Windigo Moon

Boozhoo. My novel, "Windigo Moon," is set 400 years ago among the Ojibwe of the Upper Great Lakes. In "Windigo Moon" the village of a young woman is destroyed by tribal warfare. Ashagi (Blue Heron) is rescued by an Ojibwe youth, Miskomakwa (Red Bear), whose own village is destroyed by diseases introduced by far-off European explorers.Together, they must lead their people through an apocalyptic time of anarchy and upheaval.  -- Robert Downes

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My very peculiar book tour

 The prevailing wisdom these days is that a “blog tour” is the way to go when promoting a new book, the idea being that you carpet-bomb various bloggers with articles about your book in the hope that someone will read your crap and respond.  I’m not a believer, particularly since a popular blogger I know says most people prefer video or photo blogs these days, and this has been borne out by my own experience. People want to a see bright, shiny colors dancing around on their screens rather than itty-bitty words on a page, which require time and effort.   That, and why bother writing a book if you don’t have the flagellant fun of going on a book tour?    So it was that I embarked on a two-month book tour of the Upper Great Lakes in September in support of my novel, Windigo Moon.  Camping out of a mini-van, I traveled downstate to Detroit, Ann Arbor, Rochester, Lansing and Grand Rapids, Michigan on two occasions.  Then I made a foray through the Upper Peninsula, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In all, I spoke at 22 book stores and libraries and a couple of old folks homes, traveling more than 5,000 miles.  My tour was 75 percent really good and 25 percent a disaster.

WHAT’S UP  I give a talk on “Life in Native America 400 Years Ago,” discussing the apocalyptic 16th century in which 50-to-90 percent of all Native peoples are thought to have died from diseases introduced by foreign explorers.  Historians call this time the “Lost Century” of the 1500s.  I focus on the Ojibwe, discussing their customs, myths, monsters and stories in a show that includes more than 100 digital slides.  People who’ve seen my show are generally spellbound.  The turnout was excellent when the venue got the message right and the media cooperated.  In Ann Arbor, Petoskey, Lansing, Cadillac, Marquette, Traverse City and Duluth I filled the venues and sold many books.  But when the venue and the media announced that I was going to do a “reading” instead of a digital show, very few people showed up.  I don’t blame them, because I wouldn’t be inclined to sit through an author droning on with a book reading.  My goal is to inform and entertain with a lively show, providing the bait to buy my book.

HOLLOWED OUT  Unfortunately, I found that many newspapers are hollowed out and working with skeleton crews.  This means they run lots of wire copy and horrible canned features, with little, if any, cultural reporting.  Some newspaper chains, such as MLive, no longer do any book stories or reviews.  The Grand Rapids Press, for instance, declined to write about me or my book, despite the fact that I’m a native and won that town’s ArtPrize for writing in 2014.  This has come as a shock to me, because after 30 years in the newspaper and P.R. business, I know how to write a good press release and used to get loads of press 10 years ago.  Social media is killing newspapers and among the first casualties are coverage of books and the arts.  My second trip to Minnesota was a dismal failure.  I was dismayed to learn that the St. Paul Pioneer Press offers no listings of local events of any kind — this for a city of 285,000 people!  In Rochester, MN, the library promoted my event as a “reading” instead of a show — it was the kiss of death.    It’s funny how you remember the disasters instead of the triumphs on a book tour.  My successes far outnumbered my failures, but the duds really hurt.    Even when things didn’t go well, however, I had some golden moments.  I rejoiced while camping and cycling in the heart of Ojibwe country, visiting places such as Leech Lake, MN, where the tribe ended its 500-year journey across North America.  I also made many personal contacts at bookstores along the way, hoping to make an impression.  

ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS   While traveling through western Minnesota, I happened upon an essay by Emily St. John Mandel who described her own book tour experience.   Mandel said that before she hit it big with her dystopian novel, Station Eleven, she used to travel around the country on buses, establishing relationships with book store owners who would, in turn, hand-sell her books to customers.  This was a eureka! moment for me because I was doing much the same.  I could relate!  I imagined young Ms. Mandel arriving at dumpy, small-town bus stops and gritty, urban stations with her backpack, then making her way on foot to various book stores as part of her tour.  In fact, I later learned that she had done exactly this on two occasions in my own hometown of Traverse City, Michigan.  Although I traveled in a Toyota minivan and slept on a mattress in the back alongside boxes of my books, I did much the same as Mandel on my two-month tour, stopping by every book store along my route to say hello and pass out a copy of the sell-sheet for Windigo Moon.  It was a pleasure meeting many independent book store owners and hearing of their valiant efforts to stay in business at a time when online shopping is threatening the foundations of culture and community.  Their stores were uniformly cozy and welcoming islands in towns where hard times have become the norm for small business.  I still have a couple more events to wrap up my tour.  The publishers tell me that about 1,000 copies of Windigo Moon have sold in the past two months. I had hoped for ten times that number by the end of the year, but you go with what you’ve got.

