The mourning would go on for a year, as was proper. Misko and Ashagi had painted their faces black in mourning, and Ashagi had cut her long braid to her shoulders and wore it unkempt. Both of them dressed in worn clothing, tattered and shabby to show their sorrow.
Ashagi had done her share of wailing with her new sisters to mourn the dead, but as a full cycle of the moon flew by she began to wonder when might be a proper time to establish her own lodge and take Misko as her companion. Since arriving on the island, she had stayed in a wigwam with three of her new sister-cousins who had been widowed by the red death.
Another full moon went by and Ashagi and Misko were not yet joined together. The last of the dead had been hauled from the woods and buried with ceremony, yet their own time was not yet settled.
Then one morning in the fall, more by luck than skill, Misko killed an elk he had seen wandering along the shore of the mainland, which was a short paddle across a narrow strait from Kitchi Minissing. It was a big bull, heavy with antlers, and he had seen it moving west through the trees along the beach early in the morning. Seizing a bow, he had leapt into a canoe and paddled in a frenzy to a spot well west of where the elk was headed. With a north wind blowing, the elk had obliged him by striding to the spot where he lay hidden, bugling as it came.
It took most of the day to butcher the meat, but Misko arrived back on the island by late afternoon with the elk’s head and antlers draped wide over the prow of his canoe. Eya, the legends claimed his craft looked like the water panther Misshipeshu as it coursed across the strait. The canoe was packed full with the sweet meat and hide.
Ashagi watched as Misko’s canoe neared the shore, its stern low in the water with the antlers wider than she could reach with both arms outspread. What would her father say of this suitor, who was only just a man, she wondered? She knew her father would laugh and say that only a seasoned hunter with proven skills would do for his daughter. For more than a moon she had slept with the widows, thinking about what it would be like to be Misko’s wife. Had he not proven himself? When their eyes met, there was a bond between them that shot through her body to the tips of her toes. By the time the prow of his canoe had cut the shoreline with its belly laden with meat, she had reached a decision.
“Do you think your father would have me for his son now?” he asked when she met him by the shore. “Do you think he would smile on us?”
“Eya,” she smiled. “I think it is our time.”
That night they held the wedding feast that made them companions, the ceremony of weedjeewaugun. Every member of the village joined in and ate of the sweet meat of the elk along with pumpkin, squash and maizes until their bellies were as round as gourds. As a wedding gift, Misko gave Ashagi two black feathers taken from the tail of an eagle as an ornament for her hair. Though an eagle’s tail is always a brilliant white, only the female is blessed with two or three black feathers to tell her sex from far across the sky.
Misko had obtained the feathers in the old way that his father had taught him, by digging a hole atop the far cliffs. He had covered the hole with a skein of leafy branches, huddling within and bobbing the carcass of a rabbit tied to a stick above the camouflage. At great risk from the raptor’s talons and beak, he had seized the eagle by its legs when it came for the rabbit, wrestling the flapping, screaming bird to its death.
“Eagles mate for life, and that is my promise to you,” Misko said as they sat by the fire.
“And will we also twist in the sky and roll and tumble as the eagles do when they lock talons in the spring?” Ashagi answered with a laugh.
“Oh, surely. That is the way of things.”
Ashagi snickered for they both knew that eagles lock talons in flight as a prelude to mating, and of that, she was eager for more.
As the Bear’s Head constellation rose over the fire and voices rose in song, it was as if the bond of Misko and Ashagi served to bind the surviving brothers and sisters of the Anishinaabek as well. Again and again, the survivors of the Amik clan told the newcomers from the mainland of Misko’s great deed in stealing Ashagi away from the enemy, and how the two had rescued the suffering people of the island in turn. They praised Ashagi for nursing the sick and Misko for his bold action.
