The Night Watchman LitChart

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The Night Watchman

RELATED LITERARY WORKS
INTR
INTRODUCTION
ODUCTION
Erdrich’s work is often considered part of the Native American
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF LOUISE ERDRICH Renaissance, a literary period beginning in the late 1960s that
marked an increase in the publication of works by Native
Louise Erdrich is one of the most renowned writers of her
American authors in the United States. Critics frequently argue
generation. Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1952.
that the period began with N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of
Her father and her mother, an Ojibwe woman, both taught at a
Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969. Other
boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in
notable writers of the Native American Renaissance include
Wahpeton, North Dakota. From North Dakota, Erdrich went on
Leslie Marmon Silko, whose book CerCeremon
emonyy was published in
to attend Dartmouth College before receiving a Master of Arts
degree from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. She has 1977; James Welch, whose novel Winter in the Blood was
written more than 28 books in total, including works of fiction, published in 1974; and Joy Harjo, the 23rd United States Poet
nonfiction, poetry, and children’s books. Erdrich’s work is often Laureate, whose poetry collection She Had Some Horses was
said to belong to the Native American Renaissance, which published in 1983. Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave, touches on her
includes work by Native American writers beginning in the late time in boarding school, a subject that Erdrich explores in The
1960s. Much of her work explores Native American heritage Night Watchman. The Night Watchman details the attempts of
and identity, and her work often contains narratives that people from the Turtle Mountain Reservation to fight against
interweave and overlap across multiple novels that take place the Termination Bill introduced by Senator Arthur Watkins in
in the same fictional setting, similar to William Faulkner’s 1953. In 2009, President Obama signed S.J. Res. 14, a general
novels set in Yoknapatawpha county. Erdrich has received apology to Native people for the “long history of official
many awards and accolades over the course of her prolific depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal
career; her novel The Round House won the National Book Government regarding Indian tribes.” Layli Long Soldier’s book
Award in 2012, and The Night Watchman won the Pulitzer Prize Whereas, published in 2016, was written in response to S.J. Res.
for Fiction in 2021. Erdrich currently lives in Minneapolis, 14.
Minnesota.
KEY FACTS
HISTORICAL CONTEXT • Full Title: The Night Watchman
As Erdrich writes in an introductory note to the novel, The • Where Written: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Night Watchman is based on her own grandfather’s attempts to • When Published: 2020
fight the Termination Bill introduced by Senator Arthur V.
• Literary Period: Native American Renaissance
Watkins in 1953. Erdrich uses Watkins’s real name for the
character based on him in the novel. Watkins introduced the • Genre: Novel
termination bill in an attempt to, (according to Watkins), help • Setting: The early 1950s, on the Turtle Mountain Indian
Indians assimilate into white society, as prophesied in Mormon Reservation in North Dakota; Minneapolis, Minnesota;
scripture. Watkins’s bill sought to abrogate treaties signed Washington, D.C.
between Native tribes and the United States government as • Climax: Thomas, Patrice, and others travel to Washington,
well as dissolve the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That bill, House D.C. to testify against the Termination Bill authored by
Concurrent Resolution 108, passed on August 1, 1953. That Senator Arthur V. Watkins.
passage didn’t immediately eliminate any Native tribes, but it • Antagonist: Arthur V. Watkins
established termination as the United States government’s • Point of View: Third Person
guiding policy and laid the groundwork for the U.S. government
to target individual tribes for termination. The Turtle Mountain EXTRA CREDIT
Band of Chippewa—the tribe for which Erdrich’s grandfather
was the chairman—was one of the first tribes the government. Congressional Testimony Much of the dialogue from the
targeted. The Night Watchman presents a fictional account of congressional hearing in the novel is based on the actual record
the real-life events that led her grandfather to lead a group of of that hearing, and everything that Senator Watkins says in the
delegates to Washington, D.C. to successfully testify to hearing scene is a direct quote from the congressional record.
Congress against the termination of the Turtle Mountain Band
of Chippewa. Pulitzer Prize The Night Watchman won the Pulitzer Prize in
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Fiction in 2021. Erdrich’s novel The Plague of Doves was Vera is, but she has Vera’s baby, and Patrice needs to take him.
previously nominated for the prize in 2012. Patrice says she’ll return later, and Jack takes Patrice back to
Log Jam 26. He tells her that she can stay in the dressing room
if she agrees to be the “waterjack” and perform in the club for
PL
PLO
OT SUMMARY $50 a night. With no better options available, and enticed by
the money, Patrice agrees.
In September of 1953, Thomas Wazhashk works as a night
watchman at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant. He After doing a few performances, though, Patrice learns that the
writes letters while he works, both personal letters to his waterjack costume is poisonous—apparently, the first
children, and letters to government officials and reporters in waterjack performer died, and the second performer is on her
his role as the chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of last legs. Wood Mountain’s fight in Fargo is canceled, and he
Chippewa. Often, late at night, the ghost of a former boarding also decides to go to Minneapolis to make sure Patrice is okay.
school classmate, Roderick, visits Thomas. Thomas soon learns He goes to Bernadette Blue’s house and finds out that Patrice
about House Concurrent Resolution 108, referred to as the has been with Jack Malloy. From there, he goes to Log Jam 26
Termination Bill. The Termination Bill, introduced by Senator and sees Patrice performing as the waterjack. He leaves a note
Arthur V. Watkins, aims to undo treaties signed between Native for her, saying he’ll be in the hotel next door and that she should
American Tribes and the United States government. If leave that night. Patrice leaves the dressing room in the middle
termination went into effect, the Turtle Mountain Band of of the night and sees Jack in the hallway, apparently in the
Chippewa would be forced to relocate, and all government middle of an overdose. She goes to Wood Mountain’s hotel, and
services, including the entire Bureau of Indian Affairs, would the next morning, the two of them go to Bernadette Blue’s
stop. Thomas and other members of the tribe’s advisory house to retrieve Vera’s baby and then return home.
committee make a plan to counter the bill, including collecting Sometime later, the Turtle Mountain advisory committee holds
signatures on the reservation and organizing a coalition to a meeting in Fargo to try and raise awareness about the
testify against the bill before congress in Washington, D.C. Termination Bill. At the end of the meeting, they hold a vote, in
Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau also works at the Jewel Bearing Plant, which zero people vote to support the bill and 47 people vote
making the bearings themselves, which will be used in watches against it. Thomas approaches Lloyd Barnes about holding a
and Department of Defense weapons. Her sister, Vera, has fight between Wood Mountain and Joe “Wobble”
recently gone missing after moving to Minneapolis. Her father Wobleszynski as a fundraiser to help support a delegation to
is a person with alcoholism and, when he is home, his drunken travel to Washington, D.C. and testify against the bill in
outbursts torment and terrorize Patrice along with her mother, congress. All parties involved eventually agree, and the fight
Zhaanat, and her brother, Pokey. Pokey has started boxing that ensues is well-attended, but for Wood Mountain and Joe
lessons with Lloyd Barnes, who has unrequited feelings for Wobble, it’s punishing and brutal. It’s the last boxing match that
Patrice. Lloyd often shows up at the Paranteau house, hoping either of them ever fights.
he’ll find an opportunity to talk to Patrice. When they’re back home, Wood Mountain acts fatherly toward
When the Paranteau family holds a ceremony to try and find Vera’s baby. Patrice calls the baby Gwiiwizens, or Little Boy, to
out where Vera is, Zhaanat’s cousin Gerald, a jiisikid, tells them not get too attached, but Wood Mountain gives him the
that Vera is still alive. Patrice decides to travel to Minneapolis temporary name of Archille, his father’s name. Patrice and
to look for her. On the train there, she runs into Wood Wood Mountain begin a romantic relationship, and while
Mountain, another boxer who trains with Lloyd Barnes. Wood Patrice enjoys it, she still feels like something isn’t quite right.
Mountain is on his way to a fight in Fargo, and he tells Patrice She and her mother begin to have the same dreams, in which
that if she wants to find Vera, then when she gets to they see Vera, alive but struggling. One day, while Patrice and
Minneapolis, she should look for “the scum.” Pokey are hunting in the woods, they look through the window
of an old cabin on their property and see someone slumped in
When Patrice arrives in Minneapolis, an unmarked taxi stops the bed. It turns out to be their father, who has died there.
for her. The driver ushers her inside, and when she gives him an
address, he takes her to another place, which looks like a bar, At this time, Vera has been kidnapped and trafficked to a ship
called Log Jam 26. The driver and another man drag her inside. where sailors use her body for sex. She has become addicted to
As they accost her, a third man, Jack Malloy, intervenes and drugs, and as she goes through brutal withdrawal, men from
tells Patrice that he’ll help her. He then takes Patrice to the the ship take her and dump her body in an alley. A retired Army
addresses she has for Vera. At the first, a dog emits a deathly medic named Harry Roy finds her and takes her back home to
whimper from behind the door. At the second, Jack seems nurse her back to health. He then brings her back to the
visibly shaken. At the third place, Patrice finds Bernadette Blue, Paranteau house, where she is reunited with her family and her
Wood Mountain’s half-sister, who says she doesn’t know where son. She and Wood Mountain begin a romantic relationship,
and Patrice senses that this is right, better than if she and