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November brings echoes of the Sandy Lake Tragedy

   November is the time of year when many Native Americans recall the Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850, in which hundreds of Ojibwe Indians from Michigan died in a courageous stand against being removed to reservations west of the Mississippi.    The ordeal is also known as the Wisconsin Death March and the Chippewa Trail of Tears.  It might also be called the Last Stand of the Ojibwe.  This fall, I stopped at Big Sandy Lake in northern Minnesota to reflect on the Ojibwe’s sacrifice while on a book tour in support of my novel, Windigo Moon, set 400 years ago among the tribe. There by the lakeshore, amid the fluttering golds and reds of aspen and maples in their fall glory, stands a memorial to the tragedy, which is unknown to most Americans, even those of us who live in the upper Midwest.  I had made my way here during the same chilly season that the Ojibwe arrived, 167 years ago.  By 1850, the Ojibwe, also known as the Chippewa, had forgotten the traditional skills of survival and were dependent on trade goods such as muskets, iron pots and manufactured clothing. Initially, they traded beaver pelts and other furs for these items, but after these species were all but exterminated, they had nothing left to trade but their land. In a series of one-sided treaties, the tribes of the Midwest ceded millions of acres in exchange for annual allotments of food, cash and trade goods.  In 1850 the administration of President Zachary Taylor hatched an unlawful plan to break various treaties in order to remove the Ojibwe of the Upper Great Lakes to reservations west of the Mississippi. The goal was to seize Indian territory which was rich in timber, ore and farmland.

SNOW & COLD  The Bureau of Indian Affairs moved the annual allotment of cash and supplies from LaPointe, Wisconsin at the west end of Lake Superior to a remote location 150 miles further west at Big Sandy Lake, Minnesota.  Government officials schemed to trap the Ojibwe in Minnesota for the winter, wearing down their resistance to being removed west of the Mississippi.   A number of Michigan bands flatly refused to make the trip, yet eventually, more than 5,000 Ojibwe men, women and children traveled for hundreds of miles across Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula to Big Sandy Lake in October of 1850. There, lightly dressed, bringing little food and ill-prepared for winter, they learned that their annuities and food supplies had not arrived. The allotments had not been appropriated in time by Congress.  Minnesota’s territorial governor and a BIA agent knew there were no supplies coming, but purposely didn’t warn the people.  The Ojibwe settled in to wait for their allotments as their situation grew more desperate. They had planned to return to their homes before winter set in, but found themselves caught in winter’s trap. Many had only their upturned canoes for shelter against the snow and freezing cold. Supplies of rotten pork and moldy flour arrived in early December, sickening many in the grip of starvation. Some 150 died of exposure, measles, dysentery and hunger in the encampment, but worse was yet to come.   Deep in the winter, weakened by disease and starvation, the survivors set out for home, traveling through heavy snows and freezing temperatures.  In all, some 400 people died on a death march which is little-known outside of the native peoples of northern Minnesota.  

THE IRON HEEL  This was not the end of the story, however. In 1852, a tribal leader named Chief Buffalo set out from the Apostle Islands on a 10-week mission to Washington, D.C., hoping to head-off an uprising and secure the Ojibwe homeland. Chief Buffalo was 93 at the time, yet he and his delegation paddled hundreds of miles in birch bark canoes along the shore of Lake Superior before obtaining passage on a steamship and then a train to Washington. Along the way they collected signatures of support from thousands of miners, lumberjacks and farmers, who were themselves under the iron heel of 19th century capitalism. They arrived in New York with only a dime left in the pocket of their white friend and advocate, Benjamin Armstrong.  Chief Buffalo and his delegation were turned away by bureaucrats in Washington, yet in a lucky break they met an official who gained them an audience with President Millard Fillmore. Touched by their story, Fillmore deliberated for a few days, and then revoked the order to move the Ojibwe west of the Mississippi.  These days, when I walk the streets of my hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, I often consider that I walk in  the footsteps of Native peoples who have lived in the Upper Great Lakes for 9,000-11,000 years, and still do. In 1850 the Ojibwe, also known as the Anishinaabek, sacrificed hundreds of lives to remain in their homeland. At the very least, we owe them remembrance and respect.