“He’s a brave fucker, and wiser than he looks,” he overheard Amazo say to a wanderer who had come with his wife from the shattered Moose clan, far down the coast. “He led a raid alone on a camp of the enemy and stole away a woman of our people, killing many men who followed with only his father’s club as a weapon.” The embroidered tale was not as Misko might have told it, but still the words burned in his good ear. He flushed, wondering what his father would say if he could hear them.
With the wedding feast behind them, Ashagi reveled in her new life. She set up housekeeping in the wigwam of Misko’s mother, which had been torn down and moved to the site of the new village. As a result of the disaster, she and Misko shared the lodge by themselves for a time, and not with another family, or two.
“It is strange living alone,” she said as they snuggled beneath a bear skin one night. Sleeping in the arms of a man was forbidden when others were present.
“Others will join us in time,” Misko replied sleepily. “Let us enjoy this while it lasts.”
“It is a sign of weakness for a warrior to sleep in the arms of a woman,” Ashagi teased.
“Ah, then you are lucky that I am no warrior,” Misko said. “I did more running than fighting.”
“You fought with a porcupine, and with the pigeons,” she reminded.
“Yes, and with a moose, but now I fight only with sleep.”
But sleep was kept waiting as Ashagi’s hand slowly caressed his cock, finding it already hard and growing harder.
“Come to me, great warrior,” she whispered.
In the days thereafter, Ashagi set about making the lodge her own. After sweeping the floor with a willow broom, she cut cedar boughs to spread along the edge of the lodge and wove new mats with rushes plucked from the island swamps to lay over them. These were overlaid with sleeping robes of beaver, deer and bear hides. She also set about making Misko a new set of moccasins, anxious to show that she was versed in the skills required of a wife, sewing leggings, dresses, shirts and coats against the winter. It would not do to have him displeased, for she had no family to return to.
Misko in turn, drove himself to prove his skill as a hunter. As was custom, he rose with the first birds singing outside the lodge flap while the sun had not yet cleared the horizon. He made his way north through the dew of the forest trails, checking his snares and hoping to encounter a deer wandering to its day bed.
Kitchi Minissing was a fair-sized island, yet a man could walk to its northern end in less than half a day. Even so, it was rich with deer, bear, beaver and other game, and if the morning brought a hunter up empty-handed, there was always fishing to be had later in the day. Indeed, Ashagi often wished that Misko was by her side more often, for if the day’s hunting failed, as it often did, he would elect to go fishing by torchlight until late in the evening.
It was not a sugar moon for all of the members of the renewed band, however. Some of the newcomers had old grievances with members of Misko’s clan that ran back a generation or more. There were also disputes over sharing the remaining lodges and the delegation of tasks. Some of the widows and refugee women were laid claim to against their will. Bullies asserted themselves in the anarchy of righting the village. Jealousies arose, as did fighting in the lodges at night, which all could hear. The anger that comes of grieving played its hand in unexpected ways.
All this had come with the passing of their leader, Aabitainini, Half Man, who had served as head man of the island for more than twenty summers. Aabitainini had been well liked and had arranged village affairs through the seasons to the satisfaction of most. It was he who had reached consensus on the many feasts and celebrations through the year. It was he who led the council when it was time to deliver a judgment on a wrongdoer. Ofte
n, it was Aabitainini who stepped in to settle a dispute between families. Although no man among the Anishinaabek could tell another man what to do or how to conduct himself, still, a head man was sometimes needed to put a face on the will of the People.
Who could replace Aabitainini? Someone must be called forward. With a sinking feeling, Misko realized that he was now among the eldest members of the band, even though his nineteenth autumn was still a moon away.
“What will we do without a head man? We’re fucked the way things are,” Amazo muttered one afternoon as they fished the island’s inland lake. The newcomer had become a friend and though he was a year older, it seemed to Misko as if he were a little brother.
“We will hold a council and let the people decide, as is the way of things,” Misko said.
“There are few elders left.”
“Yes,” Misko nodded.