Wood Mountain ended up together. the novel’s present, Patrice was sexually assaulted by Bucky
After the success of the fundraiser, Thomas organizes the and his friends, including her coworker Doris’s brother. The
delegation to travel to Washington, D.C. to testify against the boxing coach and math teacher, Lloyd Barnes, is infatuated with
bill. In the testimony, they argue against immediate termination, Patrice, though she rebuffs him. After her sister, Vera, goes
while Arthur Watkins argues for it. Thomas does everything in missing, Patrice feels compelled to go search for her, showing
his power to try and turn Watkins against the plan, including her deep loyalty to her family above all else. She travels to
flattering him, even though Thomas finds Watkins Minneapolis to try and track her down and meets Jack Malloy,
contemptible. On the way home, Thomas suffers a stroke. He who runs a nightclub where she briefly becomes a performer,
ultimately recovers, though, and returns to work at the Jewel wearing the waterjack suit nightly. When the circumstances at
Bearing Plant. In a closing note, Erdrich writes that the Turtle the nightclub—and Jack’s attempts to manipulate her—become
Mountain Band of Chippewa succeeded in standing up against untenable, she escapes in the middle of the night. She then
termination. brings Vera’s baby back home from Minneapolis. While Vera is
missing, Patrice and Wood Mountain—along with Patrice’s
mother, Zhaanat—become surrogate parents to Vera’s baby. At
CHARA
CHARACTERS
CTERS the same time, Patrice and Wood Mountain begin a romantic
relationship, though it ultimately fizzles out. Through that
MAJOR CHARACTERS relationship, the novel explores Patrice’s ambivalence toward
Thomas W Wazhashk
azhashk – Along with his niece Patrice, Thomas is love, romance, and the social expectations society placed on
one of the protagonists of the novel. He is the chairman of the women in the 1950s. Patrice’s biggest dream, which she reveals
Turtle Mountain Advisory Committee and the titular night to Millie Cloud, is to one day go to college.
watchman. He is based on Louise Erdrich’s own grandfather, Arthur VV.. W
Watkins
atkins – Senator Arthur V. Watkins is the novel’s
and the impetus for the novel came when she reread letters he antagonist. A devout Mormon as well as a politician, he
wrote during the time period that the novel takes place. introduces the Termination Bill to Congress, threatening the
Thomas is Rose’s husband, and Wade, Sharlo, and Fee’s father. continued survival of the people of the Turtle Mountain Band
After Thomas reads the Termination Bill—introduced to of Chippewa. The novel as a whole, especially the storyline that
congress by Senator Arthur V. Watkins—he becomes more follows Thomas, builds to the climactic scene in which Thomas
politically active and begins to organize opposition to the bill. and members of a delegation from the Turtle Mountain
He helps get together a petition and assembles a delegation of Reservation travel to Washington, D.C. to testify before
people from the Turtle Mountain Reservation to travel to Congress against Arthur Watkins’s bill. Based on a real-life
Washington, D.C., to testify against the bill. This effort senator of the same name, Watkins is described by Martin
ultimately proves successful when the attempt to terminate the Cross the most powerful person in Congress. His motivations
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa fails. During his shifts as are undeniably racist, yet he cloaks his racism in the language of
the night watchman at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing empowerment and helping others, saying that he aims to “help”
Plant, Thomas often writes letters, either to public figures or Native people “stand on their own two feet” by abrogating
allies in the fight against termination, or to his children; he treaties signed between the U.S. government and Native tribes
saves writing letters to his children for last because he enjoys that were intended to last in perpetuity. One of Watkins’s most
those the most. Thomas is depicted as a kind man with a sense damning characteristics, according to Thomas, is that he
of humor, and one of his defining characteristics is the love he doesn’t have a sense of humor. In the chapter where the
has for his family. Near the end of the novel, Thomas suffers a delegation testifies before congress about the harm that would
stroke. Though he recovers, for a while he is afraid that his fight be caused by termination, everything Watkins says is taken
against Arthur Watkins was “a battle that [will] cost him from the actual congressional record. In a concluding note
everything.” following the novel, Erdrich writes that the Turtle Mountain
Patrice “Pixie
“Pixie”” P
Par
aranteau
anteau – Patrice is one of the novel’s Band of Chippewa successfully opposed Watkins’s bill and was
protagonists. Her mother, Zhaanat, is Thomas’s cousin, and not terminated.
Patrice thinks of herself as Thomas’s niece. In part because of Ver
eraa P
Par
aranteau
anteau – Vera is Patrice’s sister who went missing
the precarity of her home life—economically, emotionally, and sometime before the novel’s present. She initially traveled to
physically because of her alcoholic, abusive father, Pogo Minneapolis with a man who said that he wanted to marry her,
Paranteau —Patrice has become self-reliant and highly values but she hasn’t been seen since then. In a later chapter, one of
her independence. Her desire to maintain that independence Patrice’s friends, Betty Pye, tells Patrice that that’s a tactic that
often puts her at odds with prevailing gender norms of the people often use to traffic and exploit women in the area: they’ll
time. For instance, she is her family’s primary breadwinner with come to the reservation, tell women they want to marry them,
her work at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant. Before then “sell her to someone who puts them out for sex.” This

seems to be what happens to Vera. Patrice and her mother, knowledge and wisdom, and her real work is to pass on that
Zhaanat, begin to have disturbing dreams about Vera, where knowledge to others who come to learn what she can teach.
she seems to be calling out to them, trying to get them to help When Patrice returns from Minneapolis with Vera’s baby,
her. Vera ends up on a ship, going through withdrawal from Zhaanat helps to raise the child, and eventually produces milk
drugs while her body is used sexually by men on the ship. When to give to him. Before Vera returns, Zhaanat and Patrice begin
the withdrawal gets even worse, men on the ship dump her having identical, painful dreams about her in which Vera is in
body in an alley. A retired Army medic, Harry Roy, finds her danger. When Millie Cloud, a graduate student who was raised
there and helps nurse her back to health before bringing her off the reservation, meets Zhaanat, she becomes interested in
home. Vera comes home broken, but when she is reunited with what she can learn from her. At the end of the novel, Millie has
her family and her baby, there seems to be hope for recovery. decided to study with Zhaanat and is in the process of trying to
Wood Mountain and Vera also begin a romantic relationship, secure funding to make sure Zhaanat gets paid for that study.
which Patrice approves of, thinking that she will support Jack Mallo
Malloyy – Jack Malloy is the owner of Log Jam 26, a bar in
anything that helps Vera heal. Minneapolis where Patrice ends up performing as the
Wood Mountain – Wood Mountain is a boxer who trains with waterjack. He ostensibly tries to help Patrice when she first
Lloyd Barnes. Throughout the novel, he has feelings for Patrice, arrives in Minneapolis—he gives her food, drives her around to
which puts him in conflict with Barnes, who also has feelings for search for Vera, and offers her a place to stay. But over time, it
her. After one of Wood Mountain’s fights in Fargo is canceled, becomes clear that he’s manipulating her, first to try and get
instead of going home, he travels to Minneapolis to try and her to become his bar’s latest waterjack, and then to stay in
make sure that Patrice is doing okay while she’s searching for the role for as long as possible. Patrice is suspicious of Jack
Vera, showing that he genuinely cares for Patrice and is willing from the start, and she soon decides that she has to escape
to go out of his way to try and be there for others. In from Log Jam 26, especially after she learns that the first two
Minneapolis, he finds Patrice working at Log Jam 26, and he waterjacks are either dead or dying, presumably because the
helps engineer her escape. The two of them then take Vera’s waterjack suit is poisonous. Jack is also addicted to drugs, and
baby back home. Wood Mountain becomes a kind of surrogate when Patrice slips out of the dressing room late at night, she
parent to the baby, and he suggests naming him Archille, after sees Jack having an overdose. She alerts an attendant at the
his father—at least temporarily, until Vera returns. He and hotel next door about Jack’s overdose and then never sees or
Patrice begin a romantic relationship at that time, too. But hears from Jack again.
when Vera returns, it becomes clear, at least to Patrice, that Millie Cloud – Millie Cloud is Louis Pipestone’s daughter and a
Wood Mountain and Vera make a better match. Patrice gives graduate student who returns to the reservation at Thomas’s
Wood Mountain her blessing when he tells her that he and invitation. Her white mother raised her away from the Turtle
Vera would like to be a couple. Wood Mountain also fights Mountain Reservation, but, as a student at the University of
against Joe Wobble in a boxing match that serves as a Minnesota, she recently completed a study of the economic
fundraiser for the delegation that travels to Washington, D.C., conditions of the reservation. Because of her work, she
to testify against the Termination Bill. eventually becomes integral in the effort to strike down the
Llo
Lloyyd Barnes – Lloyd Barnes is a math teacher and boxing Termination Bill. She is a member of the delegation that travels
coach who trains Wood Mountain and Patrice’s brother, Pokey, to Washington, D.C. to testify before congress, and, in some
among others. In his mind, Barnes attaches numbers to people. respects, her economic survey is the backbone of their
He sees Patrice, with whom he’s infatuated, as a “26” because testimony. Millie finds patterns pleasing and often dresses in
he loves the curl of the two and the loop of the six. He often them. Her ambivalence toward romance is somewhat
shows up at the Paranteau home uninvited after dropping reminiscent of Patrice’s, and she says that men are not
Pokey off, hoping he might be able to speak with Patrice. On interested in her. At one point, Millie seems to harbor romantic
one of those visits, Patrice’s mother, Zhaanat—hoping to get feelings for Patrice, but near the end of the novel, she decides
him to stop trying to get Patrice’s attention—tells him that he to go out with Barnes after he asks her out using an equation,
smells bad. He becomes frustrated and angry when he learns which she finds irresistible. At the end of the novel, she is
that Wood Mountain also has feelings for Patrice, but Barnes planning to study with Zhaanat and is in the process of securing
eventually ends up dating Patrice’s friend Valentine while funding that would allow Zhaanat to be paid for her teaching.
having feelings for another friend, Doris, as well. He helps train Valentine Blue – Valentine works with Patrice at the jewel
Wood Mountain for the fight against Joe Wobble, which is a bearing plant. She is described as one of Patrice’s closest
fundraiser for the delegation that will travel to Washington, friends, but throughout the novel, tensions flare up in their
D.C., to testify against Arthur V. Watkins’s Termination Bill. relationship. When Patrice is looking for a way to go to
Zhaanat – Zhaanat is Patrice’s mother. She makes baskets and Minneapolis to search for Vera, Valentine, in an act of
beadwork, but she is a holder of traditional Chippewa generosity, gives Patrice her sick days to use. Patrice is grateful,

