Faith and Magic

Summer 1948: ROY

So far this summer, skinny little Roy Parr has unearthed three chunks of petrified wood—crumbly but real enough, pink and brown and crystalline white—plus some hunks of charcoal and driftwood, flat tan pebbles, and two Indian arrowheads.

Today Roy is digging again in the sand lot across from his home in Miller, Indiana. He burns with excitement as, an inch below where he was digging yesterday, he finds two objects. One is small and shaped like an arrowhead. Those he found before were similarly sharp, slender brown triangles of rock. This one is also dull brown, but it looks like it has been beaten into shape.

Roy rubs the arrowhead on the leg of his shorts. It shines up to the color of a copper penny. He wonders why someone made an arrowhead out of metal.

The larger, heavier piece, also brown, burnishes to a brighter copper color. It is a rounded lump almost as long as his little finger, flattened on one side.

Roy perches the flat side on his palm. Now the lump looks like a little statue, a sitting person with a huge mouth eating something. “Are you good luck—a man eating a loaf? Or bad luck—a monster eating his own arm?” The boy turns the lump over. Underneath is an indentation full of sand. The boy snaps a twig off a nearby cottonwood tree, teases the sand out of the hole, and finds that it is a deep slot. He wonders if the arrowhead would fit into it. He wonders if the combination is magic.

Roy’s father, Mel, has given the boy a head for magic. They both needed something to replace Roy’s dead mother, yearned for something deep and mysterious to help ease their loss. Magic, tribal magic gave them a love to share. It started when Mel showed Roy the deed to the land on which their little bungalow sat, how it was passed down from the Potawatomi.

Mel learned tribal lore from a half-blood Potawatomi named Anson Eagle who lives on Miller Beach. Mel and Anson work together, white collar jobs in the rolling mill at Gary Works.

Anson told Mel and Mel told Roy of the tribe’s beliefs—in the two spirits, Kitchemonedo the Great Spirit and Matchêmonedo the Evil Spirit, and of the Seven Grandfather Teachings, and of the Great Chain of Being connecting past, present, and future generations. And that the mission of the people was embodied in their very name, Keepers of the Fire, the council fires that the Potawatomi cultivated to keep peace with their relatives, the Chippewa and the Ottawa—when they would unite and smoke the pipe of peace, the calumet.

Roy begged Mel to meet Mr. Eagle. Mel worried that he would lose his special bond with his son, but he introduced them and hoped for the best.

They first got together that June in Marquette Park. They fished in the morning and lounged in the afternoon by a picnic table to grill dinner the old way, skewered on sticks over an open fire. The bluegills weren’t biting, so they ate Mel’s store-bought pollock.

Over the glowing embers, Anson got expansive with the curious boy. He told Roy how his tribe used to fish the very same river. The Lagoon in Marquette Park used to be part of the Calumet River. The slow, winding stream and its boggy boundaries provided wild rice. His forebears plied the Calumet, the Tippecanoe, the St. Joseph, and other rivers nearby in the warm months, using spears for the mighty sturgeon—as long as a man—poles, hooks and lines or nets for trout and perch; and beating sticks to harvest wild rice in the fall. Meantime, the women farmed beans, squash, sunflowers, tobacco and pumpkins and collected berries and wild plants. Their specialty was grinding sweet calico corn, maize, and other vegetables into cakes to wrap in basswood leaves and bake on hot embers. Anson inhaled and smiled. The basswood leaves, he said, made the cakes smell like wild roses.

Come winter, Anson said, the tribe trekked east to the woods of Michigan to trap and hunt deer, moose, elk, even bear. They followed the old Sauk Trail, now U.S. Route 12 running through Gary.

“The highway that goes right past our house?” Roy said.

“Yep,” Anson said. “You go to school on a Potawatomi trail. It ran all the way to Detroit.”

A devout look stole over him. “Winter,” he said, “was also the time for writing, for setting down the tribe’s stories on scrolls of birch paper. The Potawatomi wrote in pictographs for hundreds of years before the Europeans invaded.”

Roy was astounded. “Tell me a story!”

Anson smiled. A story he loved was of Wisaka the trickster. Wisaka was born of a frail virgin and raised by Grandmother Earth in great poverty. He remained scrawny and poor, roaming the land until one day he met a fox. Wisaka fooled the fox into believing that he would be poisonous if eaten. But, Wisaka said, if the fox helped him build a lodge, he would bring a bounty of food. The fox built the lodge, and Wisaka said he would provide food by turning into a woman and charming the chief’s son in the neighboring village into marriage.

He took two elk kidneys, tied them to his chest under his coat, and sashayed into the village, calling himself Nanabush the Beautiful. The chief’s son was entranced, and a marriage ceremony soon took place. But when the village showered the couple with gifts of furs, jewelry, and food to leave for their honeymoon trip to ‘her’ lodge, Wisaka told them ‘she’ feared a ravenous fox had invaded it. The braves armed themselves and followed the newlyweds, carrying loads of dried venison and trout.

