Summary
The novel begins with 12-year-old Xavier Bird leading his best friend Elijah Whiskeyjack through the snowy woods on their first hunt. The two find a living marten caught in one of their willow traps, and Xavier encourages Elijah to club the animal. After killing the animal himself with a blow to its head, Xavier skins the marten and Elijah remarks that Xavier’s “auntie” will be proud of him. The short section ends with the two boys agreeing that they are great hunters and best friends.
The next section, "Ekiiwaniwahk: Returning," opens on a grimy railroad station in 1919 Ontario. Niska, an elderly Oiji-Cree medicine woman, has traveled for a week in a canoe to reach this station, and she’s been watching the passengers for days, although she confesses that she doesn’t understand the clothing and mannerisms of the white city dwellers, the wemistikoshiw. In 1918, Niska received a letter from the Canadian army saying that her only living relation, her nephew Xavier Bird, had died while serving as an infantryman in World War I. Now she has received another letter, this one telling her that Xavier’s best friend Elijah Whiskeyjack has been wounded while rescuing another soldier and that he is returning to his home weake and injured.
At the train station, Niska sees a one-legged man on crutches get off the train and recognizes him not as Elijah, but as her nephew. Both Xavier and Niska believed the other to be dead, and upon their reunion they sink to the ground in a weeping embrace. However, Xavier quickly grows withdrawn as he follows Niska to the river she traveled on. As Niska paddles them down the river and sets up a small camp on the bank, Xavier doesn’t say a word. He sleeps fitfully on the canoe and grows frustrated when he cannot help Niska build their tepee for the night, settling on making a fire while sitting instead. He finally speaks when Niska cooks moose meat on the fire, commenting that he has not smelled the scent of roasting meat in a long time. Niska goes to sleep in the tepee, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night she sees that Xavier is no longer at the camp. She lies awake in her blanket as she realizes that Xavier has only come home to die.
In "Takoshininaaniwan: Arrival," Xavier lies awake by the fire, fighting sleep because he doesn’t want to dream that he is back in the war. He and Elijah had stayed together throughout the war, but when a shell landed too close to Xavier, he was blown into the air and lost his left leg. While healing, he became addicted to morphine and is now completely dependent on the drug. Xavier knows that his supply of the medicine will run out in a few days and believes he will die as a result. He also remembers receiving a letter while in France saying that Niska had passed away.
Eventually Xavier falls asleep and dreams of the first time he was under fire, from another Canadian company in Belgium who mistook Xavier’s unit as Germans. After Xavier’s sergeant, known as McCaan, calls to the other troops and stops the shooting, Xavier and his company head to a farmhouse to sleep on straw for the night. Xavier falls asleep listening to two soldiers, Sean Patrick and Grey Eyes, boast (and lie) about the girls back home whom they’ve promised to marry.
Xavier and his company leave for the front the next day. As they march and sing, shells and bullets suddenly begin raining down, killing and wounding men all around Xavier. Elijah helps Xavier, Grey Eyes, and Sean Patrick to safety behind a wagon. After regrouping, the remainder of the company sets off on a western path in the foggy dark. McCann sends Xavier and Elijah to sneak over a ridge and determine whether the troops stationed behind it are enemies or allies. They find the uniforms of four Belgian soldiers; Elijah approaches them and asks where the Canadians are stationed. After finding out that they are only half a mile away, Xavier and Elijah lead their company to the other Canadian troops. Xavier feels proud that he has passed his first military test, but when he sees ghost-like soldiers who have been on the front for over a year, he realizes that the day will be only one of many trials. The next morning, Xavier meets Smithy, a small and thin sniper who has had the most confirmed kills in the Canadian and British armies—except for an Ojibwe Indian named Peggy.
Xavier wakes up from his dream to Niska’s face hovering above him. Before getting into the canoe again, Xavier self-administers morphine. As they drift down the river, he drifts back into memory of the war, when he was in the trenches on the front line at Saint-Eloi in France. Xavier, Elijah and their company are under the command of Corporal Thompson, who teaches them about the different kinds of shells and bombs that they will be subjected to in the trench. Thompson leads the company into the no-man’s land between the trenches, where they crawl amongst the bomb craters and bodies of dead soldiers. When they make it back to their own trench, Xavier stands to get a better look at the German troops; he is shot at and a clump of mud knocked up by a bullet hits his hand. As Niska paddles the canoe back to her and Xavier’s home, she thinks about how Xavier is killing himself with morphine and worries about his emotional state. She begins to tell Xavier a story about her childhood: she grew up with fellow Anishinaabe, a group of Canadian indigenous people.