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Lost Stories, Waiting to be found

  Recently, I attended a lecture about the migration of the Ojibwe from the Atlantic Coast to the Upper Great Lakes sometime over the past thousand years. The presenter was of the Anishinaabek, the true people of the Ojibwe, and her all-white audience was spellbound by her story of the epic migration, which had played out over centuries.

  After her talk came many questions, one of which was what movies did she enjoy?  She answered “Smoke Signals,” of course, and then “The Last of the Mohicans” and “Dances With Wolves.” After that, she was stumped.

  What a loss, I thought, because only “Smoke Signals” is a film entirely about Native peoples.  In every other film, from “Black Robe” to “Mohicans,” “Dances With Wolves” and “Little Big Man,” the protagonists are all white men and the Indians tend to be helpmeets or victims.

  This extends to television, with Tonto serving the Lone Ranger and Mingo serving Daniel Boone in the ‘60s.  In “Hell on Wheels,” the Indians have a sense of dignity, but inevitably they, too, aid in their own destruction at the hands of a transcontinental railroad, or serve as its victims. Only recently in “The Revenant” did a band of the Arikara get their due as being independent and dangerous adversaries of white trappers, demanding and receiving justice for a stolen daughter.

 INDIANS IN LITERATURE

  The image of the Indian as a helpmeet or a victim extends to literature.  I’m eager to be corrected if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, the only major work of fiction about the Anishinaabek as they existed prior to the European invasion of North America is The Song of Hiawatha, published in 1855 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  This, despite the fact that Native peoples have occupied the Upper Great Lakes for up to 11,000 years and the Ojibwe are the second largest tribal unit in North America.

  Based on a Christlike statesman of the Iroquois, Hiawatha was one of the bestsellers of the 19th century.  It has long been derided as a poem which promoted the ideal of the “noble savage,” meaning nostalgia by white intellectuals for the Native peoples their forefathers murdered or transplanted in a genocidal sweep.

  Yet, other than Hiawatha, one is hard-pressed to find works of fiction which deal with the Ojibwe before the advent of white invaders.  There are many novels which deal with the post-Columbian epoch, including those by Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie and Tony Hillerman, but many are about Native peoples trying to get a leg up on their oppressors or survive the aftermath of ethnic cleansing.  Other than Hanta Yo, the bestselling 1979 novel of the Sioux by Ruth Beebe Hill and a series of Hopewell-era novels by W. Michael Gear and Katherine O’Neal Gear there seem to be few, if any, major works of fiction which depict Native peoples in their absolutely free state of being before the white invasion.

 ARROWHEADS & SPEAR POINTS

  I find this strange because the prehistory of Native America is as rich with story material as anything found in Harry Potter, Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.

  I have a particular interest in this regard because my forthcoming book, Windigo Moon - A Novel of Native America, is set more than 400 years ago on the Upper Great Lakes, beginning in 1588, the so-called “Lost Century,” which was a devastating time for Native peoples. Spanning 31 years, Windigo Moon is a love story which ends in 1619, two years before the Anishinaabek met the first white man at present-day Sault Ste. Marie.  This was the French explorer Etienne Brulé, who was reportedly later boiled and eaten by the Hurons for being too eager with their women.

   It’s my hope that my novel will be a clarion call to Native writers to dig deeper into their own history, which is rich with opportunities for story-telling.  It’s worth noting that story-tellers were among the most valued members of Anishinaabek society for thousands of years because they entertained their clan-mates through endless long winter nights with tales of animals, heroes, monsters, spirits and wayward humans.

  Native American lore is well suited to historical fiction and magical realism. In Windigo Moon I take Anishinaabek myths and spirits at face value. My characters deal with ghosts, manitos and supernatural monsters in addition to the everyday challenges of survival, tribal politics, marital problems and human folly.

 COMPARE & CONTRAST

  So consider Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings with their wizards and magical wands or rings.  Ojibwe lore is filled with corollaries, including shamans with wizard-like powers and weapons or places imbued with spiritual energy. There are also mermen, pukwudgie fairies, manito spirits, talking animals, frost giants, windigo monsters, animal tricksters and more in Ojibwe legends.

