Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  Ogaa, named for the fish, Walleye, was war chief of the coastal Ojibwe as the result of a great deed committed when he was only seventeen summers old. During a disastrous raid on the Odugamies, far to the southwest in the Oisconsin country, Ogaa had been inspired by a dream to lead a daring escape across the big lake Mishi Gami in three leaking canoes. No one among any of the tribes living along the lakeshore—the Ojibwe, Potawatomi or Winnebagoes—had ever been known to cross Mishi Gami in a canoe, for it was as wider than a man could walk in three days.

  There had been a great battle; the shamans were still singing of it long after Misko was born. Over hundreds of fires they told the tale of brave Ogaa and the war chief, Ma’linganbawi, Standing Wolf. That, and the doom that sometimes comes even to the Anishinaabek.

  For many years, there had been peace with the Odugamies, even intermarriage and trade. But an argument over a woman had led to the ambush of her Ojibwe suitor, and when his aggrieved family demanded justice, the young man’s father was killed in the confrontation. Adding insult, the murders were trumpeted by the Odugamies as heroic deeds of battle, which was quickly relayed to the Ojibwe homeland by their relatives. Two Odugamie hunters were killed in retaliation by a band of Ojibwe warriors, and the old peace between the tribes disintegrated into nothingness, like so much smoke out the hole in the roof of a lodge.

  As is the case with such things, calls for restraint dissipated into nothing as members of each tribe recounted old slights and evil deeds committed by the other. Those who counseled peace were brushed away as ass-lickers. For wasn’t it true that if a people showed weakness and allowed insults to stand then the enemy would show no mercy? Who would be safe in their lodges if they did not respond with crushing force?

  The violence grew like a thorny vine. An Ojibwa trader from the eastern shores of Kitchi Gami wandered into an Odugamie village, unaware that skins were being stretched over the hollows of the war drums. He was wrapped head to foot in birch bark and set ablaze. Soon enough, the Anishinaabek heard of a jest making the rounds in the Odugamie villages: that they had entertained a burning tree with legs.

  As it happened, the trader was the half brother of the war chief Ma’linganbawi, who could not ignore such an atrocity. He sent the war pipe up and down the lakeshore with gifts of tobacco, demanding an uprising of the entire Ojibwa homeland, including their cousins among the Nipissing, the Missisauga and even the Cree.

  “An Ojibwa’s tears are never lost,” he said, reminding a council of chiefs of their duty with the old proverb.

  The war pipe was covered in a fine sleeve of doeskin, elaborately decorated with porcupine quills of vermillion, yellow, red, and blue. The decoration was hardly necessary for men all down the lakeshore clamored to taste its smoke. By drawing on the pipe, each man signified his vow to join Ma’linganbawi’s raid. More than four hundred warriors flocked to his pipe, most of whom had never raised a club, a spear, or a bow in anger against the Odugamies due to the longstanding peace.

  The young men of the Anishinaabek were especially eager to win honor on the warpath, claiming in their own small councils that their elders had grown weak through the years, and that they would revitalize the People and protect them from all who dared to stick out their tongues. They would paint their bodies for war, flout their penises at the enemy, show them their buttocks, and make them eat shit before they died. Or, so they said.

  So it was that Ma’linganbawi’s warriors set out that spring from the island of Kitchi Minissing with the last snow of winter still trickling its cold blood away. Their flotilla of canoes stretched along the southern shore of Kitchi Gami like a flock of swans, with all the women, children, and old ones left behind waving and singing as they sped west.

  Ogaa, the untested warrior, was then an island youth barely seventeen summers old. He was grateful to leave his own snake-hearted father behind, with the old man clutching at a bulge on his abdomen that proved to be the painful end of him. There were no words between them when he left. As for his mother, she had long been dead.

  Ogaa paddled a supply canoe full of pemmiccan and dried fish in the middle of the fleet, his head filled with the bright clouds of deeds he hoped to accomplish. He had taken his father’s war club, tipped with a sphere of granite embedded in a shaft of oak as long as his forearm. The club was beribboned with an old scalp said to have been lifted from a Dakota hunter.