but when she returns, she becomes frustrated when Valentine figure intent on enforcing rules and maximizing productivity by
won’t stop talking about her own generosity and about what his standards, with little to no regard for the humanity of the
she did for Patrice. Valentine then grows closer to a new friend, people who work at the plant.
Doris Lauder. Near the end of the novel, Valentine is given a Pogo P Par
aranteau
anteau – Pogo Paranteau is Patrice’s father. He is
promotion that Patrice thinks she deserves. Valentine also often referred to simply as Paranteau. He is a person with
dates Barnes, though that relationship is short-lived. alcoholism, and his outbursts at home cause chaos and fear. He
Doris Lauder – Doris is a “white girl” who is new to working at is absent for most of the novel, though he sometimes returns
the jewel bearing plant. She gives Patrice and Valentine rides to home, asking his wife, Zhaanat, or Patrice for money. When he
work each day and also gives Patrice a ride to the train station dies, Patrice and Pokey find his body in a cabin on their
when she goes to Minneapolis to look for Vera, showing Doris’s property, and the community then holds a funeral for him.
capacity for kindness and generosity. At the same time, though, LaBatte – LaBatte is the night janitor at the jewel bearing plant.
Doris also asks Patrice what happened between her and Bucky He and Thomas often talk with each other, especially about the
the summer before. Through the course of the conversation, ghost of their former classmate, Roderick, who often visits
Patrice comes to understand that Doris’s brother was one of them in the plant at night. By Thomas’s estimation, LaBatte is a
the boys in the car when Bucky and his friends assaulted her. very superstitious person. LaBatte also has a history of petty
Patrice realizes then that she can’t trust Doris. theft, and he plans on stealing from the jewel bearing plant
Betty Py
Pyee – Betty Pye works with Patrice at the jewel bearing before Thomas warns him not to and gives him some money.
plant. She prompts Patrice’s trip to Minneapolis to hunt for LaBatte also briefly converts to Mormonism, though he decides
Vera when she tells Patrice that her cousin had recently seen not to go through with it soon after and refuses to be baptized
Vera in the city. When Valentine receives the promotion that or to see Elnath or Vernon, the Mormon missionaries, again.
Patrice thinks she deserves, Betty Pye moves to the Ger
Gerald
ald – Gerald is Zhaanat’s cousin. He is a jiisikid, which means
workstation beside Patrice. The two of them become closer, that he can fly to faraway places, inhabited by other spirits.
and Betty Pye talks to Patrice about sex and about how to get When Vera is missing, he comes to help the Paranteaus find her.
away from men they don’t like. After he flies for a long time, he tells the family that he has seen
Pok
oke
ey P
Par
aranteau
anteau – Pokey is Patrice’s younger brother. He Vera, lying in a ditch, with a baby beside her.
practices boxing with Lloyd Barnes, who often drives him home, Joe ““W
Wobble
obble”” W
Wobleszynski
obleszynski – Joe Wobble, as he’s better
hoping for a chance to talk to Patrice. Because both he and known, is Wood Mountain’s main boxing rival. Years ago, Joe
Wood Mountain are boxers, they are friendly with each other, Wobble’s family encroached on land that Wood Mountain’s
and Wood Mountain learns from Pokey that Patrice isn’t grandmother owned. During their first fight, Wood Mountain
interested in Lloyd Barnes. Pokey is with Patrice, setting snares, has the opportunity to land a potentially winning combination
when they find the body of their father, Pogo Paranteau, who against Joe, but the bell rings early, unfairly letting Joe escape
has died in the cabin on their property. defeat. When Barnes approaches Joe about a rematch (for the
Bucky Duvalle – Bucky Duvalle and his friends sexually fight that will be the fundraiser for the delegation to travel to
assaulted and attempted to rape Patrice in a car the summer Congress), Joe agrees, saying that he didn’t like the unfairness
before the events of the novel take place. It could have been of the first fight either. For the fundraiser, Wood Mountain wins
even worse, Patrice thinks, but she managed to escape and the fight on points, but it’s so brutal that both boxers resolve
then swim to her uncle, Thomas’s, boat in the middle of the lake. never to fight again.
After the assault, Bucky is struck by an illness that contorts his Bernadette Blue – Bernadette is Wood Mountain’s half-sister.
mouth and then travels down his side. Patrice feels that she did She lives in Minneapolis, and she reluctantly takes care of
it to him—that her anger left her body and struck the side of Vera’s baby after Vera disappears. Bernadette tells Patrice that
Bucky’s face. Bucky, however, thinks that Zhaanat, Patrice’s she doesn’t know where Vera is, but she tells Wood Mountain
mother, put a curse on him. When he asks her to lift the curse, that she is in the “hold,” which eventually leads to Patrice and
though, she tells him that what happened is a result of his own Wood Mountain realizing that Vera is on a ship.
actions and that he did it to himself.
Roderick – Roderick is a former boarding school classmate of
Walter VVold
old – Walter Vold is the overseer and supervisor at Thomas and LaBatte who appears in the form of a ghost to both
the jewel bearing plant. He is described as “lurkishly” watching men throughout the novel. He died of tuberculosis, which he
the women work, and he doesn’t allow people to speak while contracted after he was locked in a cellar multiple times as
they are working (though they do anyway). When Patrice needs punishment at the boarding school. Thomas feels guilty for not
to go to Minneapolis to look for Vera, he tells her she has just doing more to help Roderick when he was locked in the cellar,
three days of leave total; when higher-ups are set to come to but Roderick tells Thomas that he visits the jewel bearing plant
the factory to observe, he takes away the workers’ coffee to haunt LaBatte; he was locked in the cellar the first time,
breaks and never reinstates them. Overall, he is an authority

Roderick tells Thomas, because he took the blame for also helps train the horses.
something that LaBatte did. He also says that he probably only Martin Cross – Martin Cross is Thomas’s friend and is a tribal
contracted tuberculosis the second time he was locked in the chairman of Fort Berthold. A lot of the information that
cellar. LaBatte travels with Thomas to Washington, D.C. and Thomas hears about Arthur Watkins comes from Martin Cross,
prompts Thomas to try and win over Arthur Watkins with who is also engaged in opposing the Termination Bill.
flattery. When Roderick misses the train back home, he decides
Rose – Rose is Thomas’s wife, and the mother of Wade, Sharlo,
to stay among the Native ghosts in Washington, D.C.
and Fee.
Vernon – Vernon is one of the Mormon missionaries on the
Wade – Wade is Thomas and Rose’s son. He is also an aspiring
Turtle Mountain Reservation. He is infatuated with Grace, and
boxer.
his partner, Elnath, suspects that Vernon and Grace are getting
up to “the worst kind of sin.” Elnath and Vernon visit Thomas’s Sharlo – Sharlo is Thomas and Rose’s daughter. She is a high
house and give him a copy of the Book of Mormon, which he school senior and is crowned homecoming queen near the end
occasionally reads to try and better understand Arthur V. of the novel.
Watkins’s motivation. Fee – Fee is also Thomas and Rose’s daughter and is eleven
Elnath – Elnath is one of the Mormon missionaries on the years old.
Turtle Mountain Reservation. He considers turning his Nok
Nokoo – Noko is Rose’s mother. She lives with Thomas and Rose
missionary partner, Vernon, in for violating the rules of the and their family and seems to be experiencing some form of
church because he suspects that Vernon is having sex with dementia.
Grace, but Elnath decides to confront him instead. This
Harry Ro
Royy A man who found Vera sleeping by the side of the
confrontation strains Elnath and Vernon’s relationship, and
road and took care of her.
they ultimately seem to decide to leave the reservation before
their scheduled year of living there is up because they find the
conditions too difficult to endure. THEMES
MINOR CHARACTERS In LitCharts literature guides, each theme gets its own color-
coded icon. These icons make it easy to track where the themes
Moses Montrose – Moses is the tribal judge. He is the first
occur most prominently throughout the work. If you don't have
person to bring the seriousness of the Termination Bill to
a color printer, you can still use the icons to track themes in
Thomas’s attention. He is a member of the tribal advisory
black and white.
committee and also a member of the delegation that travels to
Washington, D.C. to testify against the Termination Bill.
POWER, SOLIDARITY, AND COMMUNITY
Juggie Blue – Juggie is Wood Mountain’s mother. She is also
the caretaker and cook for the teachers’ quarters at the school. ACTION
She helps in the effort to raise awareness about the Time after time, when the characters in The Night
Termination Bill and is also part of the delegation that travels to Watchman confront conflicts, they respond with
Washington, D.C. to testify against it. solidarity to overcome them. When people in power try to
Louis Pipestone – Louis is Millie Cloud’s father. He raises and enforce their will on others, the most effective way those
trains racehorses. Louis is in charge of circulating the petition people can fight back, the novel seems to suggest, is through
against the Termination Bill and getting as many people to sign collective action. For example, when Patrice forgets to cook her
as possible. bread and has nothing to eat for lunch, the community of
people she works with steps in to give her food. She forgets to
Biboon – Biboon is Thomas’s father, who Thomas often seeks cook her bread in the first place because she is rattled by her
out for advice. Biboon also tells Thomas the story of his name, father’s drunken outburst, which is an exhibition of power (in
Wazhashk, which is the story of the muskrat. the form of physical force and the threat of violence). Another
Gwiizik
Gwiizikens
ens (V
(Ver
eraa’s Bab
Baby)
y) – Gwiizikens is Vera’s baby. Patrice example also takes place at the jewel bearing plant. When Mr.
uses the name Gwiizikens, meaning Little Boy, to avoid Vold takes away their coffee breaks, the women band together
attracting the attention of evil spirits. Wood Mountain, who to start a petition to have them reinstated. Readers learn from
helps Patrice care for Gwiizikens until Vera returns home and a note after the book that the real-life women who worked at
also builds a cradle board for him, “temporarily” names the baby the plant, on whose story the book is loosely based, ultimately
after his father, Archille. attempt to unionize. While they were unsuccessful in that
Gr
Grace
ace – Grace is Louis Pipestone’s daughter. She helps train the campaign, they did get wages raised, the cafeteria finished, and
racehorses, and she is infatuated with Wood Mountain, who coffee breaks reinstated as a result of their efforts.