  Consider Game of Thrones with its dragons and feuding kingdoms.  Ojibwe lore has mishepezhu, the lynx-head dragon of the Great Lakes, also, animiki, the thunderbird who wages eternal war with the monsters of the underworld. And even after the arrival of white invaders, Native peoples fought with neighboring tribes as they had for centuries with the same ferocity and political fervor as the kingdoms of Game of Thrones.  There are an infinite range of story opportunities in those conflicts that might rival the best of anything on the New York Times bestseller list.

  Consider Samson, Hercules or Achilles in Western mythology; Ojibwe mythology has Manabozho and Aayash to offer, shape-shifting demigods who walk among mortals performing good deeds. Manabozho figures in my own novel as the “great uncle” of the Ojibwe.  I also have a character, Animi-ma’lingan, He Who Outruns the Wolves, a club-footed shaman who serves as the eyes and ears the Ojibwe Mide-wi-win Society of Shamans; he’s literally a spy traveling in the guise of a trader throughout the tribes of North America.

  Moving on, consider the Greek gods of Mt. Olympus or the Norse gods of Asgard who are always poking their noses into popular fiction (we’re talking about you, Thor).  Native American cosmology has hundreds of gods who might bend their will to literary service.

  Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the lack of historical depth in Native American fiction is that this incredible trove of material has been hidden in plain sight while the reading public has gone gaga over the fantasy novels of writers from England or middle class white America.  Surely, there is a Native version of Stephen King or George R. R. Martin awaiting discovery.

    Native storytelling material has a close-to-the-bone authenticity that nothing like The Hobbit, The Dark Tower, The Wizard of Oz or One Hundred Years of Solitude can match in that Indians actually lived through the experience of their stories only a few lifetimes ago.  Like the rough gems of emeralds, rubies and sapphires glittering in a stream, the myths and legends of Native America await any author willing to shape them into treasures of the imagination.

   Robert Downes’ novel, Windigo Moon - A Novel of Native America, will be published September 5 by Blank Slate Press, a division of Amphorae Publishing.

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Biking Indian Country

 Cycling along the Mackinac Trail highway through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, it’s easy to see why the long-ago Indians of the North preferred to travel by canoe.  The woods on either side of the road are as dense as any rain forest I’ve ever seen. You’d have to literally crawl and snake your way through the wall of evergreens. A machete would be useless against these springy spruce trees.  It’s no wonder that the Ojibwe and the Odaawa were masters of the birchbark canoe, which was unrivaled in North America as a way to get around back in the good old days.  In particular, the Odaawa were the seafarers of the Great Lakes, building canoes of 30 feet or so, which could ship tons of trade goods.  Following a network of rivers and the archipelago of islands in Lake Michigan, they were the renowned traders of the North, and in fact, the word odaawa means “trader” in the Anishinaabek language.  During the last week in May, I biked through the ancestral lands of the Ojibwe and the Odaawa, stopping at tribal units along the way to spread the word of my forthcoming book, Windigo Moon - A Novel of Native America.  The book is a love story, set 400 years ago among the Ojibwe of the Upper Great Lakes, and will be published September 5 by Blank Slate Press.  I get a got a good reception at the Museum of Ojibwe Culture in St. Ignace, and again at the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians Interpretive Center in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.  Although I am zhaghanaashi, a white man, a number of Native people professed that they would be interested in reading my book, a hopeful sign.  My goal was to bike around Lake Huron and specifically to visit Manitoulin Island (“Spirit Island”), which was, and still is, the ancient home of the Odaawa.

TOUGH TIMES  Manitoulin Island was once at the center of a conflict between rival tribes.  In 1649, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) invaded what is now southern Ontario, attacking the agricultural towns of the Hurons (Wendat).  Although the Hurons outnumbered the Iroquois, a surprise winter attack threw them into such a panic that Huronia itself collapsed.  By then, the Hurons had also been weakened by diseases spread by French traders and missionaries, detailed in the novel, Black Robe.  Huron refugees fled north to Manitoulin Island with the Iroquois in pursuit.  Soon, the Odaawa were also under attack, and together with the Hurons, they fled to the far west of Lake Superior, settling in what is now Wisconsin.  Their troubles didn’t end there, however; in the late 1670s, the remnants of the Hurons and the Odaawa were once again under attack, this time by the Dakota Sioux, whose hunting grounds they had impinged upon.  They fled back east to the Mackinac Straits, intermingling with the Ojibwe.  Got it? Indian migratory bands were very fluid in their travels, frequently bumping up against other tribes where they weren’t always welcome.  Disease drove tribes from place to place, as did the superior firepower of eastern tribes who had obtained guns from the British and the French. But perhaps the biggest reason for this hurly-burly of migration was the fur trade.  Enamored with trade goods, the Iroquois pushed the Hurons and Odaawa from their homelands in order to trap more beaver once they had exterminated the species in their own hunting grounds.  

