Only treason and giving aid to the enemy was a crime equal to that of witchcraft in the eyes of the Anishinaabek. The old woman, who Misko had known as simply Grandmother, Nookomis, for as long as he could remember, had been popular enough in her younger days, but had grown strange in recent years and a burden to the band. They had been forced to carry her on a litter to winter camp after her legs had failed her that fall. Eya, her nephew wanted to leave her to the wolves, but Misko had said no.
Nookomis had taken to drooling and uttered a mewling babble that none could make out. She could stomach only a gruel of cornmeal, traded dearly from the Wendat. Then, to her doom, her nephew’s family had come down with the throwing up sickness and Nookomis had been accused of poisoning them with spells and charms. Alas, she had no other family to defend her. In a paradox worthy of Maji-Manito, the evil one, the old woman had lived on for years while all of her young family had died in the red sickness.
“She has outlived her time, and now she seeks to feed on the lives of others,” said her accuser and nephew, Ginwaa-okaad, Long Leg, as he made his case to the band. It was shocking to hear him declaim so within the hearing of his aunt, yet the Amiks could not help but listen. “She is jealous of my happy family, having lost her own, and now she strives to kill us all,” Ginwaa-okaad said in a loud voice. He accused his aunt of placing charms within the bodies of himself, his wife and children, which she had rubbed in the flesh of evil serpents known to live underground and at the bottom of lake Kitchi Gami.
“We were sick all night. We spent all night vomiting from her magic,” Ginwaa-okaad said, his jaw jutting forward like that of an old turtle.
“It was only bad meat,” Misko said in disgust. “We could all smell it. You were foolish to eat it.” He was loathe to deal with an accusation of witchcraft, having seen its dismal end before. “Brother, this is a grave accusation,” he added. “She’s only an old woman, as addled as we may become ourselves if we are cursed to live as long. Be generous with your deeds and perhaps she will die soon.”
But Ginwaa-okaad and his wife would have none of it.
“We’ve endured her long enough, brother,” he said. “We’ve fed her and given her the warmest place by the fire at night. We’ve sung her lullabies and have caressed her with kind words, yet this is how she treats us, with sickness and spells.”
Misko knew that Ginwaa-okaad was lying about his kind treatment of Nookomis, having spent time visiting in his lodge as was neighborly in the wintertime. Ginwaa-okaad was an irritable man and a poor hunter who complained much and did little. Misko had noticed that there was seldom a sliver of meat or fish in the old woman’s bowl and she was shoved to the wall of the wigwam at night, shaking to her bones while Ginwaa-okaad and his wife had the choicest spot by the fire. At best, she was ordered to feed the fire through the night to keep it burning, as was the duty of all the elderly.
Seeing that Misko was unconvinced, Ginwaa-okaad lowered his voice to that of a conspirator.
“Brother, there is more,” he said. “Not long ago, I was returning from fishing when I came upon a fox that sat in the middle of the trail and stared at me. As I drew closer, it turned and wandered slowly into a clump of cedars as if it had no fear of me whatsoever. Drawing closer, I was surprised by Nookomis, who walked out from behind the trees carrying an armload of firewood as if nothing had happened.”
Misko snorted at this. All knew that witches had the power to fly invisibly from place to place and to turn themselves into animals such as wolves, bats and snakes in order to do mischief. Those who made themselves into foxes or bears were said to be the most dangerous of all. The fox witch was known to breathe fire when it barked.
But Misko was not a believer.
“Tell me brother,” Misko said. “Do you really believe that your feeble aunt has the power to turn herself into a fox? It is more of a marvel that she’s still strong enough to carry an armload of firewood, and this to keep you warm at night.”
Ginwaa-okaad drew his hands down his cheeks, widening his eyes as if in horror. “I tell you only what I have seen with these two eyes.”
Had the Old Man been present, he could have performed the rites whereby the charms infecting Ginwaa-okaad and his wife could be removed. This might be done by making the victims of a witch vomit, or by sucking the evil from their skin through the hollow tube of an eagle’s leg bone, or by drawing it forth with a knife that made no cut.
