Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  Gaawiin, no, the fear within him was not of of losing his fingers, but the pain of knowing that he was finished as a hunter, and thus, a man. He had never been much of a hunter; his dim eyes had made sure of that. But now this. His dead fingers dropped into a basket, as if pointing to his fate. The Old Man applied a balm of sarsaparilla to the stubs of Nika’s hand. He looked deep into Nika’s eyes to see what lingered there and muttered some healing words. And then, nodding at the man who lay there frozen in a cold fury, he left.

  Oh, but there were recriminations thereafter, for as Ashagi had noticed when she met Nika for the first time, he was always one to lay blame. And as was his habit, it was Misko who was criminal in his neglect. It was Misko who had left him to die in the cold. It was he who was responsible for his lost fingers and toes.

  Of these, the Old Man shrived of their flesh and made a necklace, hanging it around Nika’s neck with encouraging words.

  “There are five fingers and five toes to remind you that you can live without them, brother,” the Old Man said. “They will rejoin you in the spirit land and you will once again be whole.”

  But Nika’s days as a hunter were over. With the pointing finger of his right hand gone, he could no longer pull a bowstring with the strength needed to kill. His bow wobbled when he tried. Nor could he construct a new bow when he smashed his own in a rage, nor chip flints to make arrow points, nor make the arrows themselves. At best he could be a brush-beater on the game drives with a club strapped around his wrist. This was the task given to boys.

  Nika could still wield a spear using both hands and he begged to be at the brush barricade when a game drive was held so that he could kill again. Out of pity, his brothers agreed, though all knew it was futile to poke at leaping deer with five fingers missing. After the second deer had cleared the brush at his corner, leaping over his head, Nika threw down his spear in disgust and began swinging at the whitetails in a frenzy with his strapped-on club, barely missing the heads of the men who stood near him.

  “Brother, we should call you Five Fingers now,” a visiting hunter from a nearby band said with a grin as they piled the day’s take on toboggans to be hauled back to the village through the snow.

  Nika glared at him with such a look of hatred that the hunter turned pale under his skin and looked away. Days later, his body was found in the forest with the throat eaten away by coyotes. Yet none could prove that it was Nika who killed him.

  But that was not all, for soon it was reported that Nika had been seen squatting as if a woman when he took his piss and word traveled among the bands that his cock had turned black and fallen away. With it went his sanity.

  That spring, Nika gathered his wives and left the Amiks for a new village further north on the coast. All gave sighs of relief, for he had grown to muttering and making weird threats, as if in jest, but barely. He took to speaking to himself and piercing those of the village with black looks; eya, looming dark and cavernous over frightened children.

  It was whispered that Nika had been possessed by demons, yet none would dare speak of such a thing. Nor did they need to, for with his face now black with dead skin and his body a mush of old tattoos run together, Nika had acquired a ghastly look that might scare off the demons themselves. All were happy to see him go. All except his weeping wives, who gave the appearance of prisoners as their canoe turned north with their rotting husband.

  25

  THE FRIEND OF MAN

  “Fire is the friend of man,” the Old Man said with a satisfied nod. “This we all know, but he is a friend who needs care in his company.”

  “You don’t need to tell us that,” Misko said, passing his pipe. “My own father nearly burned his face off as a boy when he fell into a cook fire and we all know sisters whose lodges have burned down around their heads at night.”

  Misko had called a council of the head men of all the villages within three days walk of the coast to discuss a plan to set fire to the forest.

  The forest ran all the way from Mishi Gami to the lake of the Wendat. It was a dense stretch of trees which rambled as far as a man could walk in ten days. As the Anishinaabek often said, a squirrel could run through the trees from one lake to the other and never touch the ground.

  There was no plan to burn the entire forest, only a portion of it, and thus the meeting was at a village on lake Was-wa-gon-ong, the Place of Torches. It was a large inland lake where men fished at night by the light of flaming pitch.