  At night, he sat by the fire and listened with blazing ears to the stories of the older men. Those in their twenties and thirties traded funny stories of the great deeds they had achieved on the hunt or in battle. Ogaa imagined himself sitting around just such a fire twenty summers on, modestly sharing stories of his own brave exploits.

  But the older men of the party were less forthcoming, with few deigning to brag by the fire. Mostly, they sat and stared into the coals as the younger men talked, sometimes grunting in agreement, or offering wry comments. “Yes, that is sometimes how things go,” one said dryly, after hearing a long, embroidered tale of an ambush that claimed two women of the enemy. “But we never hear the tales of those who do not return.”

  Much later, Ogaa reflected that it had been a prophecy.

  For three days they paddled along the lakeshore before heading upriver for two exhausting days of working against the current. They passed through the country of the Menominees, only to find that their cousins had fled inland, uncertain of the invaders’ intentions. To this, Ma’linganbawi only grunted and waved his fleet forward, leaving gifts of tobacco at the empty villages they found by the riverside.

  At last they came to the beginning of a long portage to another river that ran south. Ma’linganbawi gathered his warriors around a bonfire that night and announced the battle plan: to strike hard and flee before the Odugamies could rally.

  “We will fall upon the same village where my brother died and pluck them like berries,” he said. All agreed it was possible, it was known that there were less than one hundred of the enemy at hand.

  The Odugamie village was not far from the great southern lake of Mishi Gami. Ma’linganbawi’s men spent two days at the task of hauling their canoes over the portage between rivers, but from there it was easy paddling with the current heading south.

  But it is not possible to conceal the movement of 400 men, even when they could be hushed into gliding silently in their canoes, and it was no surprise when they reached the village of the enemy and found it empty. With coals still warm in the Odugamie lodges, Ma’linganbawi decided to give chase, knowing that the women and children of the village would slow their flight.

  So they pushed on down the river past abandoned villages all along its banks. All the signs indicated that masses of the Odugamies were fleeing south in a panic to the land of the Winnebago Sioux.

  In the lead canoes, which were draped with war ensigns of eagle feathers, antlers, and willow branches dangling with scalps, Ma’linganbawi and his subchiefs led the vanguard, exchanging pipes as they scanned the banks of the river. Behind them trailed more than one hundred canoes.

  As he paddled, Ogaa felt the thrill of gliding along with the serpent of men winding down the river. Confident that the Odugamies were on the run, the warriors of the Ojibwe hooted and beat upon their drums as they pushed south. Ogaa raised his own voice to join them in singing the war song of the Jeen-godum. There was no need for silence now. They were an invincible force and the enemy was in flight. That, and each man hoped in his secret heart that their songs would frighten the enemy from their path.

  But the Odugamies were not without resources of their own, and while their women, children, and old ones were squirreled away to ancient hiding places, their scouts lay hidden along the great river trail, reporting Ma’linganbawi’s progress as he pushed deeper into their country. Indeed, Ma’linganbawi’s pride in pushing on against all reason had given the Odugamies many days to prepare. The warriors of the Anishinaabek had no way of knowing the Odugamies had summoned the Mdewakanton Sioux to come to their aid, promising that
the destruction of their mutual enemies would open all the lands of the Ojibwe to easy prey. Even the Winnebago answered the call, though they were often enemies of the Odugamies.

  Perhaps if Kitchi Manito had intervened and denied the war party its supply of food, the Anishinaabek would have turned back, delivering many men among them into their old age. But the country of the Odugamies was rich with elk, moose, and the woodland bison. With their bellies full and their hearts brimming with the confidence of a wolf pack, Ma’linganbawi’s men pushed on.

  Yet the manitos were not with them. Perhaps it was the crows that whispered to the Odugamies that they were coming. Perhaps the otters or the clouds. Who could say?

  At last, Ma’linganbawi’s raiders came to the shores of Mishi Gami itself. Here, the men grew uneasy, for the southern lake has a more placid demeanor than Kitchi Gami, and that, in itself, seemed strange and foreboding. For the first time, it settled upon them that they were far from home and deep in the enemy’s homeland. Many murmured that it was time to give up the chase.