CALLING IT QUITS  As for my bike ride, it was short lived.  After riding about 15 miles east of the Soo, Canada, I learned that that TransCanadian Highway 17 has no shoulder at all.  After a close brush with death from a truck passing me at 60mph only an arm’s length away, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of pedaling on another 200 miles to Manitoulin Island.  I spent the night at the Ojibwe Park campground in the Garden River area.  That evening as I was falling asleep, I heard a booming voice outside my tent: “Hey buddy, are you in there?”  I opened my tent flap and a stocky Ojibwe man was standing there. “I saw you biking on the highway today and thought you might like a hamburger and a beer,” he said.  Half asleep, I gratefully accepted his offer.  The next morning I got up at 5 a.m., packed up my gear and made ready to go.  I felt bad that I hadn’t joined the man and his companions around his campfire, but I’d been too bug-bitten and tired to crawl out of my tent.  I wanted to thank him again, but don’t the sun was just peeking over the horizon. Perhaps we’ll meet again.

  Watch for my book, Windigo Moon - A Novel of Native America -  available on amazon and at bookstores this September.

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Biking Around Lake Huron

It's a rainy day, with more rain predicted this week: not so great for setting off on a bike ride of 800 miles or so around Lake Huron from Traverse City, Michigan and back, but at least the wind is coming out of the southwest and will be pushing me north.   I'm riding in part to promote my forthcoming book, Windigo Moon - A Novel of Native America, and also to get away from the demands of trying to market the book. It's been driving me batshit.   Riding 50-90 miles a day, I plan to camp along the way and visit tribal organizations to introduce myself. I'd like the Ojibwe people to hear about my novel first-hand.  Windigo Moon is set 400 years ago among the Ojibwe of the upper Great Lakes. I've visited the Ojibwe homelands where the story takes place, but during my ride around Lake Huron I plan to visit Manitoulin Island, which was the ancestral home of the Odawaa. The Ojibwe and Odawaa tribes are closely related, and are part of a historic confederation called the Three Fires, which includes the Potawatomi. Once I hit the Bruce Peninsula in Canada, I'll be riding through the lands of the Wendat, or the Hurons as they were later known.

 Windigo Moon is a love story and an adventure that covers 31 years in the life of a young Ojibwe couple.  The story begins in 1588 with a devastating raid on the heroine's village.  Thereafter, they face the challenge of warring tribes, the onset of the Little Ice Age of the 1600s, and diseases introduced by far-off European explorers. The story includes the myths, lore and supernatural beings of the Ojibwe, who call themselves the Anishinaabek, or "original people."  As background, I've studied the Anishinaabek language and have read or consulted more than 30 books to create the historical framework for Windigo Moon.  I've also hiked and camped throughout the traditional homeland of the Ojibwe, including winter camping excursions on Lake Superior and the Michigan woodlands.

 How did Windigo Moon come about?  After my partner, George Foster, and I sold our newspaper, Northern Express Weekly, I was at loose ends, wondering what to do with the rest of my life at the age of 61.  I got to thinking about a short story I had written more than 25 years ago about an Ojibwe hunter being pursued by an enemy during the coldest winter in memory. I quickly finished two more stories about the hunter's origins, never meaning for them to be published."  At the urging of my daughter, Chloe, I sent one of the stories to an international writing contest sponsored by the ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  To my great surprise, the story, which became the first chapter of Windigo Moon, won first prize.  Winning the prize lit a fire under me, prompting me to write the book. It gained the interest of a number of literary agents, as well as a mainstream publisher of historical fiction of high literary quality, Blank Slate Press.  There have been few, if any, works of fiction about the pre-conquest Ojibwe since Longfellow published The Song of Hiawatha in 1855. My goal is to open a door on a rich literary tradition that’s every bit as fascinating and fantastic as the Game of Thrones novels, with the difference being that this tradition is genuine, existing only a few lifetimes ago.  For more on Windigo Moon, check out my website: www.robertdownes.com

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A Woman’s Destiny

   This excerpt from my forthcoming novel, Windigo Moon, offers a glimpse into the hopes and dreams of a young woman of the Ojibwe and the heroine of the story, Ozawashskwa-ashagi (Blue Heron). 