The central conflict of the novel demonstrates a similar Watkins (in excerpts from the actual historical records of the
dynamic. Arthur Watkins is a senator who uses his power to proceedings) uses racist ideas and language to argue his point.
advocate for the elimination of federal recognition of Native This is one instance of the persistent desire, on the part of the
tribes. If his proposed bill were to pass, it would be devastating U.S. government, to eradicate Native history, culture, and
for the Native people it impacts. To counter this exhibition of people, and Arthur Watkins plays his part in this history while
power, Thomas helps to mobilize his community, and the still believing himself to be deeply “righteous.” Another instance
community bands together to fight. First, they start a petition, of this history is the boarding schools that Thomas and
which Louis tends to like “a garden” as he aims to get everyone Roderick went to and that ultimately claimed Roderick’s life.
on the reservation to sign. And the community comes together The government established the boarding schools with the
again for the fundraiser, a community-sponsored boxing match, supposed intention to “help” Native people, but in effect, they
that enables a group to travel from the Turtle Mountain often sought to destroy Native culture, history, and people.
Reservation to Washington, D.C. to testify against the bill. This Through these repeated examples, the novel shows how a
solidarity is not idealized, though. When Thomas convenes the desire to “help” or “do good” and a belief in one’s own
committee to decide who will go to Washington, even though righteousness can often be the impetus for actions that
they know how important it is, most people don’t want to go. oppress, exploit, or otherwise endanger others.
Even when solidarity is widespread, action based on that
solidarity can be difficult to achieve, especially because success HUMOR AND PAIN
isn’t guaranteed. Eventually, though, Thomas does get a group
When confronted with pain and suffering,
together, and their collective action ultimately succeeds in
characters in the novel often use humor as a way to
defeating the bill. The novel suggests, then, that community
get through it. After Thomas has had a stroke, Louis
action, though difficult to achieve, can effectively counter
comes to the hospital to pick him up. Louis feels guilty because
unfair displays of power, whether they come from an
he thinks that if he had gone on the trip to Washington, Thomas
exploitative boss or an agent of one of the world’s most
might not have been so overworked and might not have had a
powerful institutions.
stroke. Thomas, for his part, feels like this battle against the
Termination Bill and Arthur Watkins might “cost him
OPPRESSION AND SUPPOSED GOOD everything.” Instead of delving into those emotions, when Louis
INTENTIONS and Thomas see each other for the first time, they joke with one
Much of the brutality depicted in The Night another. Thomas asks Louis if he’s down in the city because his
Watchman is done by people who claim, and by horses got out again, and Louis says he’s there to bring Thomas
some who might believe, that they are acting for the good of back in grand style, with a red carpet laid out to Juggie’s car.
the people they harm. When Patrice travels to Minneapolis, a Similarly, after Patrice has been essentially kidnapped,
stranger almost kidnaps her, and then Jack Malloy steps in to witnessed disturbing scenes at the addresses where she had
“help.” Jack offers to do whatever she wants and takes her to checked for Vera, and is about to be lowered into the tank to be
the addresses she has written down to try and find her missing the waterjack (all of which happens in one day), she looks for
sister Vera. His plan, of course, is deeply manipulative, as he humor in the situation. Specifically, she aims to locate a kind of
aims to make money off Patrice without concern for her feeling and thinking that could “only be described in Chippewa,”
wellbeing (he hires her to perform as a “waterjack,” which where the “strangeness was also humorous” and the danger
involves dancing in a water tank in a costume that resembles became something “you might laugh at,” all while knowing you
Paul Bunyan’s sidekick, Babe the blue ox). Patrice later removes could be hurt and that the potential damage could be
herself from the situation soon after she learns that the first devastating. With that in mind, it’s notable that one of Arthur
two waterjacks who performed in Jack’s club “didn’t last long” Watkins’s most damning qualities is that he has “no sense of
(ostensibly because the costume was poisonous). humor,” which Thomas finds even more frightening than the
Similarly, Arthur V. Watkins cloaks his racism, and his desire to Mormon bible. Thomas also points out how the exploits of the
terminate Native tribes, in either the neutral language of figure Nanabozho (a trickster figure in Chippewa folklore)
bureaucracy or the salvific rhetoric of religion. He uses lofty differ from the Mormon bible, considering how Nanabozho
words like “emancipation, freedom, equality, success” to created “everything useful and much that was essential, like
“disguise the truth: termination.” This desire for termination is laughter.” This perspective suggests that humor can transform
rooted in racism and white supremacy. Martin Cross, a tribal pain into something more manageable, while a lack of humor
chairman, writes to Thomas that, from his view, the Mormon can lead a person to harm and dehumanize others.
project of conversion of Native people aims to “change Indians
into whites” and that “they think if you follow their ways your
skin will bleach out.” When the hearings take place, Arthur

SEX, VIOLENCE, AND GENDER money is good, and when she does it, she seems to enjoy the
actual performance. But once what happened to the last two
Sex often, though not always, goes hand in hand
waterjacks is revealed (the first is dead, and the second is “on
with violence in the novel. This violence is almost
her last legs”), and it becomes clear that the suit is poisoning
always, if not always, committed by men against
them, it also becomes clear that Jack is acting exploitatively and
women. The summer before the events of the novel, Bucky
has erased Patrice’s agency by lying to her and luring her into
Duvalle, with the help of his friends, attempts to rape Patrice.
performing without telling her that the performance might kill
She eventually gets away by swimming to Thomas’s boat in the
her.
middle of the lake, but not before she suffers scratches, bruises,
and a bite mark on her shoulder, along with deep psychological Arthur Watkins seems to have aims similar those of Jack and
wounds. When Patrice goes to Betty Pye as a trusted the people who exploit Vera. When Millie is considering an
confidante to talk about sex, one of the main topics of their incorrect census from years ago that made people on the Turtle
conversation is how to get away from men who they don’t like. Mountain Reservation seem prosperous, she says, “I suspect as
And when Patrice is considering how her relationship with always they simply want our land.” The Termination Bill can be
Wood Mountain might progress, she remembers something seen, in part, to have similar goals in mind, to seize land held by
her mother told her, which she believes to be absolutely true: Native people so that those in power can use it for their own
you don’t truly know a man until you reject him, and then “his purposes. To achieve that aim, Watkins introduces a bill that, if
true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.” When passed, would essentially erase the agency of the Native people
Valentine spurns Barnes’s advances, he doesn’t react with on that land; they would be “relocated” without a say in the
physical violence, but he does think to himself, in a threatening matter. With that in mind, the novel highlights the tendency of
way, “a man is a man,” intimating his belief that men have needs people in power to erase the agency of people with less power
that women are obligated to satisfy. More shockingly, Vera is so that they can exploit them, their bodies, or their land.
brutalized by men, who commit unspeakable acts of violence
against her so that they can use her body for sex. She finds
herself in the hold of a ship where, while going through SYMBOLS
withdrawal, she feels her insides being “pulled out” and her
Symbols appear in teal text throughout the Summary and
brain “heaving in her skull,” and she comes home bearing scars
Analysis sections of this LitChart.
of the violence committed against her. In the city, Patrice finds
collars fixed to chains attached to the walls of an abandoned
house, where it’s suggested that women were held captive. THE WATERJACK SUIT
It’s worth noting that sex and violence do not always go The waterjack suit, which gradually poisons its
together in the novel. Betty Pye enthusiastically enjoys much of wearer, is a symbol of the kind of exploitation that
the sex she has with her boyfriend, and Patrice goes to her people in the novel with less power often endure at the hands
when she is curious about sex. But by presenting various of those with more power. After Patrice arrives in Minneapolis,
women’s relationships with different men, and by showing the two men attempt to kidnap her. When a third man, Jack Malloy,
internalization of gender norms and the violent actions of those intervenes, he offers her a job as a performer at his bar, Log
different men, the novel suggests that gender norms at this Jam 26. The performance entails dancing in a tank of water
time tended to affirm and perpetuate gender-based violence. while wearing a “waterjack” costume that resembles Paul
Bunyan’s sidekick, Babe the blue ox. Paul Bunyan is a character
AGENCY AND EXPLOITATION of Canadian and American folklore, a lumberjack who performs
When Patrice talks with Betty Pye about sex, Betty extraordinary feats; through his profession, he represents the
says that sometimes men come to the reservation, extractive approach to land use closely aligned with colonialism
tell women they want to get married, then “ditch in the U.S. Jack claims to be acting in Patrice’s best interest and
the woman, [and] sell her to someone who puts them out for says that the job pays $50 a night, significantly more than
sex.” This seems to be what happened to Vera. And by the time Patrice makes working at the jewel bearing plant. While Patrice
Vera actually appears in the novel, she is trapped in the hold of is suspicious of Jack, the money is tempting, and she agrees.
a ship, and it seems like she has been sold into a kind of sexual Patrice dresses up as a sidekick to Paul Bunyan, and when she
slavery that strips her of her agency. When Patrice goes to the performs, she actually doesn’t mind the performance itself.
city to look for Vera, Jack claims to act in Patrice’s best Over time, though, she learns that the first person who
interests; really, though, he lies to her and manipulates the performed as the waterjack died, and the second is “on her last
situation to try and get her to do what he wants her to. This legs,” and Patrice realizes that the waterjack suit has poisoned
situation doesn’t entail the erasure of agency that Vera them. The suit, then, shows how little regard Jack has for
experiences—Patrice accepts the waterjack job because the Patrice or for the previous two people who wore the waterjack

