The Wemistikoshiw Trapper Character Analysis in Three Day Road

A French trapper. Niska comes across the wemistikoshiw trapper in the woods, and he follows her back to her lodge. They make love and have a longstanding relationship. One night, a local awawatuk (Indigenous hunter) arrives to get Niska’s help when a clan member “goes windigo” (is possessed by an evil Anishnabe spirit), and Niska must ask the trapper to leave. The trapper is apparently offended and never comes back, and Niska is forced to go to Moose Factory to find him. She does, and she also finds rumors of “half-French, half-Indian children running around [Moose Factory] that he refuses to claim.” In town, the wemistikowshiw trapper leads Niska to a church. He seduces her in the church and then turns on Niska, calling her a “heathen Indian.” “I took your ahcahk. Do you understand? I fucked your ahcahk, your spirit. Do you understand that?” the trapper says to Niska. The trapper strips Niska of her dignity and identity, and she immediately goes back to the bush and prays to the lynx to “extinguish” the “source of [her] hurt.” The trapper soon goes mad and commits suicide by jumping out a high window.

The Wemistikoshiw Trapper Character Timeline in Three Day Road

The timeline below shows where the character The Wemistikoshiw Trapper appears in Three Day Road. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Niska first came across the wemistikoshiw trapper in the days following her first “fit” in the matatosowin. She “played tricks on him,”... (full context)

“Listen carefully, Nephew,” Niska says to Xavier. The wemistikoshiw trapper , a Frenchman, came to visit often in the bush. Even after Niska moved to... (full context)

Winter came, and the wemistikoshiw trapper came to visit again. While he was there, an awawatuk from a nearby clan knocked... (full context)

The following spring, the wemistikoshiw trapper did not come to visit Niska. By late summer, Niska packed a canoe and headed... (full context)

The old Indian woman offered Niska some food. “There is talk that a certain wemistikoshiw trapper was fucking you,” the old woman said. “Be careful of that one,” she continued. “There... (full context)

...her dressed in the old woman’s clothes. She walked into a pub and saw the wemistikoshiw trapper at a table. “Niska,” he said. “I missed you.” He offered Niska a drink and... (full context)

Niska and the wemistikoshiw trapper made love inside the church, and afterward, the trapper began to laugh. “I fucked the... (full context)

...visit Niska at her lodge. She told Niska that she had heard talk of a wemistikoshiw trapper in Moose Factory who had “gone mad” and was “running up and down the street... (full context)