“None of them seem worthy to be head man. There are none I would follow.”
“Then it will be you, Amazo,” Misko said, laughing. “Big chief Amazo!”
“Ha! I think it will be you, brother. I have heard the talk of you.”
“You have heard only the woodpeckers.”
“They peck your name, brother.”
“Then we are surrounded by fools,” Misko said. “The same fools call me to follow my father’s path as ogichidaa, and I have no heart for that either.”
“Eya, but you must listen if the people call you.”
Misko had shooed away thoughts of proclaiming himself as war chief. With his father dead, the bands living up and down the coast no longer had an ogichidaa at a time when they might well need one. Who knew if the enemy was aware of their weakness? Even now, they could be paddling up the coast.
It was custom for the son of a war chief to take up his father’s pipe when his time came, yet this had never been Misko’s dream. He was relieved that no one had raised the matter with him. An old woman in the village had dreamed that the red sickness had fallen upon the Dakota and this was Misko’s hope as well, for after the disaster of his father’s quest, he had no heart in rallying men to the war path. Keeping men in line who were jumpy with the war spirit was a difficult task.
Young though he was, Misko had some knowledge of what it took to be chief, owing to the visits he and his father had made to lodges up and down the coast the previous year. He thought back on the days when it was just the two of them, paddling up snowy rivers to the hunting grounds of the various bands, sitting at the back of council rings as his father made the case for war, and of the times he had listened, as quiet and unnoticed as a sparrow while the chiefs tossed the ball of decision back and forth. Now, most of them were dead, yet he had taken keen note of their ways.
And though he had professed to Amazo that he had no interest in the post of a head man, the seed had been planted, and soon it began to itch and grow. Perhaps it was Misko’s aloof manner, owing to the deafness in his bad ear, or perhaps the watchful, waiting lessons of the council fires, but these gave him an air of authority. Often he was consulted on matters no one would have dreamed of asking such a young man before the sickness struck.
The stricken Anishinaabek also had need of a strong man to keep order; thus Misko also gained a reputation as a warrior through many gabblings among the Anishinaabek over their evening fires. Though he had not raised a blow in his father’s raid, stealing a woman from the enemy was considered a great deed.
“He is the only one of Ogaa’s men who returned with a trophy from the enemy,” Ashagi heard the women of the island say. “The son of Ogaa brought us a sister to help replace those we’ve lost and she is not so bad as some.”
This latter feat was not lost on the young men and boys of the band. In their eyes, Misko’s retrieval of such a beauty from the Dakota was a deed worthy of song. Clearly, Misko was a warrior to be reckoned with. His time as a man-killer and ogichidaa, war chief, was written in the sky.
Misko protested that he had no interest in serving as war chief, but for lack of any elders among the survivors, he was pressed to make decisions on everyday matters. Gradually, he came to relish the role of head man. He sent half the band to the mainland to resume the nut harvest and summoned the aged Naabese back to the island to instruct a team of youths in the repair and construction of canoes. He sent couriers up and down the coast to take a census of the surviving bands, along with an invitation to gather on Kitchi Minissing for a council.
All of these matters were in the form of polite requests, humbly submitted, for Misko had no authority other than to suggest a way forward for the frightened band.
“My hope is that a head man will be found soon,” he told Ashagi over an evening meal.
“Ha! I see through you, husband,” Ashagi said. “Everyone knows you wish to be head man.”
“No,” he said softly, but she caught the glimmer of his eyes.
“And why can’t you be the head man?” she urged. “The women of the island already think of you as our leader, and the young men too. No one stands against you.”
“Have you forgotten Nika?”
“He’s a bad-mouther, everyone knows it. You must put yourself forward.”
Misko waved a hand in dismissal. “There are no young leaders among the Anishinaabek,” he said. “I have been to the council fires with my father and have sat among the elders. I can tell you that every one of them had more than twice as many years as me.”
“But if those men have all gone, then who?”
