Summary
The hearings are conducted like a play, with proper names highlighted and the prose organized in a series of speeches and dialogues. As Watkins begins speaking, Roderick suddenly appears. He recognizes Watkins as the teacher who taught the Palmer Method, a popular instructional system for cursive writing. Watkins physically beat Roderick, punished him for “talking Indian,” dragged him into the cellar stairs, and threatened Thomas with the same punishment. Roderick provides moral courage for Thomas as he speaks in court and refutes Watkin’s false statements that Indians were poor because they were too lazy to farm. Along with their lawyer, the delegation makes a convincing and eloquent case. They decide to buy time and argue that the tribe is in fact far too impoverished to be able to sustain itself without support from the government and, in fact, required more money. At the end of testimony, Thomas thanks Senator Watkins, hoping to curry good favor.
They leave, happy to get away from the Capitol and its associated anxiety, and turn their thoughts to home. On the way, Thomas suffers a stroke and is taken to the hospital.
Vera shows up at her old home on the reservation and sees Wood Mountain, who is visiting her baby. She is surprised to see him and asks what he is doing here. When he fails to recognize her, she reveals that she is Vera, Patrice’s missing sister. She sees the baby, and he tells Vera that the baby is hers. She collapses at the news, and he gets her back up and puts the baby in her arms. Zhaanat returns, and the mother and long-lost daughter embrace.
During a joyless session of light petting and mutual exasperation, Valentine finally breaks up with Barnes. Afterward, he goes on a drive and listens to an opera recording, a gift from his uncle, while weeping.
Millie insists that Thomas be taken to the hospital. As a relative, his niece, Patrice is the only one allowed into his room. She prays over him, speaking in her mother’s language and using the words used in religious ceremonies.
Later, Patrice and Millie retire to Millie’s rented room. They scavenge enough food to make a meal. Patrice compliments Millie on her minimalist place. She tells Patrice that she is the first person who has ever visited her. Patrice asks if she has a boyfriend, and Millie replies negatively, saying that she enjoys her solitude. She tells Patrice that she is beautiful and is on the verge of confessing her love, but Patrice speaks first, telling her that she wanted to adopt Millie as her sister. Being adopted by a Chippewa, Millie understands, is a special mark of friendship and honor. She accepts her offer, both happy and disappointed.
Thomas is drifting in and out of consciousness at the hospital. He has dreams and flashbacks while in this liminal state—of his niece, Patrice, and the time she swam out to his boat in the middle of a lake. Another time, he is in the same boat in the same lake, but is sinking to the bottom of a lake, which turns into a well. He has a flashback to digging a well in September with Biboon, a multi-day endeavor that coats his insides and outsides in a sulfurous clay. He ends his dream thinking about Rose, wishing that she were here with him.
Patrice and Millie are lying in bed talking. Patrice asks her what it takes to become a lawyer, and Millie tells her. After a while, Millie falls asleep, and Patrice contemplates the ceiling, thinking of Wood Mountain and whether she is in love with him, and then she thinks of Vera, who she is certain is still alive.
Vernon and Elnath are discussing what to do. Elnath has been betraying his confidence and their mission by seeing a girl. They discuss quitting their mission and calling for someone to get them. Elnath thinks that they should tough it out, but Vernon says it is too cold to continue and that would die if they did. They hitch a ride into town with Milda. Without warning, Elanth changes direction, saying that he is going to the next town. Vernon follows, knowing that they will freeze to death on the way. Before they freeze, Louis Pipestone picks them up and tells them that he will drop them off in Grand Forks, where there is a church member who could take them in.
Louis drives to the Twin Cities to pick up Thomas, Millie, and Patrice. He comes and gets Thomas from his hospital bed, who explains how his stroke happened. He says that he saw a flock of snowy owls, which had come to keep him safe. Louis says that LaBette had taken over Thomas’ night shift at the jewel bearing plant but quit because an owl kept trying to get in. Thomas says that must be his owl, or perhaps Roderick, who has been haunting the plant.
Wood Mountain visits Zhaanat’s place to see the baby, who lights up when he sees him, which Vera observes mutely. He calls the baby Archille, and Vera corrects him, saying that his name is Thomas. Vera sees that the baby loves Wood Mountain more than he loves her. Wood Mountain pays attention to Vera, her laugh and the newly whitening scar along her eyebrow. He notes out loud that she named him Thomas after her uncle. She nods and says that he named him Archille, for his father.
Wood Mountain returns to the house day after day and starts paying more attention to Vera—a ragged earlobe, a crooked finger, a sideways eye, a missing tooth. They begin calling the baby Thomas Archille, or Archille Thomas, the names blurring into each other. Patrice, seeing Vera and Wood Mountain together, recognizes what is happening between them, and her feelings become heavy and muddy. He tells Patrice that he is in love with both of them, which she denies, knowing that he belongs with Vera. She is not angry and is determined to move past her feelings in order to embrace anything that might rebuild Vera’s demolished heart.
Millie works late into the night, typing and preparing a summary of the chairman’s report that will be distributed to the tribe. She is a bit tipsy and disturbed by voices. Juggie appears, and she asks her if she hears them too. They go outside and witness northern lights dancing across the sky. Juggie says that the lights are dancing spirits looking after them, echoing what Zhaanat said earlier about the lights being joyous and benevolent spirits of the dead. While watching, Millie experiences a spiritual moment in which she understands that the spiritual and the rational are intertwined and find traces within each other.
