Tracks: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Nanapush finds Lulu passed out outside Margaret’s cabin. Lulu is so frozen that she can say only that something is wrong with Fleur. Margaret wraps her in warmed blankets. The snow outside has obscured any trail or typical landmarks. Lulu had become lost, and suffered more because she’d worn her thin, fancy shoes. Margaret curses Eli for buying them and tries to burn them. Margaret instructs Nanapush on how to warm Lulu, and then runs to the Matchimanito cabin. Lulu struggles against Nanapush’s embrace as she thaws. Nanapush talks all night to try to keep Lulu calm.

Father Damien arrives with the off-reservation doctor, and with butter to spread on Lulu’s frostbitten skin. The doctor examines Lulu and gives her Laudanum, and says he must take Lulu to his office because one of her feet is entirely frozen. Nanapush refuses her being taken away, because he knows the doctor won’t be able to save Lulu, even though he isn’t certain he can save her either. The doctor storms off, and Lulu wakes to give Nanapush a secret look.

Nanapush nurses Lulu for days in Margaret’s cabin, though Fleur, trapped in her own cabin by the weather and her weakness, begs for her, convinced Lulu is dead. On the first warm day, Nanapush takes Lulu to Fleur on a toboggan, the same way he saved the sick Fleur years ago.

When Nanapush arrives at the cabin, Fleur looks ragged and sick, and lurches toward Lulu on the sled. The black umbrella has been propped in the tree where the baby’s body was placed, to protect it from the elements. Upon seeing Lulu and knowing the baby’s body is protected in the tree, Fleur awakens to her senses, and tends to Lulu’s needs. Later Fleur dreams of a place where a deer might exist that they could hunt for meat, but when Eli tries to find the animal, he comes home empty-handed.

The next day, Fleur cuts a hole in the ice of the lake to fish. Eli wrestles her home and tends the line himself, but catches only a tiny perch. That night, Fleur sings a foreign song until Nanapush urges her to sleep. None of her sung prayers cause the appearance of the food they need though. Instead, government wagons appear with commodities, and someone must go to town to register for the rations with the Agent. All are reluctant to be the one to go.

Margaret volunteers to go and leaves the cabin for town. She returns with Father Damien, who has a pack of provisions for the family. Nanapush greets the priest, and Father Damien shows them a map of the land on the reservation and the large fees due on their land before summer. Father Damien refuses food, but he sits with the family through their silence, contemplating the map together. Margaret worries over the way the Morrissey land threatens her own, but Nanapush can see that the real threat is that of the lumberjacks and bankers. Fleur believes no one would try to collect Pillager land, but Margaret knows that times have changed.

Nanapush tells Father Damien that the government can’t tax their parcels of land because they are in trust, but the priest and Nector know different, saying that if they don’t pay, the land will be auctioned off. Father Damien says that some people want to build a fishing lodge on the lake, but that they might trade for another allotment. Nanapush says they will have to raise the money to save their land. Father Damien suggests gathering and selling cranberry bark to a tonic dealer, and they take advantage of this opportunity each time the dealer comes to town. The odor of the bark sticks to all of them, signifying “salvation and betrayal.” The rustling bark keeps them awake at night, mimicking the sound of dollar bills.

Eli goes to town to get the last of the supplies due to them, but Nanapush knows they are giving up some of their independence in accepting them. He notes, too, that Fleur has changed. She is less straightforward, and is eager to cover the fear caused by having lost one child and almost losing another. Nanapush tells her to go to the lake to pray to her helpers, but she goes to sleep in the bed instead.

Nanapush thinks of the wisdom he would pass onto Fleur if she would listen. After much thought, he tells Fleur that he has never believed himself fully responsible for his power or for his failures, but says that Fleur believes she is too powerful to be responsible for others’ failures. Nanapush tells her that keeping the land is not entirely her responsibility, and neither was keeping the baby alive. Fleur turns away from this information.

News comes from town. Pauline has taken her vows. Sophie and Clarence Morrissey have married their cousins, the Lazarres. Sophie’s Lazarre has six children from a previous marriage, in which he was believed to have murdered his wife. The new families take over Bernadette’s house, and Bernadette brings baby Marie and Philomena to live in town, where she takes a job working for the Agent, though it’s clear she has consumption.

Nanapush tells Lulu that Napoleon was driven to drink again by the new relatives in the house. He tells Lulu that people get the grandchildren they deserve, and draws attention to who Lulu’s grandchildren might be if she marries a Morrissey, as she would like to do.

One day, Nanapush and Nector go to the Morrissey farm as Napoleon is butchering his last cow. Clarence tells them to stand back and they’ll throw them the guts. Nanapush reminds them how they spared Clarence’s life, and says the Morrisseys owe them half the cow at least. Clarence butchers them a small portion and Nanapush registers how the Morrissey place has fallen into disrepair. More of the same follows in the years after, according to Nanapush, the Morrisseys’ record books and livestock growing unkempt as they focus on breeding with one another.

Fish swarm to the surface of the lake in late winter, and the residents of the Pillager cabin catch the fish through holes in the ice. They can eat more now that they are catching their own, and Nanapush is again interested in Margaret romantically. They make love, and Nanapush says they should build a house on the Pillager land for themselves. Margaret assures Nanapush that they’ll get the money together to save both the Kashpaw and Pillager family allotments. It’s revealed that Nanapush’s land has already been lost— he mentions that his land had only been empty for a month when it was overtaken by a pack of the growing Lazarre clan.

Father Damien visits to tell how he stumbled upon a naked, dead baby in the snow, and how all the others in the house the child belonged to were blind drunk. He tells Nanapush he should step forward and involve himself in the government to prevent further tragedies like this, but Nanapush can tell the goal of the government is simply to further control the Indians. Father Damien begins to talk as Nanapush has taught him, not allowing Nanapush to get a word in, and Nanapush gives in. Father Damien writes a letter to the government recommending Nanapush for a government position, but the letter goes unanswered by the new secretary to the Agent: Bernadette.

Nanapush says that after Fleur lost her other baby, she became more protective of Lulu. Margaret asks Fleur to let Lulu have some freedom now. Nanapush identifies with Fleur’s reaction to losing a child, but he knows Margaret does not understand because she has not experienced this tragedy. Still, Nanapush thinks he should go to Moses to get a medicine to allow Fleur to detach from Lulu. Nanapush brings gifts to Moses and they devise a plan.

Two days later, Moses approaches the Pillager cabin carrying two drums. Nanapush mixes yarrow with another ingredient he won’t name, a concoction he dreamed of. The potion allows him to reach into boiling pots to pull out meat or to reach into human bodies to pull out the names haunting a person, as he did when he was mourning his family so that he might survive his grief. As they prepare the fire and stew, Pauline approaches the tent they’ve built, and Fleur and Margaret arrive, too.

Nanapush pulls some meat from the boiling pot with his hands and gives it to Fleur to eat. Pauline approaches the pot, and Margaret tries to quietly nudge her out of the tent so that Fleur might continue her cure, but Pauline says she has been sent to prove Christ’s ways. Pauline plunges her hands, unprotected, into the boiling pot and holds them there, until she finally screams and withdraws, running back to town.

Afterward Fleur seems improved, but Nanapush isn’t sure if it’s his cure that helped her or the money that they finally gather together just after the deadline. All of the family contributes every cent they have, and then Father Damien adds the last necessary quarter. They have just enough for both the Pillager and Kashpaw land. Nector volunteers to take the money to town, and then they are all so relieved that none of them think it odd that Nector and Margaret spend a significant amount of time away.