  It had been many years since the forest had been burned and the game had suffered for lack of forage as the shade of tall trees crowded out any hope of seedlings taking root. The summer had been dryer than usual, yet there had been no lightning strikes to set the trees on fire.

  “Brothers, the deer are starving for lack of food and have grown too thin to make it through the winter,” Misko told an assembly of seventeen elders and head men. “If we don’t aid them, we will all starve with them.”

  “Just so long as we don’t roast ourselves,” the head man from Was-wa-gon-ong said. “Brother, you live by the big lake, but we will be in the path of the fire.”

  “Do you think we are fools?” Misko said impatiently. “We will start the fire only when your lodges have been rolled up for winter camp, and then only when there are signs of rain.”

  So the plan was cast, for even the chiefs of the villages in the path of the coming fire knew that something must be done to improve the deer herd. And it would be better for the Anishinaabek to set the fire at the time of their choosing than to allow Animikii the thunderbird to ignite the forest when all were unprepared.

  Thus, one day late in the fall, runners were sent inland to insure that every soul of the Ojibwe bands had departed for their winter hunting grounds to the south. Then, when the Old Man determined by signs in the sky and the wind that rain was coming two days off, the men of Misko’s village began torching the dry pines all along the coast. Soon, the flames crackled high in the trees. With a steady wind blowing out of the west, it wasn’t long before the fire took on a life as vast as the dunes themselves.

  Eya, the flames rose as high as three pine trees stacked atop one another, roaring and snapping and cracking like a fire monster set on devouring the sky itself. It was a sight that young children would remember until their white haired and wizened days, speaking of the time when the inland lakes boiled over and flaming birds passed screaming through the sky. They would tell of the fire roaring like thunder and rearing up like a giant with a hundred arms. Truly, none of this happened, but that is how the fire would be remembered.

  Just as the Old Man had predicted, it began to rain on the second day, the long, steady, cold rain of late fall.

  “The great fire monster is killed by tiny raindrops,” he chuckled in the company of several children observing the distant smoke.

  All the way to the smoky horizon lay a blackened landscape of limbless trunks and twinkling embers, yet with untouched islands of green here and there, for the fire burned in a patchwork. Amid the ashes were the charred bodies of thousands of animals that were too small to outrun the flames; gaag, the porcupine, esiban, the raccoon, and gwiingwa’aage, the wolverine. The blackened, hairless corpses of woodchucks, martens, bobcats, and even bear were scattered everywhere, their flesh dark and bloody. Only the deer and the wolf had the legs capable of fleeing the fire, which traveled faster than a man could run.

  Before the flames had died down the Anishinaabek of all the villages surrounding the blaze descended on the blackened desert and began picking at the broiled animals. The small game would be eaten in haste before the meat rotted, with the rest laden upon the smoking racks to save for the winter.

  Thus there was a great feast in Misko’s village by the shores of Mishi Gami with some eating until their bellies rebelled, vomiting to eat even more. But first, the Old Man lifted his voice to the sky to beg the forgiveness of every animal that had died in the fire, and to give thanks that they had given the gift of their lives to the Anishinaab
ek.

  “To make something grow, something must be destroyed,” he said, looking over the wooden platters of meat. “Brothers,” he addressed the animals, “know that your deaths mean that many of your own kin will live, thanks to the green shoots and tender forage we have made for you.”

  The following spring the burned-over forest came alive with green shoots and the blackened trunks of trees sprouted new branches. Soon the whitetails returned, starving and thin from the hardship of winter. But they fattened quickly with the new forage and scouts reported that many fawns had been born and were thriving. It would be many good years to come, both for the deer and the Anishinaabek.

  With the fire came another gift.

  With new life returning to the blackened forest, Ashagi felt the tide of creation stirring in her belly. This time, there had been no helpmate; the babe was Misko’s alone.

  Every woman of the band hailed it as a miracle, for by now Ashagi was forty-two summers old, and though she was noted for her strength and endurance, still, having a baby at such an advanced age was something to talk about.