When the fox smelled the food coming, he licked his chops. But when the braves unloaded their provender, the fox could see their carrying sticks were really spears. The fox ran away keening in fear. Wisaka cheered with the braves, waving his coat in triumph. When his false breasts were revealed, the chief’s son and the rest of the braves ran away screaming of Wisaka’s betrayal. And Wisaka had provisions to last the whole winter. Legend has it that he continued to thrive and lived to beget us all.

Anson said the lesson was to use one’s wits to survive. Roy heard only that a weakling can become a hero by creativity.

Roy remembers this as his he holds his new treasures in his palm. Could a weak child really fool a fox, a chief, even a whole village? Roy wants to believe the story. He thinks as hard as he can about Wisaka. He hungers for adventure too much to wonder whether the statuette is of a lucky man or a desperate monster, or whether magic comes from Kitchemonedo the Great or from Matchêmonedo the Evil One. He squeezes his eyes shut and whispers, “Wisaka, help me!” and inserts the arrowhead into the slot in the statue.

The sand, the hills and the woods blur into a vortex, a swirl of colors. A cacophony of warrior howls and fox screams assaults Roy’s ears. The sweet aroma of wild roses fills his nose. And everything turns black.

August 1810: NIKAN

“Cigwe'!”—Thunderbird! —the boy shouted in Neshnabek, which we call Potawatomi. He pointed at a large black bird ruffling its tailfeathers.

To the old man, such enthusiasm was childish in a thirteen-year-old. “Co, mshike',” he said. “No, it’s a turkey.” He sighed. “You have turned away from what growing men must see, must do.” Crouched in the stern of his birch bark canoe, ash-wood paddle in hand, he spoke again to the boy in the bow. “You have become a dreamer.”

The man dug his paddle into the water, turning the canoe to avoid a snag. “Do you deny it?”

“No, grandfather. But…” He trailed off.

“Go on. I am listening.”

“But I love to dream!” he said. “Of the mighty bear and the great elk. Of what the whippoorwill’s call means, and why the dove sounds so sad. Of how the turkey got its beautiful feathers. Of why the jay scolds, and what the crows argue about.”

“That will not help us face the Sauk when they arrive in their war canoes. Nor will we eat if the Pokagon to the south take our game. If all young ones sat around like you, our people would vanish.”

“But grandfather. The Medicine Woman tells us that we are all joined together, that we must love and respect all beings—even tiny creatures like the water spider. How can I fight—kill—humans if I believe Medicine Woman?”

Grandfather huffed. “Medicine Woman has no need to gather food. It is brought to her as her due for giving us wisdom. But a man cannot live on wisdom alone. He and his family need food in their bellies. A man must learn to tell the clouds of wisdom from the rain and snow of the real world.”

“But grandfather. Don’t clouds become rain and snow?”

The old man threw back his head and laughed. “Ah, Nikan. Yes, all is connected. And all that grows matures in its own good time. And you—" he chuckled— “you may be too clever for your own good. Or maybe you will become the next Medicine Man. Shall we speak to Kwe’ Wapun, whose words you revere, and ask her if you will become our next e'shkukin Isnage?”

Nikan beamed and threw his hands in the air. “Yes, grandfather!”

“Daydreaming may put a human being in the frame for yabwe', real dreaming. And a grandfather’s recommendation must be taken seriously,” The Medicine Woman said, seated with Nikan and his grandfather on the ground around the evening fire outside her wigwam. “But the test is what counts. If you cannot pass the test, survive yabwe' giwse', you cannot become a man of medicine. Are you sure you want to dare the dream hunt at such an early age?”

Nikan’s head rose and he said, “I am not a boy, Kwe’ Wapun. I am a man of three and ten summers. I am old enough to ask of the dangers of the test.”

The Medicine Woman nodded. “It is no small thing to go without food for three days. It is a test of bravery to wander alone without the company of the Neshnabek for that long. Who knows what animal might hunt you? If it be a spirit animal, what kind of magic might befall you?”

“Does magic come from Kitchemonedo the Great Spirit or from Matchêmonedo the Evil Spirit?”

“A prudent question. I will answer it with a story of Wisaka the trickster. It was a time of drought. Wisaka’s people—our people—were dying of thirst. But miles upstream, Wisaka had seen a dam made of reeds, branches, and mud. A large lake lay behind it. The Frog People had built the dam. So, Wisaka took on the form of a coyote and spat in the dirt. He rolled in it until he was filthy. Then he trotted up north to show himself to the Frog People.

“‘Take pity on me,’ he cried. ‘Let me wash in your bounteous waters.’ The chief said, ‘Get to it! You look terrible and you smell even worse!’

“Wisaka dove off the dam. He swam underwater and dug through the mud. As his lungs were about to burst, he popped through the hole and swam down the new stream all the way back to his people.”

Kwe Wapun stared at Nikan. “Did Wisaka’s trick come from the Great Spirit or from the Evil One?”

“From the Great Spirit!” Nikan said. “Kitchemonedo took pity on his people and saved them.”

Kwe Wapun’s eyebrows raised. “But what of the Frog People? Perhaps you will learn of good and evil on your last long night. But, I warn you, it can make the faint of spirit tear their hearts out.”