But, alas, the Old Man was not with them, and as head man, only Misko could sanction the killing of a witch.
“You must allow it, brother,” Ginwaa-okaad said. “You cannot allow her to wreak her spells on the people. Where is the justice if you allow a witch to live?”
“Bring her forth,” Misko said.
A grim smile passed Ginwaa-okaad’s lips as if imagining that Misko would brain the woman off in the darkness beyond the lodges. For that was the best way to dispose of a witch, quietly, when the evil doers could not see death coming.
Ginwaa-okaad dragged Nookomis from behind the circle of onlookers. She looked as confused and fearful as a beaten dog. Brought before Misko, she offered a thin smile and babbled half sentences that none could make out, her head bobbing on the stick of her neck. Eya, and with her back bowed by the sorrows of so many winters she was barely a cornhusk doll, waiting to be blown to the winds.
“How are you, Grandmother?” Misko asked.
“I am well, Misko. I am well,” she said. Then, in a querulous voice she asked, “Who are you? Who are you?”
Ice rippled down Misko’s spine, for how could the old woman know his name in one breath and forget it in the next? Nookomis lapsed into baby talk and said no more.
“So?” Ginwaa-okaad asked.
“I will think on it tonight,” Misko said.
Thinking over his pipe before the fire that night, Misko remembered the times when he had slept in the lodge of Nookomis as a child. He remembered how she had fed and caressed him and had sung lullabies as if she was his own mother. All women did as much for the children of the band; it was the way of the clan. Misko wondered how many in the clan had shared such times with Nookomis, yet now she was defamed and condemned without a friend at her back.
“She is no witch,” Misko muttered to Ashagi. “Ginwaa-okaad and his wife are just tired of her.”
“You must ask the others how they feel,” Ashagi offered.
“In truth,” Misko grunted.
“My own grandmother was also accused of witchcraft.”
“What did she do to stand accused?”
“She did nothing,” Ashagi recalled. “She was just old and another woman wanted her beads.”
“And how did she fare?”
Ashagi hesitated at the memory. “I beat her accuser with a stick until she begged forgiveness.”
“Then I will have you beat Ginwaa-okaad for me,” Misko said, smiling.
Ashagi patted Misko’s leg. “No, husband, that is your task now, for I did not enjoy it.”
No head man could take an accusation of witchcraft lightly. Misko knew that if the people were of a mind that Nookomis was a witch and would be done with her, his hand would be forced. Yet if Nookomis had friends and family who would stand up for her, she would be spared. But what friends does an old woman have? he wondered. Only those who are old and powerless themselves. He did not sleep well that night, feeling that the fate of Nookomis was lost. If he failed to order her death, he would lose the confidence of the band and there would be grumbling and gossip at his heels for the rest of the winter.
But Nookomis was a thin husk in the tatters of her last breath and sometime in the night, a stone lining the fire pit in the lodge of Ginwaa-okaad was lifted and a tap was given to the top of her eggshell head.
“Alas, she has died in the night,” Ginwaa-okaad said the next morning, dragging the thin corpse from his wife’s lodge.
Misko scowled and leaned forward. “You have murdered her.”
“No, brother, not I. She got up
to piss and tumbled her head against the stones. Be happy, Kitchi Manito has saved you a decision.”
“You are a liar, and your mouth runs full with shit.” Misko’s voice was low and menacing. “See that she gets a proper burial, else your witch comes back to haunt you.”
Ginwaa-okaad blanched at the thought. That afternoon, the burial ceremony was made for Nookomis, who was raised high above the snow on the limb of an oak tree far from the lodges. Her body was wrapped in birch bark against the ravages of winter. No one spoke of witches then.
Eya, but they did so on the next day, for that night the lodge of Ginwaa-okaad and his family caught fire, killing the accuser and his wife.
As all of the Anishinaabek know, nothing is so flammable as birch bark, which explodes in a thunderclap of flame when it is dry. Yet in the winter, the bark is dampened enough to allow for sparks to pass through the smoke hole all through the night with little risk. If and when the bark caught fire, the blaze was extinguished with a wet rag at the end of a pole, which was always close at hand.