    Her family had been snug as a nest of wrens, singing and drumming in their lodge through the long, cold nights. Their only enemy then had been the merciless cold, easily defeated by the stories told by her father and grandmother before the winter fire.

    One night, she remembered, the snow had fallen in millions of tufts, floating as soft and silent through the trees as the downy feathers of a swan.  “Why do the snowflakes gather as they fall?” she had asked, marveling at the sight of the feathering snow.

   “Even the snow has a family, child,” her father had murmured.  “All things have a family, even as we. We are all one clan in the eyes of the Great Spirit; the earth, the sky, the animals and birds; we are all family.”

   Eya, and on that night Ashagi had thought of the family that she too would bring from her body when the time came for her to become a mother.

    Ashagi had been promised a life as fixed and unchanging as the stars rolling through the sky through all the years beyond count.  A life that had been handed down from all her grandmothers going back as many generations as there were stones on the beach.  Someday soon, the promise said, her eyes would lock on those of a man from several clans away, perhaps at the summer festival held far down the lake.  He would be handsome, with flashing eyes and a broad smile, and one day he would appear at her mother's lodge with a deer slung over his shoulder along with earnest words and tobacco for her father.   

 Her father would say no, but the young hunter would come again and again, each time with more deer, elk, moose, whatever it took to prove that he could provide.  And, in time, after his little bird gave her assent, her father would say yes, and the man would come to live with them as her husband and as her father's new son.

  Then, with the Great Spirit willing, she would become a mother, then a grandmother, then merely a whisper in the memory of her clan as her daughters and their daughters carried on.  That was the promise given by the creator of all things, eternal and unchanging among the Anishinaabek.

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Finding the right trail

 What do we know about the Ojibwe Indians who lived in the region of the upper Great Lakes more than 400 years ago?    The answer is a paradox.  We know a great deal about those who called themselves the Anishinaabek, the "True People or Original People," and yet, very little.

  Also known as the Chippewa (a French corruption of Ojibwe) the Anishinaabek were a fluid tribe made up of many bands who migrated from place to place through the seasons in search of food.  They intermarried with the Odaawaa, who arrived in upper Michigan in the mid-1600s.  Of them, we have the recollections of Ojibwe elders and storytellers, which have been handed down through the centuries.  We have the memoirs of French explorers and Jesuit missionaries in a voluminous body of work known as "The Relations."  We have the writings of early ethnologists, such as Frances Densmore and Henry Schoolcraft, and of Ojibwe historian William Warren. We have our own personal experiences, hunting, fishing and hiking in the wilds of northern Michigan and Canada.  Yet many of these records were compiled in the 1800s or later by writers such as Schoolcraft, long after ancient traditions had slipped away.  Of the centuries prior to the arrival of the first French explorer, Etienne Brule, at Sault Sainte Marie in 1622, we know very little about the customs, beliefs and way of thinking of those who lived along the shores of Lake Superior.  Imagine trying to describe how your own ancestors lived 400 years ago, or longer. You might be able to sketch a rough outline of life back then, but even if you had a time machine and could go back and witness your ancestors' lives firsthand, their way of thinking and their connection to the world around them would surely be impossible to grasp.   Nor is scholarship particularly helpful. Consult a dozen different authors on Native Americans and you will likely find a dozen different spellings, histories, cultural practices, origins and placements relating to the Ojibwe and other tribes.  Often, they are literally "all over the map."  Claims about Indian ways tend to be at polar opposites from book to book. One source claims that the Indians buried their dead facing east; other authors claim the dead were buried facing west.  The early French claimed that young Indian women were wildly promiscuous; other sources claim they were chaste and risked having both their hair and their ears cropped if they transgressed.  Some claim the Indians used salty language and loved scatological tales; others claim they never used profanity. Several books claim that a family's wealth passed to the wife's side following the death of a husband; others claim that his possessions, as well as his wife, went to his male relatives, and so on.   Thus, determining what is correct about the Indians of 400 years ago is on par with trying to follow a faint game trail through the forest well after dusk. Side trails dwindle off into the darkness. Are you on the right trail? Your guides are sure to disagree.