The boy frowned, “I know of death. If not for grandfather, I would be an orphan. The raids, the sickness, the shortage of game… our village is not growing. But you have taught me that the Neshnabek will be everlasting. And someone must say those mighty words to the next generation. Perhaps it takes a dreamer.”

“Ahaw… anak. Yes… maybe,” Kwe’ Wapun raised her eyes to shpamuk, heaven, in hope. Would this dreamer be the one?

In northwest Indiana, wind, ice, and thousands of years created long, narrow spits of sand that cover most of the area creating a huge, corrugated wetland. By Nikan’s time, the spits had widened into bands up to a mile wide. The land also grew vertically. Beachgrass started it, holding grass in its roots and sheltering sand grains and seeds with its leaves against the wind, until cottonwood trees grew and were themselves covered by mighty sand dunes.

That was where Nikan hoped to find a safe spot for his last night of the test, on the highest dune in the tribe’s territory, Mt. Tom.

It was a struggle to climb the two-hundred-foot hill, especially barefoot, as the singing sands parted with his footfalls. The soughing sound with each step was his only comfort in the climb up the 33-degree slope. Nikan fell onto his hands and knees over and over again, breathless. Moonlight illuminated the dune just enough to keep his feet out of the sharp-edged beachgrass that covered most of it.

He reached the open top of the dune dizzy with hunger, too exhausted to take another step. But when he looked up, he was amazed. The moonlight made the foaming breakers wash ashore from the Big Lake in moving lines of glowing white. The sounds of their collapse on the shore mirrored his panting. The sand on the shore stretched in great curves east and west as far as the eye could see. He raised his slender arms to match their arcs. The Big Lake cast a coal black shadow all the way to the horizon. Stars beamed above, swaying this way and that in the summer heat. Not a cloud marred the inky sky.

Nikan let the world wash over him. He lay on his back, spread his arms wide again, slid his fingers into the cool sand, and stared up. A shooting star flitted across his field of vision. More came, wider arcs in yellow and orange. Nikan was enraptured. But when a big, bright green one headed his way and burst before his face with a thunderous boom, he cried out in fear.

“Who’s there?” a voice called out—in English.

October 2030: ELDON

Elaine Trich, the slim Eurasian ex-nun who serves as chief ethics officer for the Genocide Project points at the image of Roy. “He made it! Now bring him back!”

The image of Roy walking along the top of the dune at night looks eerie. The flat screen shows his face as orange, his swinging arms in lurid yellows. The grasses around him look mauve. Only the sandy shore is in natural-looking tans. The tans are like those out the window, a view of Lake Michigan’s southwestern shoreline from a conference room in a luxurious high-rise.

CEO Eldon Muntz turns from the screen to look down his nose at Elaine. His wide-eyed boyish face belies his intent. “Inane, tell me again. Why are you here?”

“It’s Elaine! And you know why. Clearly, you need ethical guidance. Claiming Roy gave informed consent by pushing the key into the slot is self-delusion.”

Hernan DeSoto, the chief of IT and, at age 45, the elder statesman of the group, says, “He did invoke magic—he wanted to go somewhere. The question is, are we going to leave him in 1810—make him stay? Do we go for data on the Indian Relocation, or is the technical feat enough for now?”

Elaine says, “Bring him back to 1948 where he belongs! The rats never survived more than two jumps without getting their brains scrambled. For God’s sake!”

They thought it masterful when Hernan produced the arrowhead-statuette combination. The simulation of native copper is superb. The tranachron-transmitter in the lump is invisible. Its infrared holo-camera gives weird images, but it works even inside Roy’s pocket. And it allows the illusion of agency by the person holding it.

Eldon raises his hands. “Look, everyone, we don’t have to decide today. Let’s see if the boys bond. We have all the time in the world.”

“Baloney!” Elaine says. “We know how this ends. Roy had it right: the statuette is a monster eating his own arm. He and Nikan may well bond, but by 1838, if they survive, they will be rounded up and pushed from Indiana to Kansas, trying to eat food so loathsome many refuse it, people dying right and left of typhoid.

Muntz says, “But Elaine, dozens escaped the army’s encirclement.”

“Sure, sure, into Michigan and Wisconsin. Or Canada. Now there are 28,000 Potawatomi. Our attempts to exterminate them failed.”

Muntz says, “We need more from the boys. We love our ‘Hateful Leader’ theory of genocide, but it doesn’t tell us why so many people did the leader’s bidding. And there’s no Hateful Leader in America in the 1800s. After all our efforts, we don’t know a thing about why genocide--”

Elaine breaks in. “You don’t think Andrew Jackson was a hateful leader? If anyone was ever an Indian-hater, he was. And if you don’t believe white America elects leaders who hate non-whites, you’re out of your mind.”

Hernan shakes his head. “You’re both missing the point. We have created magic, but we have no faith. We have not learned from the Potawatomi that all are united in spirit. If anything can unite us again it will be a new reverence for the old anthem to “crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”