But with Nookomis dead, there was no old one in Ginwaa-okaad’s lodge to feed the fire through the night, staying awake until dawn to nurse the embers. Nor was there a watchful elder to give a cry of alarm when the ceiling’s bark curled with a trickle of flames. Instead, Ginwaa-okaad had instructed his wife to heap an extra portion of wood on the fire before they drifted off to sleep, never to awaken. But no one in the band knew that it was the spiteful Ginwaa-okaad who ended up killing himself as well as his wife, so everyone believed that Nookomis was a witch after all and had killed her enemies from beyond the grave.
That spring, Misko’s band returned to Kitchi Minissing without incident only to find that four of their seven caches had been raided. These hidden pits in the ground had been lined with moss and filled with hard-won baskets of nuts, trade cornmeal, and dried fish and meat meant to last the Anishinaabek through the starving time of the spring.
In despair, the Amiks wept over the plundered caches, which still had a sprinkling of maize and nuts around the holes where they had been stored.
“Husband, how would anyone know our stores were there?” Ashagi wondered, for the caches were well hidden in the woods beyond the village, with their contents covered with a lid of logs and a layer of dirt to deter animals.
“It could only be someone who knew where they were buried,” Misko said glumly.
“But who?”
“Only the birds know and they won’t tell us.”
Some said it had been the witch Nookomis, who had managed to steal the food in revenge for her killing. But Misko suspected Nika, who had left their winter camp weeks earlier after causing as scene in Ashagi’s lodge. Several families had been gathered around the fire telling tales when someone asked Nika to share a story. Inevitably, Nika dredged up the fate of his lost brother, recounting the details of Ogaa’s fatal raid and its dismal end. The band relived the death of their sons, husbands and fathers through Nika’s eyes, along with the torture of his young brother who had become like a son. His mournful story had the lodge full of weeping listeners in his hand, and in his excitement, he threw caution away with his words. “And do you know why all this happened? Do you know why my brother died along with all of our dead brothers?” Nika said at the end of his tale. “Him!” he pointed at Misko. “He is the cause. He is to blame!”
Misko had looked at him, wondering if Nika had been driven mad by the confinement of the winter. But although he ached to leap up and bury his club in Nika’s skull, Misko showed no sign of anger. His experience traveling with his father and rubbing shoulders with the head men along the coast had taught him that the man who holds his tongue often holds the balance.
“You pull no feathers from my tail with your bad words,” Misko said mildly, dismissing Nika with a flat wave of his hand and looking away from him.
“Ah, but you are no straight talker, are you brother?” Nika pointed a tattooed finger at Misko as his voice rose. “You led the enemy straight to us. When you stole their woman, it was as if you had handed your brothers a hornet’s nest.” He turned to the rest of the listeners. “Him! It was Misko who led to the deaths of our brothers, our fathers and sons! It was only him!”
Nika leapt to his feet and crouched in a defensive stance, knowing that this insult could not go unanswered. The fourteen listeners in Ashagi’s lodge froze as still as deer, appalled at the accusation and Nika’s shocking display of bad manners. But none spoke up, for while all knew Nika was a bully and a blame-all, he was also avoided for the same reasons. Eya, and as a man killer, he was rarely challenged. Nika was also bigger than Misko by a head. Indeed, he was the largest member of the entire band, and for a moment it seemed as if there would be a fight in the lodge the like of which might set the wigwam on fire.
But then an unearthly scream came from behind Nika’s back followed by the crack of a clay pot shattering on his head. Unfazed by the blow, Nika turned to find Ashagi standing behind him, quaking like the flames of a bonfire. “Out! Out!” she cried as tears streamed down her face. “Get out of my lodge!” Nika’s words had loosed the anger dwelling deep within, and her scream carried the death cry of her father, which had echoed in her thoughts for nights beyond count. It carried the hatred of fat, farting Snail Eye. And it carried the anger of her empty womb.
Nika’s body went limp, as if she had bled out his soul from the bottom of his feet. Without a word, he pushed his way out the door flap to his wife’s lodge where he gathered his things and disappeared into the night, leaving his wife behind to wail over his abandonment.