costume. He is willing to slowly kill them if it means that he can
make money off them. In this way, Jack is like the other Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
characters in the novel who have power, like Senator Arthur V.
Watkins or Mr. Vold, and the waterjack suit is a symbol of their Related Themes:
shared intent to extract the vitality of those with less power
until they die or become shells of who they once were, all in the Page Number: i
name of increasing their own power and profits. Explanation and Analysis
Erdrich uses this note to situate the story that she’ll tell in
THE MUSKRAT the novel within its historical context. This contextualization
serves several purposes. First, by stating explicitly that the
Thomas’s last name, Wazhashk, comes from
character of Thomas is based on her actual grandfather,
wazhashk, which means muskrat, a “lowly,
Erdrich establishes the story as an homage to him, both the
hardworking, water-loving rodent.” Muskrats are common, and
person he was and what he was able to accomplish in his
they aren’t necessarily the most glamorous animals, Thomas
life. In the note, she also clarifies one of the main themes of
thinks, but they are essential. When Thomas visits his father,
the novel. Her grandfather fought against termination as a
Biboon, and asks for the story of his name, Biboon says that in
tribal chairman while he was also a night watchman. He was
the beginning, the world was covered in water. The creator
an ordinary person who worked extraordinarily hard, and
lined up the best divers and asked them to dive, but none could
his efforts had profound and lasting effects. By reminding
reach the bottom. Then came the muskrat. The muskrat dove
the reader that Arthur V. Watkins is also the name of the
too, as far as it could, and when it came back up, it had drowned.
real, historical senator who proposed the Termination Bill,
But in its hand, it held a tiny bit of silt from the very bottom, and
Erdrich is also making it clear that while the novel is a work
from that, the creator made the whole earth. This journey is, in
of fiction, both the central catalyst for the events of the
some ways, similar to Thomas’s fight against Senator Arthur V.
novel—the Termination Bill—and its author were real,
Watkins. Thomas works as hard as he can, dives as deep as he
historical entities, and the events were grounded in real
can go, and, as a result, Thomas has a stroke. Unlike the
racism. Those things, Erdrich writes, are not, by any means,
muskrat of the story, though, Thomas recovers, and he—along
fiction.
with all the others who fought alongside him—ultimately
succeeds in defeating Arthur Watkins’s Termination Bill, just as
the muskrat returned with silt from which the creator made the
earth. With that in mind, the muskrat is a symbol of the unsung
Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant Quotes
heroes in the background who do the often unglamorous but Thomas was named for the muskrat, wazhashk, the lowly,
industrious work necessary not just to make the world keep hardworking, water-loving rodent […] Although the
going, but to protect what is valuable and to make lasting and wazhashkag were numerous and ordinary, they were also
vital change. crucial. In the beginning, after the great flood, it was a muskrat
who had helped remake the earth. In that way, as it turned out,
Thomas was perfectly named.
QUO
QUOTES
TES
Note: all page numbers for the quotes below refer to the Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk
Harper Perennial edition of The Night Watchman published in
2021. Related Themes:
Page Number: 4
Introductory Note Quotes
Explanation and Analysis
My grandfather Patrick Gourneau fought against
termination as a tribal chairman while working as a night The novel establishes early on that Thomas is a kind of
watchman. He hardly slept, like my character Thomas “everyman.” He, like the muskrat that gave his family its
Wazhashk. This book is fiction. But all the same, I have tried to name, is similar to so many others, but his actions are
be faithful to my grandfather’s extraordinary life. Any failures essential, not just to keep the world spinning, but to help
are my own. Other than Thomas, and the Turtle Mountain recreate it after it has been decimated by disaster. In the
Jewel Bearing Plant, the only other major character who creation story referenced, the disaster is a flood. After
resembles anyone alive or dead is Senator Arthur V. Watkins, countless other animals try to dive down through the water
relentless pursuer of Native dispossession and the man who to find the silt at the bottom that will help recreate the
interrogated my grandfather.

earth, the muskrat, an unlikely hero, is able to reach the alongside him to defeat the Termination Bill, Patrice also
bottom and bring silt back up. Notably, the muskrat drowns must rely on others to try and find Vera. This attempt—to
and dies in the process. The disaster referenced for Thomas find trustworthy people—proves difficult, but not
is the violence of colonization and its lasting legacy. Thomas impossible, as Patrice navigates the wider world to piece
is perfectly named (after a muskrat) on the one hand together clues of what happened to Vera. This quote hints
because his efforts will help to continue the effort to rebuild that, as difficult as that search might be, Patrice can succeed
the Native community following the lasting impacts of by relying on the help and support of others.
colonization. He’s also perfectly named because, in some
ways, he derives his power from his ordinariness. He
doesn’t think he’s superior to anyone; as a result, he sees Mr. Vold forbade speech. Still, they did speak. They hardly
himself in everyone, which also allows others to see remembered what they said, later, but they talked to one
themselves in him. That ability to have shared experiences,
another all day.
along with shared outlooks and goals, enables people to
come together, with Thomas as a leader, under the banner
of a shared struggle. Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Walter Vold
Related Themes:
Lard on Bread Quotes
Page Number: 10
Word went out that dough was in Patrice’s bucket. That
she’d forgotten to cook it, bake it, fry it […] Saint Anne pushed a Explanation and Analysis
buttered bun across the table to Patrice. Someone handed an Mr. Vold is the authority figure at the jewel bearing plant,
oatmeal cookie down the line. Doris gave her half a bacon the manager who looks at women on the line “lurkishly.” His
sandwich. position of relative power, and his use of power to demean
and dehumanize those with supposedly less power, put him
Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Doris in line with other characters in the novel like Arthur Watkins
Lauder and Jack. The novel posits that the only way to counter
those kinds of people is through solidarity and collective
Related Themes: action. And the solidarity of these plant workers is evident,
even if it is not supported or encouraged by the plant’s
Page Number: 8 management. If they are ever going to be able to stand up to
someone like Mr. Vold, they’ll have to do it together, as a
Explanation and Analysis community that’s come together for a common purpose.
While it can be presumed that no one working at the jewel Notably, the people on the line talk all day, but, in the end,
bearing plant is especially wealthy, and no one has an they hardly remember what they said. The novel contends
abundance of food or can afford to not worry if there might that that is often how the bonds of relationships—and, by
come a time when they don’t have enough, when Patrice extension, communities—are formed. A person might not
forgets to cook her lunch, several of her fellow workers step remember exactly what happened when, but they
in to give her food. Notably, Patrice forgets to fry her bread remember the feeling of being seen by someone else, being
because she is rattled by her father’s drunken outbursts, listened to, and listening to others, and those feelings, when
and all of the people working on the line with her are they happen often enough, bind people together.
women—introducing the novel’s theme of violence and
gender, as well as the theme of solidarity against
oppression. The Skin Tent Quotes
This section begins the narrative, following Patrice, which There were times when Patrice felt like she was stretched
will be told alongside, and will often intertwine with, across a frame, like a skin tent. She tried to forget that she
Thomas’s story of opposing and ultimately defeating the could be so easily blown away. Or how easily her father could
Termination Bill. Patrice ultimately becomes essential to wreck them all. This feeling of being the only barrier between
that effort as well, but the central conflict animating her her family and disaster wasn’t new, but they had come so far
story is the fact that her sister Vera has gone missing. since she started work.
Similar to how Thomas must find people willing to work