Patrice returns to her job at the factory and bonds further with Betty. Her estrangement with Valentine continues. She is working extra hard because she is planning to ask for a raise to take home more money now that Vera and her baby are back, meaning four mouths to feed instead of two. Wood Mountain has taken a job as a school bus driver to help financially.
Millie has decided to study anthropology instead of economics and study with Zhaanat. She applies for money to pay her as an informant. Between the money from Millie and what Patrice saves, she suggests that Patrice could go back to school. Together, Patrice and Zhaanat drink the cold sap from a birch tree, a spring tonic, and clink their jars together, saying “À ta santé,” literally meaning “to your health” in French.
Thomas is back as night watchman of the jewel bearing factory. He is signing birthday cards, having missed a number of them, which he keeps track of in his notebook. His memory has started failing him, and he is often at a loss for words. He starts doodling as a way to win the game that he has started playing with his memory. The battle with termination and with Watkins, he fears, has cost him dearly, implying that his mental deterioration has been caused by the stress of the fight. While dozing, Thomas dreams of muskrats skittering everywhere. He asks them what his name is, and they answer, “Washashk gidizhinikaaz,” which makes him reflect on the possibility that there may come a time when he doesn't know himself. He has a flashback to him and his father sitting outside his father's cabin amidst bright fall leaves, dissonant with the springtime. He looks out and sees prairies full of bones as far as his eye can see. He shakes himself out of the reverie, drinks the hot coffee and jelly bun that Rose prepared for him, and goes back to writing birthday cards for his family until the end of his night watch.
There is a postscript at the end of the novel reporting the outcome of this period in the history of the Turtle Mountain band. They were not terminated, and Thomas recovered from his initial stroke and worked to improve the reservation school system, writing a Turtle Mountain Constitution, and writing and publishing the first history of the Turtle Mountains. He served as tribal chairman until 1959 and was promoted to supervisor of maintenance at the jewel bearing plant until his mandatory retirement in 1970. In 1955, the women workers of the jewel bearing plant attempted to unionize, raising a great ruckus that reached all the way to New York. While unionization ultimately failed, pay increases were implemented, a cafeteria was completed, and the workers regained their coffee break.
Analysis
At the Congressional hearings, Watkins tries to press Thomas on why the reservation is so poor and traffics in racist stereotypes of the lazy Indian who chooses not to farm his own land. Thomas diligently refutes these assertions, and he is backed up by Millie’s testimony on her economic study of the reservation. As the reader has accrued intimate knowledge of Thomas and his community in Turtle Rock throughout the novel, Watkins' rhetoric and portrayal of the “lazy Indian” rings outrageously and instinctively false, as we have witnessed how hard Thomas, Patrice, and others work so that their families might survive, despite the policies that keep them impoverished. Roderick’s presence and his flashbacks to the brutal and punitive measures that he faced in the boarding school with Thomas solidifies the sense that the schoolteacher who bullied Roderick is the same as the senator advocating for what amounts to genocidal policies on the congressional floor.
Millie and Patrice stay behind in the Twin Cities to take care of Thomas, who has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke. They have long had a resonant relationship. Patrice recognizes a version of herself that she would like to become—educated, independent, career-oriented. The sense of kinship is mutual and, as later revealed, romantic, at least on Millie’s end. This is the first instance of homosexuality and reveals that Millie’s bachelor status may be for reasons other than her career. For a novel set in the 1950s, same-sex attraction between women is a notable feature to be included.
Back on the reservation, Vera’s return and her growing intimacy with Wood Mountain is founded upon and strengthened through their bond with the baby. While Wood first calls him Archille and Vera corrects him, saying that his name is Thomas, they grow familiar with each other and their rhythms of caretaking. They begin putting the names together and calling him Thomas Archille. Wood Mountain’s strong caretaking instincts are precisely what Vera needs to rely on right now. The baby brings them together, and Patrice, recognizing this, steps aside, both for her sister and for herself, as she learns from Millie the necessary steps to becoming a lawyer.
Roderick had followed the delegation to D.C. but, unlike the rest, stays behind in the “city full of ghosts.” A perpetual outsider who is connected to but alienated from the Chippewa community, Roderick finally finds a community of other outsiders in D.C. The location of the nation’s capitol being a major gathering site for ghosts of American Indians is an obvious enough symbol that the story of American civilization is necessarily also a story of Indian death and genocide.
Back on the reservation, the display of northern lights across the sky is, according to Juggie, the dancing spirits looking after them. This moment is a repetition of Thomas’ encounter with the “shining people” and the drumming sounds. Millie, an outsider, is able to experience an integration of the different sides of her—the rational and the mystical, the white and the Indian—into one coherent self. The northern lights are also a spiritual confirmation of her growing connection to the Chippewa community in Turtle Mountain; these spirits are her ancestors, too.
Thomas is back on his night watch, writing long neglected letters to his family. His dream of being surrounded by muskrats reveals the importance of names and remembering your history in order to know oneself. The story of the muskrat, which is the story of Thomas’ surname, connects him to a larger myth and cosmic history. This book, too, retrieves the past in order to better understand and connect past and present Indian identities into one larger narrative.