“A man of experience. An older man whom the people will gladly follow. He will come to us.”
“Who has more experience than you now? Most of the old ones are dead.”
“Someone will come forward.”
“You are a silly man,” she said in exasperation. “Too silly to be our head man.”
“Far too silly,” he grinned back at her.
“But I would not mind being a head man’s wife,” she said slyly.
“Then I will make a gift of you when a suitable old chief is found. He will need a young wife to prop up his bones.”
Ashagi made a face, but then grew serious.
“My father was head man of our village,” she said. “He did not take it lightly, though his duties were few. If you are called, then you must answer. It will be a gift of the Anishinaabek and you cannot turn your back on them.”
At last, the man of experience came to them, yet not as their leader. The bands along the coast were still gathering on the island when Outruns the Wolves, Animi-ma’lingan, arrived home from a long trading trip, far to the south. For more than three moons the Old Man had been away, trading copper, ochre and furs to the men of the south in exchange for tobacco, cowrie shells, salt and maize. He had also sat in council with the holy men among his cousins, the Potawatomi, though as a member of the Mede-wi-win, he was forbidden to share any secrets of the Ojibwe.
He too had heard of the sickness sweeping west like a winter storm. It was said to have come from the tribes gathered along the great salt water who were cut down by its devastation. The disease had blown west, heaping ruin on the confederations of the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee, with thousands dead in their towns. Their fortifications of sharpened pines were no match for a spirit that killed its victims within days and peppered its victims with red spots. Eya, the markings were like the rosy patches that blossomed on the skin of those who were starving and near death, he thought.
And now, even the hunting grounds of the Anishinaabek had been affected. For weeks the Old Man and his companions had paddled through an empty land, which had once teemed with hundreds of villages and thousands of people from many tribes, now all washed away as if by the hand of the Evil One, Maji-Manito. The smell of death had settled like a cloak upon the land.
The Old Man’s arms were dead with exhaustion as he paddled the last stretch in silence with two youths he’d met on the island of Mishi Mackinakong. He felt like a twist of old leather; he hadn’t eaten even as much as that for the past day. Eya, these
were times filled with mystery, he thought, and if the ancestors had anything to say about the grief being visited upon the Anishinaabek, they remained silent about it whenever the Old Man or other members of the Mede-wi-win sought their advice in the dream world.
Paddling along the coast, Animi-ma’lingan scanned the wigwams of Kitchi Minissing with a skeptical eye. Where were the Anishinaabek? There was no sign of anyone in the looming village.
In the final approach to the island, he had seen a young bear walking along the shore just west of the painted cliffs on the mainland, its fur glowing a fiery red as it strolled toward the setting sun. He gave a gentle laugh of recognition. Of course. It was all clear.
Yet, despite this sign, he wondered if his chosen son would be there when he arrived, for the Old Man had gone south before Misko had joined his father’s raid. And he knew that young men did not always return from the raiding trail.
So there were tears of joy when his canoe touched the shore of Kitchi Minissing and the Old Man found Misko whole and well, with a young bride capering by his side like a spring doe.
“I thought I might find you as a ghost, my son,” he smiled as he stepped from the canoe, weaving faint with hunger and exhaustion on the shore.
“Take care you are not a ghost yourself,” Misko said, catching the Old Man’s arm. “Come, and we will put some life back into you.”
They talked long into the night by the fire in Misko’s lodge, smoking the tobacco the Old Man had brought from the south while Ashagi served them bowls of soup, stewed with leeks and mushrooms and laden with generous hunks of meat. They spoke of the fatal raid, the death of Ogaa, the illness and the Old Man’s adventures in the south. They even spoke in low tones of Ashagi, though men did not speak much of women when they were within hearing.
“I found your true name today,” the Old Man said at last, late in the evening when the fire had died to a smoldering red. “It is Miskomakwa, Red Bear.”
Windigo Moon Page 18