Tracks

As the second narrator of the novel, Pauline Puyat presents a contrasting and often contradicting version of events to that presented by Nanapush. Born to a small, mixed-blood family, Pauline craves a better life outside the reservation, where she assumes that she can cast off her Chippewa identity and live as a white woman.

One thing everyone agrees upon is that Pauline is homely and invisible. As Nanapush explains:

Because she was unnoticeable, homely if it must be said, Pauline schemed to gain attention by telling odd tales that created damage. There was some question if she wasn’t afflicted, touched in the mind. Her Aunt Regina, who was married to a Dutchman, sent the girl back here when she got peculiar, blacked out and couldn’t sleep, saw things that weren’t in the room. That is all to say that the only people who believed Pauline’s stories were the ones who loved the dirt. (39)

Nanapush understands Pauline better than she does herself, and the reader must keep that in mind when reading Pauline’s accounts of events. Because she lies and distorts the truth, she is an unreliable narrator. The reader must look for corroboration of events through other sources, including the fallible Nanapush.

Pauline leaves her old life behind and becomes a nun, though in her religious mania prior to taking her final vows, she kills Napoleon Morrissey, whom she mistakes for Satan, and with whom she has had a child, Marie. There is no doubt that Pauline is a liar and a pitiful creature whom no one loves, but she finds some level of acceptance and caring from the nuns.

Fleur is the central character of the novel, but she does not speak for herself. Instead, the two narrators, Nanapush and Pauline, tell her story. They frequently contradict one another and have different views of Fleur, her personality, her personal power, and her actions. Fleur’s power and energy demonstrate the last wildness and strength in the Chippewa tribe. The two narrators agree upon her power, but they disagree about her motives and her goodness or lack of it.

Her physical strength, intelligence, and beauty are renowned:

Her cheeks were wide and flat, her hands large, chapped, muscular. Fleur’s shoulders were broad and curved as a yoke, her hips fishlike, slippery, narrow. An old green dress clung to her waist, worn thin where she sat. Her glossy braids were like the tails of animals, and swung against her when she moved, deliberately, slowly in her work, held in and half-tamed. But only half. I could tell, but the others never noticed. They never looked into her sly born eyes or noticed her teeth, strong and sharp and very white … They never knew she’d drowned. They were blinded, they were stupid, they only saw her in the flesh. (18)

When Fleur’s land is taken through the trickery and betrayal of Nector and Margaret Kashpaw, her husband Eli’s brother and mother, Fleur never gives up. She does not allow the loggers to claim the forest around her house. She takes the forest down herself, and kills them in the process.

In this way, she maintains dignity, a characteristic lost by many of the tribe in their rush to cash in on the logging company’s offers for their land and its timber. Like Nanapush, Fleur never bows her head, either metaphorically or literally, to the white government forces swamping the reservation land and destroying her people. In the end, though her land is taken, she does not collude with the forces attempting to destroy her. This is the story of bravery, cleverness, and strength that Nanapush attempts to instill in Lulu about her mother.

Eli and Nector’s mother, Margaret Kashpaw, is a formidable woman. Early in the novel, Nanapush describes her:

There was no knocking with Margaret because with warning you might get your breath, or escape. She was headlong, bossy, scared of nobody and full of vinegar. She was a little woman, but so blinded by irritation that she’d take on anyone. She was thick on the top and plump as a turnip below, with a face like a round molasses cake. On each side of it gray plaits hung. With age, her part had widened down the middle so it looked as though the braids were slipping off her head. Her eyes were harsh, bright, and her tongue honed keen. (47)

Despite her harsh ways, she does her best to welcome Fleur into the family once Eli has chosen her, and Fleur and her baby become part of Margaret’s true family. Margaret, like Nanapush, would go to extremes to preserve her family.

Eventually, Nanapush and Margaret marry in the old way. Together, they survive everything that the world throws at them. For example, when Boy Lazarre and Clarence Morrissey attack her and Nanapush because they have refused to sell their timber to the logging company, the attackers essentially scalp Margaret, weakening and dishonoring her by removing her hair. Nanapush is beaten up, and he is deeply humiliated that he cannot save or protect Margaret because he is an old man, easily overpowered by the young Morrissey.

Nanapush admires Margaret for her strength, her sharp mind and tongue, and her good humor. They are drawn closer together by witnessing each other’s humiliation at the hands of the Lazarre and Morrissey boys, and they help each other heal rather than poking at each other’s wounds. They find a way to be gentle with one another.

In this way, their new relationship thrives, despite the fact that Margaret deliberately pays the fees only for her own allotment, allowing Fleur’s land to be lost and sold to the logging company. Nanapush understands this betrayal, though he never loves Margaret as much or in the same way after this action, driven by pure survival instincts.

Eli Kashpaw marries Fleur Pillager and helps her raise her daughter Lulu, until the need for money to buy back the Pillager’s land allotments drives him to look for work in the logging camp. Fleur distances herself from him then because he works for the enemy and because he knew that his mother, Margaret, had betrayed her by not paying the allotment fee due on Fleur’s land.

As Margaret’s son, Eli inherits her practical ways, whereas Fleur has much more pride and stubbornness. For example, Eli humbles himself, with Nanapush’s advice, to regain Fleur’s trust after he has been unfaithful to her with Sophie Morrissey. By the end of the novel, though Fleur has taken him back before, he loses her for good when he allows his mother to deceive her and the government to steal her land. Eli is a weak man who does not understand who Fleur is. He does not grasp her strength and her alignment with nature and the supernatural. Therefore, he cannot maintain her respect.