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau newspapers go along with this obfuscation of language and
perpetrate it themselves, suggesting that the media, despite
Related Themes: its claims to be unbiased, is instead clearly biased in favor of
Watkins and his bill. Similar to the ongoing question
Page Number: 20 throughout the novel of whether Arthur V. Watkins is a
cynical actor or a person who genuinely believes he is doing
good, the media might be genuine in their attempts to fairly
Since getting a job at the jewel bearing plant, Patrice has cover the different sides of a debate around the
become the main breadwinner for her family, and her family Termination Bill; but, if so, that makes the novel’s
is often one missed paycheck away from catastrophe. Her documentation of the reporters’ clear failure to do so an
father is also always on the edge of wrecking her family due indictment of the ways that conviction in one’s own
to his drinking and violence, and since Vera left, Patrice has goodness can cloud judgment.
also felt increasingly alone. On one level, Patrice is aware
that she’s only human, that there could be any moment
when an outside force, a wind, could come along and sweep Juggie’s Boy Quotes
her away, like a tent. But she also tries not to think about
those outside forces, lest she fixate on the catastrophe that Many years back, the first Wobleszynski had encroached
would inevitably follow and be dragged down into fear and on the land owned by Wood Mountain’s grandmother. Since
dread. This passage illustrates one of the reasons that then, the Wobleszynskis sent their cattle to graze on Juggie’s
Patrice clings to her independence: she’s self-reliant land so often that her family had finally shanghaied a cow. This
because so often she has had to be. She hasn’t had any other happened during berry-picking time, when there were extra
choice, and, out of repeated thought and action, the habit of people camped out everywhere, so if the cow was stolen it was
self-reliance has become a personality trait. quickly absorbed into boiling pots. Nothing was ever traced or
proved but nothing was ever forgotten, either. Over the years,
resentment between the families had become entrenched.
Three Men Quotes
Thomas had a good friend in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Related Characters: Wood Mountain, Juggie Blue, Joe
Area Office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who had sent him a “Wobble” Wobleszynski
copy of the proposed bill that was supposed to emancipate
Indians. That was the word used in newspaper articles. Related Themes:
Emancipate.
Page Number: 53
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins Explanation and Analysis

This quotation comes just before Wood Mountain fights Joe
Related Themes: Wobble for the first time. While much of the novel
documents how the United States government is
Page Number: 23 attempting to strip Native people of their land (again)
through its most powerful institutions, this passage
highlights the ways that injustice can function on an
This is one of the first mentions of the Termination Bill in the intimate level—between families, with repercussions felt for
novel. The passage establishes the way that the author of generations. But Joe Wobble’s ancestors were able to act
the bill, Arthur Watkins, along with the reporters covering with impunity in the first place, encroaching on the land of
that bill, use language to disguise the proposal’s true Wood Mountain’s family, because they had the implicit
intentions. Specifically, the word “emancipated” carries with support of those institutions. If Wood Mountain’s family had
it the connotation, in the United States and in English, of gone to the authorities when the Wobleszynski family first
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which effectively encroached, the novel implies that the authorities would
abolished slavery. Arthur Watkins, the author of the bill, have clearly sided with the Wobleszynskis, not Wood
uses that word, “emancipate,” to obfuscate the bill’s actual Mountain’s ancestors. However, the passage also makes
intentions (to terminate Native tribes) and instead makes it clear that Wood Mountain’s family didn’t surrender their
seem like the bill’s aim is not just to correct past injustices, agency. They attempted to seek retribution for the illicit
but set right the course of history. It’s notable that actions of the Wobleszynskis by taking Wobleszynski cows

Pukkons Quotes
if they were on their land. The passage also suggests,
though, that jockeying for retribution, the give and take on “This one takes away the treaties.”
both sides, will be endless, and always out of balance, if the “For all Indians? Or just us?”
conflict can’t be arbitrated by an authority accepted by both “All.”
parties. Again, though, when the United States government
“At least they’re not picking on us alone,” says Biboon. “Maybe
is trying to do to the entire Turtle Mountain Reservation
we can get together with the other tribes on this thing.”
what the Wobleszynskis did to Wood Mountain’s family,
there’s little hope that an unbiased authority will be found in
any currently established institutions of governmental Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Biboon
power.
Related Themes:
Valentine’s Days Quotes Page Number: 68
Valentine said, “You can have my days.” Explanation and Analysis

“What do you mean?” Thomas consults with his father Biboon about the best way
“My sick days. Mr. Vold told me that I could give my days to you. to challenge the Termination Bill. Biboon is old enough to
Under the circumstances.” remember when they signed the initial treaties, which were
supposed to last in perpetuity. Native people signed those
treaties out of necessity, Biboon says; either they signed or
Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Valentine they would die. The Termination Bill seeks to abolish those
Blue, Walter Vold treaties, and makes it clear, once more, just how little the
United States government can be trusted, how willing the
Related Themes: government is to change the rules to suit those in power.
Biboon sees it as a blessing, though, that at least the bill
Page Number: 62
doesn’t target only the Turtle Mountain Reservation. Since
Explanation and Analysis they’re targeting more people than just them, Biboon hopes
that many tribes will be able to band together to oppose the
When Patrice decides she needs to travel to Minneapolis to
bill, articulating one of the central themes in the novel, that
try and find Vera, Mr. Vold holds firmly to the time-off policy
those with less power can challenge those with more if they
at the jewel bearing plant. Patrice has three days she can
act in solidarity and as a united community.
take to travel, but if she’s not back by then, there’s a chance
she’ll lose her job. In an act of solidarity, Valentine talks to
Mr. Vold, and Mr. Vold allows Valentine to give her available
days off to Patrice, leaving Patrice with six days total to A Bill Quotes
travel and try to find Vera. Far from considering himself the In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had
villain in this situation, Mr. Vold might even think that he’s constructed a cloud of lofty words around this
being generous, that he’s doing a good thing for Patrice. bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised
This ability to believe that you are righteous while its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The
dehumanizing others is one of the main characteristics ex.
linking Mr. Vold to Arthur Watkins. If the Termination Bill
were to pass, then it would be legally binding, held up as the
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
rule of law by all relevant institutions in the United States.
Similarly, Mr. Vold is just operating according to pre- Related Themes:
established rules at the plant. But, like the proposed
Termination Bill, those rules are not fair or just. They are not Page Number: 91
guidelines designed for the mutual benefit of all parties
involved. Instead, the rules are designed to benefit one Explanation and Analysis
party, those in power, while the workers at the plant suffer As media coverage of the Termination Bill increases, Arthur
as a result. Watkins continues to use the rhetoric of freedom and
empowerment to cloak his true aim, termination. The bill

Who? [1] Quotes

itself, quoted just before this passage, contains the word
termination itself: The bill aims to “terminate federal So it comes down to this, thought Thomas, staring at the
supervision over the property of the Turtle Mountain Band neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have
of Chippewa Indians.” The motives of the bill are also survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the
disguised by the faux neutrality of its bureaucratic language. Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu
That language, and the language of empowerment that epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United
Watkins uses in newspapers, has the goal of making the bill States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of
seem either benign or beneficial to Native people. The tedious words.
quoted passage is situated in a third-person section that is
grounded in Thomas’s perspective. For Thomas, far from Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
being benign or beneficial, the bill is aimed at more than its
stated goal of termination. In truth, the bill seeks to Related Themes:
exterminate Native people. The evocation of the word
extermination links Watkins’s project to genocide, a mission Page Number: 93
that seeks to achieve its aims not through physical violence
but through state-sanctioned legislation and is covered up
through misinformation. As Thomas reads again through the Termination Bill while at
work, he’s struck by the mordant irony that after surviving
so many different onslaughts of colonization, whether they
came in the form of physical violence or physical illness, a
“They think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach
string of words, intentionally made to sound tedious and
out. They call it lightsome and gladsome.”
stripped of force, will be the thing that will destroy Native
people. By presenting a list of past threats Native people
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins have faced at the hands of colonizers, the passage also
establishes a baseline of past wrongs, one that is in no way
Related Themes: exhaustive. The Termination Bill, then, is just the latest in a
series of attempts to destroy Native people. While Thomas
Page Number: 92 notes the irony that a set of tedious words might be what
Explanation and Analysis ultimately destroys them, this list also states in the most
straightforward terms some of the violence that colonizers
This quote follows the one above, which identifies Senator have enacted on Native people. The historical list also
Watkins's goal with his bill to be genocidal. The phrase makes the conclusion impossible to avoid that, even if the
“lightsome and gladsome” echoes the phrase from the Book Termination Bill doesn’t succeed in its goal to destroy
of Mormon, which says that members of the Church of Native people, unless something drastic changes, those in
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will be a “white and power will just go back to the drawing board to try and find
delightsome people,” a white supremacist ideology that was a new way.
taught as doctrine in the Mormon church during the time
period when the novel takes place. The Mormon Church
didn’t disavow the explicit white supremacy of its past Who? [2] Quotes
teachings until 2013, when the official Church of Latter-
Day Saints website posted a statement saying that the How should being an Indian relate to this country that had
“church disavows the theories advanced in the past that conquered and was trying in every possible way to absorb
black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse.” Knowing that them? […] How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the
the Mormon church of the 1950s, the time period of the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to
novel, explicitly endorsed white supremacy makes it clear their hearts, with something like love?
that Thomas’s interpretation is in fact the stated goal of the
church of which Watkins is a devout member. The church Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
sees skin that is not white as a sign of “divine disfavor” or a
“curse,” and, as such, the goal of the church is to, as Martin Related Themes:
Cross says in the quote above, “bleach out” others’ skin, or
eliminate them. Page Number: 98