The narrative switches to Niska. As a young girl, Niska frequently experienced sharp pains in her head and convulsions. She lived with her parents and her sister, Rabbit, who would become Xavier’s mother. Niska recounts one winter where game was scarce and her people were starving; the hunters went to rouse a sleeping bear from its den and kill it, an act that was usually forbidden and considered inhumane. She watches her parents skin and cook the bear with great respect for the animal, praying and even crying over its body.
As the group continues to starve throughout the winter, a young hunter named Micah leaves with his wife and child in the hope of surviving in a less populated area of the bush. They set up a winter shelter in a place where many tracks cross the snow near their lodge, but each time Micah follows the tracks he doesn’t find a single animal. Eventually, Micah freezes to death after spending hours trying to catch fish through a hole in the ice. His wife and child manage to survive the night, and the next morning Micah’s wife cooks his body to feed herself and their child.
Meanwhile, back at the main settlement, Niska’s father sends hunters on a mission to find moose near the Albany River. Micah’s wife returns with her child, saying that Micah has supplied her with more meat than she could eat. Niska’s father is suspicious, telling some young men to take away her pack; in it, they find Micah’s remains. Micah’s wife falls into madness, sobbing and growling constantly. Once, she regains her composure enough to say that a man-beast had come out of the woods and told her that if she didn’t feed her child, he would take and eat it. Since Niska’s father had become the hookimaw, or leader, of the group after he killed a group of windigo (cannibals), he takes it upon himself to suffocate Micah’s wife and her child. Niska watches the act while hiding beneath her father’s moose robe; afterwards, her father says that he let her watch because someday she might have to do the same thing. While hiding, Niska discovers that she has gotten her first period. Soon, the hunters return to the camp with a huge quantity of moose meat, and the famine ends along with the winter. However, Niska is scarred by the events of the past season, and grows more and more withdrawn. The next summer, wemistikoshiw—white Canadian settlers—arrive at the camp and place Niska’s father in their jail, having heard about his murder of Micah’s wife and child from other Anishinaabe when they were drunk on rum. Winter passes again, and the group travels to the Albany River to find out that Niska’s father is dead.
In "Pasitew: Fire," the narrative switches back to Xavier as he wakes up in the canoe. He notices the dividing line between new growth and tall trees on the bank that signifies a recent forest fire, and he tells Niska that he and Elijah once found a dead moose at the same spot. As he lays down again, he immediately slips into a memory of paddling upriver with Elijah, completing a long journey through “new country” in order to enlist in the war. After several days of travel, they spot a forest fire raging along the riverbank, and Elijah insists on paddling closer. The two eventually make their camp for the night and, after falling asleep, they are almost consumed by the fire as it grows closer to their camp. Both boys escape to the river and make it back to their canoe. The two stand in the water all night, waiting for the fire to die down, and Xavier thinks about his time in a residential school where a nun, Sister Magdalene, taught that the Cree are heathens and anger God. After paddling through the smoke-filled river, Xavier and Elijah spot the burned carcass of a bull moose, and cut and eat its meat. They spend the next few days on the canoe, saddened by the lack of animal noises and forest life. Elijah, who learned to speak English eloquently while at the residential school, teaches Xavier some English. Finally, they reach the town where they will register for the Canadian army, and spend a tense night sleeping nearby, wondering about the challenges they will face in the war.
Analysis
The prologue introduces us to one of the main relationships in the book: the one between Xavier and Elijah. Their relationship is characterized by two modes, friends and hunting partners; in this prologue, they are depicted mainly as hunting partners. Xavier is more experienced with the technicalities of the hunt: the processes of trapping, killing, and skinning wild animals. By contrast, Elijah is a keen learner, willing to follow Xavier’s commands without question and watching Xavier intently to improve his own understanding of life in the bush. The prologue also touches on another important relationship, between Xavier and his aunt, Niska. Although he is at first nervous to hurt the animal, asking Elijah to club it instead, he ultimately overcomes his fear because he wants to make Niska proud. Although Xavier exhibits a clear reluctance to kill—more so than Elijah does—his loyalty to Niska clearly has a heavy influence on his actions.
The first section of the novel establishes a distinction between the indigenous Canadian people and the white Canadians, or the wemistikoshiw. While Niska paddles through a week-long journey in a wooden canoe, the wemistikoshiw’s steam engine barrels through the town at high speeds. While the wemistikoshiw wear dresses with extra fabric and shiny shoes, Niska can name each kind of animal that her spare clothes have come from. This contrast is made even more explicit by Niska’s thoughts: she admits to herself that she doesn’t understand the customs and ways of the white Canadians.
