the warriors who died during the attack on the river.

  The seven stopping places of the Anishinaabe in their migration from the eastern shores are as follows:

  Montreal Island

  Niagara Falls

  Detroit River

  Manitoulin Island

  Sault Ste. Marie

  Spirit Island in Duluth, Minnesota

  Madeline Island, among the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior

  The Crow Creek Massacre near Chamberlain, South Dakota, was a real-life event that happened in 1325. Archaeologists discovered 487 bodies at the site. There are a few theories of who committed the annihilation of these people. Perhaps my hypothesis will open up a different line of thought.

  The discovery of the Norse axe, sword, and shield handle near Beardmore in Northern Ontario is another actual event. They were found by a prospector named James Edward Dodd on May 24, 1931. The artifacts currently reside at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The authenticity of the relics has always been in question. Perhaps my postulation will suggest that it really isn’t a mystery, after all. My Native forefathers travelled to Turtle Island for centuries before the whites came. Anything was possible, even a wayward Viking!

  There are mysteries all around us. The Crow Creek Massacre and the Beardmore relics are just two of them. I would like to think that perhaps I have opened the door just a bit for other possibilities and thinking.

  The sharp stone arrowheads that Chaŋku Wašte, the Lakȟóta warrior, attaches to his arrow shafts before the buffalo hunt were made from volcanic obsidian rock. Chaŋku Wašte got the items from a Crow who would have received them in trade from Natives who had access to lava beds and lived near the Rocky Mountains.

  Oh, and if readers don’t know who Dekanahwideh is, they should look it up!

  To see how a birchbark canoe is made, check out a ten-minute video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPnjDj3xR2g.

  In Canada the present-day Anishinaabe-Ojibwe are the second-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by the Cree. In the United States, they have the fourth-largest population among Native American tribes where they are known as the Chippewa, surpassed only by the Navajo, Cherokee, and Lakȟóta.

  The average age for Lakȟóta speakers in the United States is 65 and there are 8,500 to 9,000 speakers remaining in a population in the United States of 102,200 (2000 U.S. census). The population of the Mi’kmaq in Canada is around 60,000 with 8,935 speakers left (2011 Canadian census). The Algonquins have 2,275 speakers remaining in Canada. The average age for Anishinaabe (Chippewa in the United States) speakers is 70, and they have around 6,000 speakers left in the United States. The Anishinaabe (Ojibwe in Canada) have 20,000 speakers.

  This is the legacy of the residential schools!

  European colonialism failed to respect Native culture when taking possession of indigenous lands. As far as Europeans were concerned, the “savages” had no particular need for land, when in reality Natives went to war to keep their lands against rival tribes. William W. Warren, in History of the Ojibway People, notes that Native families needed one square mile per family to subsist for food gathering.

  Personally, I think the biggest genocide to suck the Native population into a vortex of despair and sadness for the past 130 years involved the policies of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, and his gathering of as many Native children as his government could lay their hands on and institutionalizing them into the horrors of the residential schools. He might have been the first prime minister of Canada, but he was also the first man to teach future generations of despots how to control a country with no degree of consciousness nor any humanity toward fellow human beings. Macdonald was and is undeserving of the accolades heaped upon his dehumanization of the Native population of Canada.

  The colonists might have taken many Native people’s lives with disregard, but when they stole their children, they stole all hopes of the Native families’ future along with those children.

  Sir John A. Macdonald gets far too much credit for what people think he did and not enough credit for the things he actually did, which affected the Native population of my country of Turtle Island for the past 130 years!

  Miigwetch

  Rick Revelle

  Mashkawizi Mahingan Inini (Strong Wolf Man)

  Glossaries and Pronunciation Guides

  For the Native-language glossaries that follow, the Native word comes first followed by the pronunciation in italics and then the meaning.

  It is my hope that all those who read the three novels in my Algonquin Quest series will gain a better understanding of these dying languages and that they will learn to pronounce a few words that will stay with them in the coming years. All the glossaries have websites that readers can visit to discover these ancient languages which were spoken by real people before they were removed from their lands.

  Miigwetch.

  Algonquin/Omàmiwinini Glossary

  For an Algonquin Talking Dictionary, please see www.hilaroad.com/camp/nation/speak.html.

  Àbimì (ah-bih-mee)

  Defend, guard

  Àbita (ah-beh-ta)

  Half

  Achgook

  Snake

  Àgimag (ug-ga-mug)

  Snowshoes

  Agingos (uh-gihn-goes)

  Chipmunk

  Agwanìwon (uh-gweh-nee-won)

  Shawl Woman

  Akwàndawàgan (a-kwon-da-way-gan)

  Ladder

  Amik (ah-mik)

  Beaver

 
Àmò-sizibàkwad (ah-mow-siz-zeh-baw-kwad)

  Honey

  Àndeg (un-deck)

  Crow

  Anìbimin

  Cranberries

  Anìbìsh (ah-ne-bish)

  Tea

  Animosh (an-ney-mush)

  Dog

  Anokì (uh-noo-key)

  Hunt

  Asab (a-sab)

  Net

  Asin (a-sin)

  Stone

  Asinabka

  Place of glare rock (Chaudière Falls)

  Asticou

  Boiling rapids (also Chaudière Falls)

  Àwadòsiwag (ah-wa-dow-she-wag)

  Minnow

  Awesìnz (uh-way-seehns)

  Animal

  Azàd

  Aspen

  Enàndeg (en-nahn-deg)

  Colour

  Esiban (ez-sa-bun)

  Raccoon

  Gichi-anami’e-bizhiw

  Fabulous Night Panther

  Gichigami