Explanation and Analysis boarding schools for Native youth serves an explicitly
political function. It is meant, again, to wear down Native
In this passage, Thomas continues to think about how to identity and agency with a long-term aim of weakening
best oppose the Termination Bill and about how to maintain commitment to the treaties that give Native Nations
his identity in a country that continuously tries to “absorb” autonomy with the United States. In the context of a
that identity, to wash it away. The passage also articulates boarding school like the one Thomas went to, the phrase “a
one of the central themes of the book, that people who act flag worth dying for” also seems to contain a threat: if you
with good intentions often commit horrific acts. This is don’t join us, then the power behind this flag can be turned
presumably the case with Arthur Watkins, who considers on you. That is, if Native tribes function as autonomous
himself to be deeply righteous while attempting to nations, then the statement that the U.S. flag is one that, for
eradicate Native people by enacting policies grounded in many people, is thought to be worth dying for can also serve
and fueled by white supremacist ideology. The novel also as a menacing reminder that, if the U.S. government were to
suggests that a sincere, even if unfounded, belief in the turn on Native Nations, the force of the U.S. military could
righteousness of one’s own intentions might be the key to also turn on them.
achieving one’s aims, which puts Thomas in a conundrum.
How does he oppose people who claim, and might believe,
they are offering love? On a basic level, it can be difficult to The Old Muskrat Quotes
parse true good intentions from good intentions laced with
maliciousness if the person offering them says they are one “Survival is a changing game.”
and the same. On a deeper level, it can be difficult to wage a
fight against people who believe so strongly in the God- Related Characters: Biboon (speaker), Thomas Wazhashk
granted righteousness of their cause, who derive power
from their religious beliefs as well as the most powerful Related Themes:
institutions in the world. The novel as a whole, though,
presents a kind of answer to Thomas’s conundrum. He Page Number: 119
successfully opposes the Termination Bill, and its author,
through deft strategy, mobilization, solidarity, and
community action. When Thomas seeks Biboon’s counsel about the
Termination Bill, Biboon tells him that “survival is a changing
game.” The statement serves a few different functions. First,
Flags Quotes Biboon is making the point that Native communities are in a
different position than they were when he was younger.
He had been there a few months when he heard the
Native communities, Biboon says, are more autonomous
phrase a flag worth dying for, and a slow chill prickled.
now and also more deeply entwined with surrounding
communities. The economies of those surrounding
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk communities depend on a Native workforce and Native
agriculture, among other things. Abolishing Native tribes,
Related Themes: then, would have far-reaching implications, and Biboon tells
Thomas that he’ll have to remind politicians in power of that
Page Number: 100 fact. In that statement, Biboon is also reminding Thomas
Explanation and Analysis that he has to be adaptable, that the strategies that worked
when he was a young man might not work as well now. And
When Thomas went to boarding school, the authorities by saying that survival “is a changing game”—instead of, for
tried to chip away at his identity as well as the identity of his example, saying that the game of survival has
classmates. The United States government initially founded changed—Biboon is making the point that the “game” of
the boarding schools with the intention of “helping” Native survival is continuously changing, and, as a result,
people, but their true function seems to have been to try adaptability remains paramount.
and eradicate Native culture. It’s worth noting that Native
tribes are autonomous nations within the United States.
With that in mind, along with signaling United States
nationalism, the inculcation of the Pledge of Allegiance and “I would like to move we refer to House Concurrent
the propaganda of the phrase “a flag worth dying for” in Resolution 108 as the Termination Bill. Those words like
emancipation and Freedom are smoke.”

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk (speaker) the issue than English because Chippewa can capture the
way that danger and humor are deeply intertwined, how
Related Themes: humor, in Chippewa, can help process pain without washing
away that pain. The idea grapples deeply with questions of
Page Number: 119 identity, first of who Patrice is now and if she knows herself
or knows who she is. Second, is she less herself because she
has to operate almost exclusively in English, has to navigate
Thomas is speaking here before a meeting that the advisory a world that has been constructed by colonizers and
committee has convened to go over the Termination Bill and navigate it in the colonizer’s language? These are
its implications. Thomas again calls attention to the way that complicated questions, and the novel engages with them
the bill’s author, Arthur Watkins, uses language to obfuscate throughout the entire story without offering reductive
his true motives, masking his intentions behind the vague, answers. Interestingly, Patrice translates the Chippewa
bureaucratic-sounding “House Concurrent Resolution 108.” phrase “gawiin ingikendizo siin” to herself as “I am a stranger
Thomas’s proposal—to call the bill what it is, a Termination to myself.” While the sentiment itself is experienced
Bill—is then at once a condemnation of misused language commonly enough in the modern world, Patrice, and the
and a testament to its power, a demonstration of the novel, aim to reclaim that modernist sentiment by clarifying
sometimes hidden force of naming. By calling the bill the that colonization, more than perhaps any other modern
Termination Bill, Thomas suggests (and the novel bears out phenomenon, is responsible for the kind of alienation that
the truth of his suggestion) that the act of properly naming Patrice feels.
something can be an act of dragging something out of the
shadows and into the light. Calling the bill the Termination
Bill brings its true intentions into the light and allows others The Average Woman and the Empty Tank Quotes
to see those intentions clearly, to cut through the fog of
obfuscation to find the truth. Louis Pipestone tended the petition like a garden.
Related Characters: Louis Pipestone

The Waterjack Quotes
Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself […] This Related Themes:
was again the sort of feeling and thinking that could only be
Page Number: 160
described in Chippewa, where the strangeness was also
humorous and the danger surrounding this entire situation was Explanation and Analysis
the sort that you might laugh at, even though you could also get
One of the main tactics used by the advisory committee to
hurt, and there were secrets involved, and desperation, for
raise awareness of, and register opposition to, the
indeed she had nowhere, after her unthinkable short
Termination Bill is a petition, circulated by Louis Pipestone.
immediate future rolling in the water tank, nowhere to go but
The petition is an example of the solidarity needed to
the dressing room down at the other end of the second-floor
oppose the bill, and it also serves as a direct symbol of
hall of Log Jam 26.
widespread community action. The fact that Louis tends it
“like a garden” is also significant. The garden metaphor
Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau suggests that the community engagement that goes along
with the petition is something organic, something that
Related Themes: grows of its own accord. Notably, though, a garden is
something that a person must cultivate, must “tend.”
Page Number: 132 Community engagement isn’t something purely organic that
happens on its own; it’s not a “weed” that will grow
anywhere in any conditions or a “wildfire” that will consume
Before she has had her first performance, Patrice is anything in its path. Instead, it is a garden that Louis, and the
surprised at herself that she has agreed to take on the role other members of the advisory committee, must nurture for
of the waterjack at the bar Log Jam 26. She wonders who it to take root and grow. And, the novel also shows, this
she has become, over the course of only a day, and also garden ends up thriving as a result of their faithful efforts.
wonders what her mother would make of her. She thinks
that the Chippewa language can get more to the heart of

He reached over to his lunch box. Maybe he’d left that
crust. It was LaBatte’s lunch box, full. A meat sandwich of the four ancient groups of people in the Book of Mormon.
with real butter. More bread, this time with butter and sugar. A According to the Book of Mormon, Lamanites have “skin of
baked potato, still warm. Apples. blackness” as the result of a curse on the children of Laman
(“Lamanites”) from God because of their wickedness and
corruption. In this worldview, Elnath and Vernon (and
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, LaBatte
Watkins, by extension) see themselves as acting for the
betterment of Native people, who they see as corrupted,
Related Themes:
and their skin color is evidence of that corruption. While
Page Number: 167 Elnath and Vernon preach white supremacy and all of its
constituent ignorance and violence, they believe that they
Explanation and Analysis are acting righteously and doing God’s work. They are
After Thomas confronts LaBatte about his possible plan to acting with purpose, but their purpose is “mystifying,”
try and steal jewel bearings from the plant, LaBatte dizzying for Thomas, and those raised outside of the
confesses. He tells Thomas that he’s fallen on hard times religion’s precepts, to try and comprehend or to understand
and isn’t sure what to do or how to get by. Thomas, as the why its adherents would choose to follow it.
night watchman, isn’t just listening to LaBatte as a friend.
Ostensibly, he’s also listening to LaBatte as someone who
has a duty to protect the plant, and in a different scenario, it The Star Powwow Quotes
wouldn’t be completely unlikely that Thomas might feel They had as good as killed Roderick down there.
compelled to turn LaBatte in. But that fundamentally
contradicts who Thomas is as a person. Thomas is loyal, first
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Roderick
and foremost, to the people he knows, to his community, not
to the jewel bearing plant. And he’s not out to punish
Related Themes:
people, to take something from others that they don’t have
to give. Instead, Thomas counsels LaBatte. He listens to Page Number: 223
LaBatte. He tries to understand him. And when he leaves
work in the morning, Thomas finds LaBatte’s lunch box in his Explanation and Analysis
car, which LaBatte, even though he doesn’t have much to his This sentence clears up Roderick’s story arc, pieces of which
name to give, has left for Thomas, illustrating the full-circle have been doled out throughout the novel. In short,
way that solidarity and community work, with each person Roderick was Thomas’s boarding school classmate. He
exhibiting their own forms of loyalty, each giving what they never had much and worked countless jobs to get by,
have to help the other. including one in a bakery, which he loved. When he was
caught stealing bread from the bakery (because he didn’t
have anything to eat), the school authorities punished him
The Missionaries Quotes by locking him in a basement for weeks at a time. Roderick
They didn’t look alike anymore, but they walked in exactly contracted tuberculosis as a result of those punishments
the same straight line, full of mystifying purpose. and eventually died from the illness. Thomas helped
smuggle a jacket into the basement for Roderick, but
Thomas also feels guilty for Roderick’s death, thinking that
Related Characters: Vernon, Elnath
he should have done more to help. The story as a whole
presents a straightforward condemnation of the boarding
Related Themes:
schools, which were again established with supposedly
Page Number: 171 good intentions, but in effect aimed to eradicate Native
culture and killed Native children like Roderick.
Explanation and Analysis Roderick’s inhumane punishment at the hands of
The missionaries, Elnath and Vernon, arrive one day at authorities when he is caught stealing is presented in
Thomas’s door. When Thomas asks them why their senator, contrast to Thomas’s decision to act in solidarity with
Arthur Watkins, wants to terminate Native people, Elnath LaBatte when LaBatte confesses that he planned to steal
says Watkins doesn’t want that at all and that they—Elnath from the jewel bearing plant. With that in mind, Roderick’s
and Vernon—have been sent to bring Native people to the story is central to Thomas’s overall arc in the novel.
gospel. “You’re all Lamanites,” Elnath says, referencing one Roderick’s death shows—at least in how Thomas interprets