  That night, Ogaa had a dream that he was paddling alone far out on the lake with no sight of the shore on any horizon. The gray depths of the lake blended seamlessly with drizzling, dull clouds as if he were paddling into the sky itself. Beneath his canoe a long shadow glided past, dark and low in the depths of his dream.

  In the morning, Ma’linganbawi fell to haranguing the men with taunts of shame and intimations of cowardice, the tools of all war chiefs. “We are almost on them,” he told the assembled warriors on the beach, “and it would be shameful to turn back now.”

  “It’s more likely that they are almost on us,” said a lesser chief named Mountain. Wajiiw was a giant of forty summers who was renowned for his size, standing a head taller than any among the Anishinaabek. “It’s foolish to attack an enemy who knows you’re coming. We lack the blessing of surprise and none of us knows this country.”

  “The enemy is in disarray.”

  “Who is to say?” Wajiiw responded. “We might as well be blind, for all we know of their doings.”

  Even Ma’linganbawi could not dispute this.

  “Brothers, what Wajiiw says is true,” he answered. “But join me, be it life or death. Either way, the Great Spirit will know your name in the passing.” Ma’linganbawi paused and collected his breath, his voice rising to a shout. “Is it not better to die in battle than to feel the breath of our enemies on our backs?” he cried. “They will come creeping after you, silent as foxes, and there will be no rest for you in your lodges, nor for your women or children.”

  To this there was silent agreement among the half circle on the shore.

  “I tell you, brothers, we have them by their nuts and it is time to cut, not run,” Ma’linganbawi continued. “Give me one more day, brothers. One more day, and then home.”

  Who could reject such a plan? Ogaa wondered. They could plunder the empty villages of the enemy on the journey home and return with their honor intact.

  They paddled south along the shores of Mishi Gami all that day, making camp where a broad trail led inland from the lake. The next morning, after a meal of corn mush and dried fish, the trail proved irresistible. It was lined with the debris of the fleeing Odugamies, furs, pots, snowshoes, clothing, and more. The muck along the muddy trail revealed the footprints of hundreds fleeing south, more than half of them women and children.

  As Ma’linganbawi had predicted, they were indeed almost on the enemy.

  “Brothers, we are upon them,” Ma’linganbawi said. “Within this day we will hear them crying for what they have done to our people and they will never forget us. Today, we will paint the earth red.”

  A rumbling cry rose above the lakeshore as the men pushed down the trail with Ma’linganbawi in the lead. The men raised their war whistles, fashioned from the hollow leg bones of herons and deer, trilling amid the shouting tumult, which now seemed an irresistible force. Ogaa jostled with the warriors as they hurried along. Every man’s blood was up with the thought a crushing blow, for the Odugamies were considered weak and cowardly, no match for the Ojibwe.

  Only Wajiiw, the Mountain, pushed forward in silence, his face as grim as slate. “This is not our way, brother,” he grumbled to Ma’linganbawi. “Our’s is the quiet way, stepping from the forest as ghosts and melting away after the blow. You have made us a flock of chattering crows.”

  But if Ma’linganbawi heard, he gave no answer.

  The sun was midway up the morning sky when Standing Wolf’s warriors rounded a grove of pines to find four Odugamie hunters walking up the trail in their direction. Apparently stunned by the appearance of such a large force, the hunters dropped their bows and ran back down the trail, shouting in alarm. Walking at the head of the expedition, Ma’linganbawi raised his hands for all to desist, but a squadron of excited young braves gave the war cry, “Sas-sak-way!” and scrambled past him like wolves chasing a rabbit. Who could know that the four hunters were the fastest runners among the entire tribe of the Odugamies, selected for their speed?

  More than forty of Ma’linganbawi’s force spread out in a long line of pursuit down the trail when the Odugamies began picking them off singly and in pairs from the cover of bushes as they ran past. Cries of pain and dismay rang back down the trail.

