The Porcupine Year (16 page)

An Ojibwe friend of mine named Delia, from Manitoulin Island, once had a porcupine for a pet. She told me that the little fellow liked to drink coffee and milk from a cup that it held in its paws. Nevertheless, I would not recommend taking a porcupine home for a pet. I would suggest an innocuous and harmless creature like a guinea pig, or at prickliest, a hedgehog.

There were several routes into the fur country of what is now northern Minnesota. Hoping to meet trading partners or other close members of the family, Omakayas's family decided to enter that wealth of lakes via what is now the St. Louis River.

The story that Deydey tells about his father was taken from Grace Lee Nute's book
The Voyageur
. In a haunting vignette, she writes “the laughable tale” of a half-breed boy who seeks his father just as Deydey sought his own, among the fur traders and French voyageurs who so often made liaisons with Native women. That long-ago boy was greeted with derisive laughter when he stepped up to his father to identify himself. I could not forget how that boy
must have felt, and imagined that his wounded pride gave a fierce and unforgiving cast to his soul.

Conflict and war between the Ojibwe and the Dakota for hunting territory marked the time this book takes place, but there were also surprising acts of peace and friendship, which presaged the good relationship between the two groups today.

I was struck by an incident recounted in
Being Dakota: Tales & Traditions of the Sisseton & Wahpeton
by Amos E. Oneroad and Alanson B. Skinner. The meeting between the Wahpeton Dakota warrior Running-walker and the Ojibwe warrior Jingling-cloud concludes this way: “The Ojibway chief gave his best horse to Running-walker and a lot of mococs of rice and maple sugar. Then the Sioux and Ojibway mingled giving presents and the Ojibway were brought into camp where they were told where to pitch their tents. That evening, Running-walker invited all the Ojibway to his lodge, while Jingling-cloud singed a deer whole and made the ‘chief dish' for them.”

The two warriors then thanked each other and declared that they considered themselves each half Dakota and half Ojibwe.

So the fellowship with which the members of Omakayas's family are greeted by the Bwaanag, or Dakota, was historical fact.

Old Tallow is based on a short missionary journal description of an Ojibwe woman who lived near Red
Cliff. May her dog-loving warrior spirit never die!

Omakayas's family ends up together in Lake of the Woods, which is a mysterious and beautiful place indeed. The next book will be set there in the late 1860s, when Omakayas is the mother of twins who get into trouble even more often than their uncle Quill.

I would like to thank my mother, Rita Gourneau Erdrich, for helping me along the trail, as well as my daughters, Persia, Pallas, Aza, and Kiizh. I would also like to thank my editor, Tara Weikum, and Elizabeth Hall for her own work and her support of other writers.