#Ojibwe, #NativeAmerica, #FirstPeople, #Chippewa

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No Defenses

From the Afterword of the forthcoming novel, Windigo Moon, to be published September 5, 2017 by Blank Slate Press.

   The events of Windigo Moon (circa 1545-1617) take place during a time of crisis and upheaval during the 11,000-year habitation of the upper Great Lakes.  It’s estimated that in 1600, the Ojibwe numbered anywhere from 20,000 to an astounding 100,000 persons living in the Upper Great Lakes, with up to 3,000 attending the annual summer and fall festivals at the fishing grounds of present-day Sault Ste. Marie.  Yet, by the time British traders began appearing on the scene in the 1760s, the Ojibwe population had dwindled to a few thousand, with only 200 or so reported at the Sault.  What happened? A disaster of apocalyptic proportions.  “Almost from the first appearance of Eureopean fur traders and colonists, native societies around the Great Lakes and Ohio  River valley were caught up in a relentless cycle of violence, dispersal, and relocation,” notes the book, “Through Indian Eyes: The Untold Story of Native American Peoples,” published by Reader’s Digest.  In the late 1400s and early 1500s, explorers from more than a dozen countries brought home tales of civilizations with well-ordered towns, farmlands and systems of government among the native peoples of North America.  Yet, these early encounters unwittingly introduced smallpox, viral hepatitis, measles, diphtheria, typhus and other diseases for which the Native Americans had no biological defenses.  Over the past two decades, many well-researched books, such as "1491" by  Charles C. Mann, "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick, "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann and "A Voyage Long and Strange" by Tony Horowitz, tell this devastating story, recounting the destruction of Indian civilizations.  In "1491" Mann reports that up to 90 percent of the estimated 100 to 120 million Indians living in the New World may have been killed by introduced diseases, with many dying years before the first colonists arrived in the early 1600s.  Elsewhere, that figure is set at 50 percent; in any case, a catastrophe beyond imagination.  The Indians were especially vulnerable because they attributed diseases to magic or the spirits of evil manitos and gathered tightly packed in their lodges for safety, creating a biological bomb of humanity; whereas the citizens of old Europe tended to flee to the countryside when epidemics such as the bubonic plague struck.  Thus, decades after the first explorers touched the shores of North America, the colonists of the Mayflower and succeeding vessels found a new world that was largely empty of its former population, with abandoned towns, overgrown fields and thousands of scattered bones.    It's believed that viral hepatitis killed up to 90 percent of the Indians living along the coast of New England in the early 1600s. A merchant named Thomas Morton wrote of the epidemic of 1616-1619 that the Indians "died in heapes as they lay in their houses," with the dying, "left for crows, kites and vermin to prey upon."    In the South, the army of conquistador Hernan de Soto laid waste to virtual kingdoms in a swath extending from Georgia to the Mississippi. Yet it was the smallpox-bearing hogs he brought from Spain which killed far more Native Americans, with epidemics engulfing tribes throughout North America.

[windigomoon]

A Novel of the Anishinaabek

"One is left to wonder, which version of history is correct?  Or, even more to the point, what difference does it make?"  
           - Charles E.  Cleland, Rites of Conquest 

 Pitch your tent on the shores of the Manitou islands in Lake Michigan on a summer night and let your senses fill with the breezes off the beach. There are spirits moving here - manitos - the powerful shapes and memories of those who walked these sands and sat, loved and sang beneath these trees for hundreds, even thousands of years.  They watched the same sunsets and played along the same beaches that we love today, their canoes coursing along a lakeshore that is hailed as one of the most beautiful places in America.

  They were the Ojibwe, a tribe which once lived, and still does, in an immense area ranging from Hudson Bay to the northern Great Plains. Their lives were entwined with nature in every sense, believing that every rock, animal and man-made thing had a spirit. Their world was full of magic and mystery in which animals gave their lives so that the True People, the Anishinaabek, might live.  Generous and kind to their friends and family, they could be unspeakably cruel to their enemies. They danced, sang, drummed and lived free, traveling through the seasons in an eternal quest for food.   Beginning in 1588, Windigo Moon - A Novel of Native America is a story of those times, years before the "shadow men," the wdjibbon of Europe touched their shores.  Over the next few months I’ll be offering stories from the novel along with insights on the Anishinaabek people as they were prior to the European invasion of North America.

  The settings for Windigo Moon include western Ontario, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Upper Michigan, New York State and the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.