Now, with nearly a moon gone by, here was the band threatened by starvation with more than half of their stores gone. Nika seemed a likely culprit, but it might just as well have been a raiding bear and the scavengers that followed. It could have been a party of traders passing through, or a former member of the band who knew the hiding places and had seized the food with the help of others. For how could a single man carry off such a store of food?
Alas, it was a mystery that was never solved, for Nika had turned up starving at a village far down the lakeshore that spring and none could accuse him of being fattened by the Amik’s cache. Soon, he arrived back on Kitchi Minissing and reclaimed his wife as if nothing had happened, pointedly ignoring Misko-makwa. Only his eyes, shining with hatred, gave any clue that there was anything amiss between them.
20
THE WAY SOUTH
It was nahme, the sturgeon, who saved the Amik clan that spring.
Each year as the ice began to melt, the sturgeon made their way upriver from Kitchi Gami as part of their eternal ritual of spawning. Armored with plates around its head and striped in rainbows of yellow, blue and red, a nahme could live to be one hundred years old and weigh as much as two men. Many were taller than the men of the Anishinaabek, and a single sturgeon could feed Misko’s band for three days. It was said that the demigod Manabozho sometimes rode a giant sturgeon through Kitchi Gami for his pleasure.
Generations ago, the Amiks had constructed a log bridge over a narrow river on the mainland. This was a single log walk way balanced above stout posts driven into the river bottom, atop which the fishing men could sit. A thicket of branches and nets of basswood twine were suspended in the river below the framework, trapping the giant fish as they attempted to swim through to their spawning grounds. These could be speared or clubbed by the waiting men. This was cold, wet work with the snow still on the ground, and though it chilled them to their bones, the returning men always brought a gift of nahme home to the grilling fires.
Just as arduous was spearing the fish through a hole in the ice. Misko spent half a day chipping a hole in the ice on Kitchi Gami’s half moon bay near the village and sank several decoy fish into the water. Carved of wood and finned with birch bark, the fish fluttered in the current, suspended on cords of basswood with rocks used as sinkers. Lying atop a carpet of old deer hides, Misko covered his head to peer into the water below and waited for nahme to
come nosing at the decoys. Then came the plunge of his spear, or at times, the lifting of a net in the hope that a fat sturgeon would offer itself to the people.
Even so, many prayers of thanks had to be offered for each fish taken, for the Amiks did not usually disturb nahme on her way to spawning in the spring. Only the pinch of the starving time drove them to break an ancient taboo.
That spring, the Old Man returned from his trade route to the south where he had wintered with the Potawatomis, gathering stories. He clucked at the loss of the Amik’s store of food, but had no clues as to the culprits. “Alas, missing food is a problem for every tribe under the sun,” he said. “Witches, demons, bears. Who can say? But it wouldn’t surprise me if it were the people of the Wendat, fleeing to the west, for they have been stricken with a strange disease and their whole country is twisting like a nest of snakes.”
From within his tunic, the Old Man brought forth a bag made from the paw of a bobcat and pulled out a string of shells bound by a leather cord. The shells were black, the symbols of death. “These are from the elders of the tribes living far to the east,” he said, lifting the shells to Misko’s face. “They have sent us a message.”
The Old Man described a scarring disease that had fallen upon the union of the Wendat tribes, causing their bodies to bubble up in pock marks, bringing death within days. Those who survived were cut with scars, as if by a knife. Some were blinded by the pocks, others crippled.
“They are dying in their towns with their bodies piled high and their maize fields going unplanted,” he said. “There will be no trading with them this fall.”
“Where does this new sickness come from, father?” Misko asked.
“It rose from the great salt water to the east and now has swept through all the tribes, the Mohegans, the Mohawks, Oneidas—all of the eastern peoples of the Haudenosaunee.”
With memories of the red sickness still haunting the band, Misko called the leading men of the lakeshore in council and had Animi-ma’lingan repeat his tale of the disease. Worried looks passed between the men as they listened.
Windigo Moon Page 24