Three Day Road: Masinahikewin: Writing Summary & Analysis

Xavier tells Niska that his medicine is almost gone, and when it is, he will turn into “the worst child [Niska] has ever seen.” His heart will probably stop, if the pain doesn’t kill him first. Niska sits next to Xavier and takes his head in her lap. She looks at his “empty pant leg” and cries. “How will he survive in the bush?” she asks herself. She bends down and feeds him a bit of broth with her mouth. He doesn’t throw up.

“Elijah,” Xavier suddenly says. “Do you know how many he killed? I’ve killed many too. But Elijah, he is truly talented.” Niska looks at Xavier. “What has happened to Elijah?” she asks. Xavier tries to stand and falls. “Nephew,” Niska says. “Let me tell you a story. It will help to pass this night.”

By the end of Elijah’s first summer with Xavier and Niska in the bush, he had to return to the residential school. In Elijah’s absence, Niska taught Xavier to build a sweat lodge, and she taught him to “divine” with a shoulder bone over the fire. By the next summer, Elijah returned. He no longer had to go back to the residential school, he said. The years passed, and Niska was “shown tormented visions” of dead men. She soon understood. “A war has started in that place called Europe,” Elijah said. “The Canadians have entered it.”

Elijah and Xavier wished to enlist in the war and asked for Niska’s blessing. “You must do what you must do,” she said. On the day Elijah and Xavier left, she gave them medicine bundles with “protective herbs” and the tooth of a lynx. She prayed to the lynx to watch over the boys, but it did not answer. Word came of the war. The “wemistikoshiw had gone mad” it seemed and had new inventions used to kill that “were beyond belief.” A local awawatuk told Niska that much news of the war came to the trading post in Moose Factory, and she knew that she must go.

When Niska arrived in town, the people again stopped to stare. She went directly to the trading post where the proprietor, Old Man Ferguson, yelled at her in incomprehensible words. Joseph Netmaker, an Indian man Niska remembered from long ago sat in the trading post. “They think you are a witch and a heathen and say you must leave here now or you will meet a violent end,” he translated. Niska wanted only to know about Xavier in the war, she told him. Joseph spoke in English to Ferguson, who promptly answered. “He says that you are a dirty bush Indian and a sorceress to boot and he will not have you in his store even if you have a hundred relatives in their army.”

Ferguson finally agreed to find out about Xavier if Niska agreed to begin trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company. “You must sit away from them and you must not touch anything in the store. They say you must leave by week’s end and return at winter’s end with as many furs as you can.” Joseph said. He translated the names of places she did not know, like Saint-Eloi and the Somme, but nothing of Xavier. The trading post received word of all the local boys who had been killed, but Xavier’s name was not on the list.

During the winter, Joseph arrived at Niska’s camp. There had been word of Elijah Whiskeyjack’s heroism, and Joseph has learned the place where Xavier and Elijah are, if they are still together that is. “I wish to do what the wemistikoshiw do,” Niska said. “I wish to write him a letter.” “I can write it for you!” Joseph said excitedly. He had been “forced” to read and write English on the reserve school as a child.

Joseph began to write as Niska spoke. “You must do what is necessary to survive,” she said. Niska told Xavier that Gitchi Manitou will understand if he must kill, and “Elijah must know this too.” She told him to pray and make offerings to Gitchi Manitou and do everything he had to return home to her. Xavier is “the last in [their] family line,” she said, he must return home.