  But Ma’linganbawi and his subchiefs had succeeded in holding the main force of their men back, and now they hesitated, uncertain as to how to react to the enemy’s trap. Ahead, the trail echoed with the trill of the Odugamies’ war whistles and mocking cries. A large band of them gathered out of bowshot at a bend in the trail, making insulting gestures and waving their cocks.

  As such things go, there was no clear victory, nor any crush of warriors in battle. Ma’linganbawi did not know that the enemy outnumbered him more than two to one, but he was canny enough to suspect as much. “That way,” he said, pointing with his lance back down the way they had come. Without the cloak of surprise there was no point in continuing.

  And so it went, skirmishing in the woodlands alongside the trail of retreat throughout the afternoon until both sides lost heart for having no advantage. Escape seemed likely until a scout reported that a large force of the enemy was coming up the trail in their path.

  These were the warriors of the Mdewakanton Sioux, come to help the Odugamies. Eya, the Mdewakanton and the Odugamies were ancient enemies, but they hated the Ojibwe even more and had pledged an alliance to drive them from their hunting grounds until the sun lay in its grave. Now the woods boiled with doom as the men of the Anishinaabek found themselves caught between two large forces of enemies. They gathered at the top of a knoll with the enemy rallying their forces beneath them.

  Ma’linganbawi surveilled the hundreds of painted warriors below and realized that the spirits were against him. Indeed, the Odugamie’s snare had been laid half a moon before, and he had stuck his neck in it, as foolish as a turkey pecking at corn.

  “Brothers, this is where we part,” Ma’linganbawi told his exhausted men. “We will scatter as leaves through the forest, leaving a decoy to lead the enemy to the lakeshore. If the Great Spirit wills it, we will all meet on the shore of Kitchi Gami from where we departed. I myself will lead the decoy.”

  7.

  OGAA’S CROSSING

  And so they scattered, melting into the trees in twos and threes to the north, while Ma’linganbawi and a company of ten volunteers prepared for their deaths. They hammered at their drums, shrilled at their whistles, and sang their death songs as they fled back up the trail to Mishi Gami. With them went the youngest volunteer, Ogaa. He did not know why he joined them; he was quaking with fear, but did his best to roar in defiance with his thin, cracking voice.

  And as Ma’linganbawi had prayed, the enemy was soon on their trail.

  As it happened, there was a small island just offshore, crowned by a low bluff, and though such a place would only forestall the coming massacre, Ma’linganbawi thought it a likely spot to make his final stand.

  The
y waded chest-deep to the island and found four canoes hidden there beneath the fronds of a willow tree overhanging the shore.

  “Kitchi Manito has shown us a way,” Wajiiw said as they surveyed the craft. One was rotted beyond repair, its bottom greasy with dead fish. The bark of another was badly tattered and leaking. It was the Ojibwe’s habit to patch their canoes each day with a tar of pine pitch, but there was none to be had, nor any time to apply it. Then, too, the spruce roots that stitched the gunwales of each canoe were split and frayed in many places. Yet, given care and constant baling, the three canoes could carry all eleven of the decoy party. Precariously.

  “How so?” Ma’linganbawi said sourly. “The enemy has canoes, too, and there will be twenty of them in our wake, paddling fast.”

  “Yes, and with us sinking fast,” Wajiiw said. “But Kitchi Manito has left these for us, so there must be a plan. And better that than growing the pricks of the porcupine, for soon we will be fringed with arrows, or worse.”

  “I never knew you to be a juggler of spirits,” Ma’linganbawi said.

  “We have no need of the spirits, brother,” Wajiiw replied. “We need only our arms and the canoes the Great Spirit has provided.”

  “Ehn, we may yet save our skins,” Ma’linganbawi said, “but what of this?” He gestured at Wajiiw’s dangling arm.

  “I leave you here, brothers,” Wajiiw said, cradling his left arm, which had been broken early on in the battle. He had been struck in the elbow with the stone ball of a war club, knocking the joint out of place. His face was pale with sweat. “I’m fucked, brother; I cannot paddle.”

  “Brother, do you think we would leave you?” Ma’linganbawi said gravely. “You can paddle with one arm and beat on the enemy when they come for us with all that you have left. We will need a Mountain then.”