  Nine moons went by and then, with Minose serving as midwife, Ashagi delivered the babe in her lodge, taking care not to cry out.

  Eya, but what joy when she lifted the tremulous doll in her arms and beheld that it was a girl! For now, Ashagi knew, there would be a daughter to carry on her lodge.

  “You will carry us on,” she said, smiling down on the babe. “When we are all gone and as lost as the old legends, you and your daughters’ daughters will still carry my blood in your veins.”

  The babe was born on the new moon of Ode’imini-giizis, the time when baby birds chirped in their nests and the sun began drawing crops from the earth. Ashagi and Misko named her Niibin, Summer. They had riches now, the true riches of the Anishinaabek, who often gave away mere possessions. Now, when visiting strangers asked, Ashagi and Misko could boast that they had three children, Niimi, Dancing Boy, Biidaaban, Comes the Dawn, and Niibin, Summer.

  Among the Ojibwe, inheritance passed to the father’s side and thus, a woman went to live with her husband’s family when she married. A woman’s family counted for little once the bond of marriage was tied. But it was also true that men by their nature often traveled to dangerous, faraway places to hunt or on raids. It was not uncommon for a man to die in a lonely spot, far from home. And then, who would carry on the family? His woman. It was the women of the Anishinaabek who stayed close by the village and kept a watchful eye on the children. It was the women who built and maintained their lodges. It was the women who were the core of the clan. In truth, the men envied them. And wasn’t it true that it was the grandmother, Nookomis, who served as judge, care-taker and center of the family? Even warriors acclaimed as killers of men bowed before their grandmothers.

  Someday, Ashagi knew, her daughter would leave her lodge to live with another man’s family. She only hoped that he would be as good a man as Misko had been to her.

  Her love for him had not faltered as they had grown older. Misko now had streaks of gray in his hair, and often a solemn countenance from the weight of his duties as head man. But she still felt like a young girl around him whenever he returned from hunting or a far-off council. Ashagi had always feared the wolf in man, yet she could not deny that she was a wolf herself, with the same feral feeling for Misko that made him her mate for life. Eya, she knew he was a faulted man; he had betrayed her and had not always spoken to her kindly. But Ashagi knew there were spots on her own tunic, and thus found forgiveness.

  As for Misko, had he known that Ashagi once feared that he would leave her, he would have laughed at such a notion. Although it was unspoken and not deserving of thought, he would rather die than leave her side. In this, Ashagi’s musings on the loyalties of wolves and men ran true.

  Misko was no longer the frightened, wild-haired youth who had surprised a young woman in a berry grove so many years ago. He was no killer, but the weight of leading the Amik clan had ground him down through the years and had made him a hard man with a blunt edge. All the squabbles, petty complaints, and fist fights of the village had landed on his shoulders, and those small, nagging troubles weighed more than the big decisions that affected scores of lives.

  Eya, he had learned to say no, and mean it. Yet, he had also learned the value of saying yes more often than no. He had learned to bend in the wind of opinion when the wishes of the village ran against him, yet he had learned how to whip back like a willow branch when the people themselves were wrong. He had learned how to become their scourge, just as they knew how to nip at him where he was at his weakest.

  “A leader must make the hard choices, often full of pain,” the Old Man had said when Misko was elected head man fifteen summers earlier. He did not fully understand that then, yet now, every time a witch was condemned, or a brother was accused of murder, or a babe was born deformed and in need of destruction, eya, it was Miskomakwa who had to make the hard choice, and he had tears on his heart to show the pain of what it meant to lead. Yet these were never shown to the people he led.

  As head man, Misko had other concerns which went beyond the nattering issues of village affairs. There were guests, many of them, to accommodate with feasts and long days in council. They took away much of Misko’s precious hunting time and heaped Ashagi’s shoulders with endless toil in preparing meals. Often, Ashagi was compelled to perform the Begging Dance from lodge to lodge around the village to rustle food for Misko’s visitors.