Xavier’s return in the first section exemplifies a common theme of the novel: the horrors and destruction of war. Xavier’s physical and emotional damage is immediately clear to Niska, not only in the stump of his amputated leg but in the glassy, faraway look in his eyes, and the deep silence into which he quickly retreats. Niska’s recognition that Xavier—ravaged by injury, emotional pain, and drug addiction—has only come home to die is a continuation of the pain and danger that Xavier faced while in the war. In addition, Elijah’s unexplained absence serves as a constant reminder that Xavier is fortunate to have made it home at all.
"Takoshininaaniwan: Arrival" introduces the split narrative technique used throughout the novel, alternating between first-person narration by Niska and Xavier. Because the section is told through memory, an eerie juxtaposition is created between Xavier’s naiveté and apprehension at the beginning of the war and his exhausted, emaciated state after he leaves the battlefield. The hope and victories that Xavier narrates through memory are tempered by the knowledge that his time in the war will have a devastating effect.
The distinction between Cree and white Canadians continues in this section. Xavier feels like he doesn’t identify with the group; his isolation is exacerbated by the language barrier between him and the other soldiers, as when he refuses to sing English songs in solidarity with his Cree heritage. However, war serves as an equalizer: the death and destruction of the German shells does not discriminate, and Xavier realizes that he can transform the racist mindsets of the soldiers with his shooting abilities. He hopes that he will have the chance to fight, so that he can use his superior hunting experience to gain respect from the other soldiers; this opportunity is exemplified by the story of Peggy, an Ojibwe Indian, who is admired by the Canadian soldiers.
Xavier and Elijah’s relationships shifts from the one depicted in the prologue: now Elijah is the one to take charge, approaching the soldiers below the ridge to fulfill a dangerous mission. War draws out the differences between the two: while Elijah wishes he could fly like a plane or a bird, Xavier says that he is more comfortable on the ground. However, their relationship also grows more necessary as they are surrounded by white men. The familiar closeness of their friendship is evident not only in their mission to the ridge, but also in the small conversations they have in Cree and the way they agree to share a sleeping space without even having to speak.
Unpredictable and devastating violence begins to characterize Xavier’s memories as he recounts his time on the battlefield, a hellish landscape where anything can happen at any time. The practice of trench warfare, in which Xavier, Elijah, and their fellow soldiers live under the constant threat of sudden, painful death, is established as a major challenge for Xavier. The sensory deprivation created by blinding shell blasts, combined with descriptions of large-scale carnage and bloodshed, conveys the sense of inescapable destruction that World War I caused for so many soldiers. Xavier’s hesitation as he stares at the German trench is synonymous with his realization that whether or not he will be killed in the war—shot from afar by a person he will never see—is only a matter of chance.
Niska’s narrative advances the theme of nature as an indiscriminate force capable of bringing great hardship. While much of the novel focuses on the destructive capabilities of humans, this section explores the power of nature to threaten human lives. For Niska, the forest represents a home: she spends her entire life alone in the bush, learning how to navigate it. However, this kind of existence is not softened by modern conveniences and technology, the way that life in Moose Factory is made easier by railroads and stores. Instead, it is a harsh, day-to-day style of life that focuses on survival above all else. The unforgiving winter of Niska’s youth illustrates the hardship that natural forces can bring, as her community is forced to more and more desperate lengths in pursuit of survival.
The windigos, Cree who have been pushed by extreme conditions to turn into cannibals, make their first appearance in this section as well. Throughout the novel, they appear as symbols of insanity and mental collapse, representative of the darker parts of human nature coming to the fore in formerly sane people. Niska’s experience of watching her father kill the windigo is a formative one, laying the foundations for her future identity as a windigo killer. The mix of tenderness and cruelty towards the windigo woman, her child, and Niska that marks his murderous act illustrates the fact that evil and good can coexist in one person. This theme is reinforced throughout the novel, as countless characters display acts of charm and kindness along with depravity or murder. In the face of harsh conditions such as famine and war, the characters fight to refrain from evil acts except when necessary for survival, working hard not to succumb to the challenges surrounding them.
"Pasitew: Fire" introduces us to some stark differences between Xavier and Elijah. While Xavier enjoys hunting, he abhors destruction and danger. In contrast, Elijah relishes the adrenaline rush that accompanies a threat. Xavier is surprised to see Elijah smiling, enjoying the excitement and danger that the fire brings. Their separate reactions to the raging fire reveal a fundamental difference between their personalities—their proclivities to get involved in dangerous situations—that only becomes more evident as the novel goes on. Xavier is more reserved and dedicated to peace than his friend, who enjoys challenges to his own security. While this thirst for danger translates into battlefield bravery, Elijah’s overindulgence in it leads to dire consequences.