  Now, with another child to raise and more than forty summers weighing on her, Ashagi began to grumble under the demands of preparing so many feasts.

  “Perhaps it would be good to take a second wife, after all,” she said wearily to Misko one night after another round of guests had been laid to rest in her lodge.

  “Perhaps even a third,” Misko said with a wry smile.

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  Yet by her frown he knew that this was in jest, and a treacherous one at that, for Ashagi would never countenance another woman in her lodge, no matter how hard she worked. The woman simply had no sense of humor on the matter whenever Misko brought it up. And truthfully, neither Misko and Ashagi would have wished things otherwise, for chieftainship also had its benefits. Every guest and diplomatic mission brought presents, including furs, shell beads of wampumpeag, tobacco and food for the getting together. And who could complain over being widely discussed and held in high esteem? At times, Ashagi felt like the preening bird of her namesake, proud of her plumage and her place. But this, of course, was a feeling she kept to herself, for the Anishinaabek would never tolerate a woman given to strutting.

  As for the presents, they were given away to the next round of visitors, for the highest mark of esteem among the Anishinaabek was generosity, and only by being generous to the point of pain could a chief retain his power. Oftentimes, Misko did not feel especially generous, yet he would grit his teeth and give all that he could, knowing this was the only way forward. He was head man, after all.

  One day, the Old Man sat on a driftwood log and watched as flights of nika winged their way south in arrowhead formations. The geese will see more than I ever could in their long journey to the south, he thought with a smile. And he, Animi-ma’lingan, had traveled more than any man of the Ojibwe that he had ever met or even heard of. Only the nika honking overhead had outdone him. But soon, he knew, he would be taking a journey further than even they could fly. He could feel a quiet stirring in his bones, probing tenderly for a weakness.

  He sighed and addressed his work. Some time before, he had instructed a young boy to find him a birch of the purest white, with a trunk as wide as a man’s chest. It was with some difficulty that the Old Man had hobbled to the tree with his bad leg. But the tree was fine, and he had taken his copper blade and cut a length of bark in a long sheet, to be fastened with leather bindings to an older roll of bark, which he had already painted. Now, sitting on the beach with the sun glinting silver off Mishi Gami, he arranged his paint po
ts and spread the bark, thinking of the pictographs he would paint to carry on story of the Anishinaabek. There was Ogaa’s great deed, the crossing of Mishi Gami, which had finished on this very shore where they had met more than fifty summers ago. And then there had been the coming of Ogaa’s son Misko and the perils of the diseases which had swept over the Amik clan. Misko, too, had performed a great deed in bringing the clan south to the Sleeping Bear.

  The Old Man heard the honk of the nika again and smiled. They might travel farther than he could ever dream, yet his scroll would outlive them all.

  26

  THE WINDIGO

  Life had been good in the village beneath the Sleeping Bear and many other members of the Anishinaabek had joined them through the years. They now numbered more than one hundred and twenty. There were also new bands living along the coast and an even larger village two days’ paddle to the north. Many of the Ojibwe and the Odaawaa had been driven south by the increasing cold, and though the fishing was not as good in the new land as on Kitchi Gami and the northern rivers, still, there were far fewer biting flies and mosquitoes. There were even a few families of the Odaawaa, who had been driven west by the Haudenosaunee. Many of the Odaawaa now lived on Manitowaaling, the Spirit Island at the north end of the lake of the Wendat. The Old Man predicted there would be many more to come if the Haudenosaunee kept up their attacks.

  There was also less risk of raiders in the summer, as the Dakota and the Odugamies lived far beyond the barrier of Mishi Gami, while the Haudenosaunee lived beyond the vast forest of the southern peninsula, through which there were no direct water routes. Their neighbors to the south were the Potawatomi, the friendly brothers and sisters of the Three Fires.