it for himself—a failure for Thomas to act in solidarity with Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Betty Pye
someone who is being treated unjustly. Though the blame
for Roderick’s death of course lies with the boarding school Related Themes:
authorities, Thomas in part holds himself responsible, and
his commitment to acting in solidarity with others and Page Number: 296
acting on behalf of his community can be understood as an
attempt to atone for his past failure to do enough to help
Roderick. After Patrice expresses her curiosity, Betty Pye and Patrice
talk about sex one day after work. The conversation covers
numerous topics—from how to get away from men you’re
Two-Day Journey Quotes not interested in to tips to better enjoy sex—and eventually
the conversation moves toward ways that men exploit
She began to wonder whether she was even dead. women through sex work. Betty Pye describes a scenario of
Although she had been dead way back when she’d been alive. a man coming to the reservation, promising to marry a
Maybe for a long time. Of that she was sure. woman he meets, then taking that woman to the city to “sell
her to someone who puts them out for sex,” a person Betty
Related Characters: Vera Paranteau calls a “pimp.” The scenario sounds like what might have
happened to Vera. Patrice pretends she doesn’t understand,
Related Themes: but in her mind, instead of sitting in judgment or being
confused, Patrice knows exactly what Betty is talking about.
Page Number: 279 She recognizes the patterns that could have led to
something similar happening to her. When she traveled to
Minneapolis and met Jack, Jack didn’t present himself as a
After people on the ship where Vera has been held captive villain. Similar to Arthur V. Watkins, Jack presents himself as
dump Vera in an alley while she’s going through withdrawal a good Samaritan, a savior. At the same time, Jack also
from drugs, she starts walking. Part of her is convinced that began to manipulate Patrice to get her to do what he
she has died and she’s slowly marching toward the afterlife. wanted, making Patrice feel ashamed. Patrice recognizes
When objects around her begin to take shape, though, she how that shame could build and build until it turned her (or,
wonders if she has actually died or whether she might be the passage suggests, Vera) into someone lacking the
alive. Regardless, though, she knows that she had been dead independence she so fiercely protects, someone she would
while she had been alive. The idea, that she had died while no longer recognize.
still alive, puts words to how the brutality she experienced
impacted her. Maybe she didn’t die biologically—maybe her
pulse continued to pound, her blood to flow—but she knows New Year’s Soup Quotes
that something deep in her had died. For Vera, it’s an
And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was
acknowledgment of the pain she experienced, but it’s also a
definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him
way to accurately name what people did to her. Whether
you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to
one considers it to be her spirit or her soul, the men who
charm you, might surface.
abused her killed something in her, and their actions, the
passage suggests, should be thought of in terms similar to
murder. Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Zhaanat
Related Themes:
The Promotion Quotes
Page Number: 344
“A pimp is someone who owns the lady. Takes the money
she got paid for having sex, see?” Explanation and Analysis
“No. I don’t see,” said Patrice flatly. But she did see. Jack would Wood Mountain has recently asked Patrice to marry him,
have tampered with her slightly, just enough so that when and Patrice hasn’t said no, but she didn’t say yes either. She
somebody else came along she’d have that shame, then more also still wants to have sex, but she’s worried that, after the
shame, until she got lost in shame and wasn’t herself. proposal, Wood Mountain has become too “sticky,” that he’s
fallen in love with her and will cling to her, especially if they

have sex. That reminds Patrice of what Zhaanat had said, his part, sees it in the only way that seems to make sense: as
that you don’t know a man until you tell him you don’t love a joke. But, following one of the main themes of the novel,
him, that that’s when his true ugliness might surface. The while that joke might help cope with pain, it doesn’t
passage sheds light on how gender dynamics function neutralize the danger inherent in the racist ideology
within the novel. According to Zhaanat (and Patrice), men represented by that quote. This is especially the case in the
seek to charm women if it will help get them what they novel because racism and a white supremacist worldview
want. If a woman spurns those advances, though, the man, animate Arthur Watkins, who is intent—no matter what he
with a bruised ego, might reveal his true ugliness, resulting says to himself, to the media, or to anyone else—on
in one form of violence or another. Rather than serving as a dispossessing and terminating Native people and Native
reason to be afraid of men, the quote instead reminds tribes.
Patrice of why her independence is so important, why she
must maintain her agency in the face of threats from those
who want to take it away, from men with fragile egos whose Thomas Quotes
understanding of their place in the world, and the way they
His mind was everything to him, but he hadn’t the slightest
relate to others, have been woefully misshaped by
notion how to save it. He just kept diving down, grabbing for
prevailing gender norms.
the word, coming back up. The battle with termination and with
Arthur V. Watkins had been, he feared, a battle that would cost
him everything.
The Lamanites Quotes
“Their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
nature that they became wild and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty
people, full of idolatry and filthiness, feeding upon beasts of Related Themes:
prey, dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness
with a short skin girdle about their loins.” Page Number: 442
“What do you think, Rosey?” said Thomas. “It’s us.”
This passage comes near the end of the novel when Thomas
Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins is reflecting on his battle to oppose the Termination Bill and
his fight against Arthur Watkins. The quote calls back to
Related Themes:
Biboon’s earlier description of the name Wazhashk,
Page Number: 381 meaning muskrat, and the creation story in which the
muskrat was the only animal able to swim to the bottom of
Explanation and Analysis the ocean to find silt that would help create the earth. After
Thomas reads through the Book of Mormon, which the he has a stroke, Thomas grasps for words that don’t come as
missionaries, Elnath and Vernon, left for him. The quotation readily as they once did, and he feels again like the muskrat
that Thomas reads to Rose is a direct quotation from that swimming to the bottom of the ocean, hoping to grasp what
book. When the missionaries gave the book to Thomas, he’s looking for. Similarly, his battle with Arthur Watkins was
Elnath told him that he and Vernon, and Arthur Watkins, like the journey that the muskrat went on. Though Thomas,
didn’t want to terminate Native people; instead, they like the muskrat, might not have been the most likely hero,
wanted to bring them to the gospel, to, in essence, “show he was able to face long odds and go up against something
them the light.” Elnath says they feel driven to do that extraordinarily powerful—like the muskrat against the
because “they,” meaning Native people, are all “Lamanites,” ocean—and come out victorious. Thomas worries, though,
one of the four ancient peoples described in the Book of that like the muskrat, which succeeded in finding silt but
Mormon. The Book of Mormon, and Mormon doctrine drowned in the process, the battle will cost him everything,
during the 1950s (until 2013, presumably, when the that he will die as a result of his efforts. An explanatory note
Mormon Church repudiated its past teachings about race), at the end clarifies that Erdrich’s grandfather, who the
claims that the darker skin of “Lamanites” is evidence of a character of Thomas was based on, survived his initial
curse from God, and “Lamanites” are described, as can be stroke, but the point remains that Thomas’s battle for his
seen in the direct quote above, as evil by nature, wild and survival, and the survival of his community, almost killed
ferocious. The description is vile in its racism. Thomas, for him.

SUMMARY AND ANAL

ANALYSIS
YSIS
The color-coded icons under each analysis entry make it easy to track where the themes occur most prominently throughout the
work. Each icon corresponds to one of the themes explained in the Themes section of this LitChart.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The novel begins with an explanation of its historical context. Erdrich begins with this explanatory note to establish the book’s
On August 1, 1953, the United States Congress announced a relationship to actual events in United States history. Grounding the
bill that aimed to dissolve treaties between the United States book in actual events serves numerous functions, but, by citing the
government and Native American tribes. The announcement characters who are based on actual people—Thomas and Senator
also stated that, if passed, the bill would immediately eliminate Watkins—Erdrich calls attention to two functions in particular. First,
five Native tribes; eventually, all Native tribes would be Erdrich bases the character of Thomas on her actual grandfather to
eliminated. Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, fought pay homage to him as a person and to what he, and a group of
against that termination when he worked as a tribal chairman similarly motivated people, were able to accomplish against long
and a night watchman, similar to the character of Thomas odds. Second, keeping Arthur Watkins’s name the same as the
Wazhashk in the book. Senator Arthur V. Watkins, who is also a actual senator who proposed the Termination Bill helps to underline
character in the book, is the real name of the person who the fact that while the novel is a work of fiction, the racism that
introduced the bill. Pixie, aka Patrice, is “completely fictional.” animated 1950s politicians and policies is not imagined, made-up,
or fictionalized. Instead, it is part and parcel of the history of the
United States. Erdrich’s decision also points to the ways that racism
is embedded in the foundation of the United States as it is today
and how it has shaped the ideology of several people charged with
running its institutions and creating its policies.
TURTLE MOUNTAIN JEWEL BEARING PLANT

In September 1953, Thomas Wazhashk sets his work jacket on The jewel bearing plant is a main source of well-paying work in the
the chair and lunchbox on the windowsill when he arrives at his area. The novel points out that it is rare in the 1950s that women
post as a night watchman at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing would be able to secure well-paying jobs over men, given the gender
Plant. At the plant, women apply thin slices of ruby, sapphire, norms of the time. The fact that the jewel bearings will be used for
and garnet onto spindles to prepare them for drilling. The jewel Department of Defense weapons is also notable; as Thomas and
bearings are then used by the Defense Department and in others fight against the U.S. government’s proposed Termination
Bulova watches. Women fill the desirable jobs because they do Bill, the jewel bearing plant (where Thomas works) manufactures
much better on exams testing manual dexterity. Thomas parts for weapons that will help the U.S. reinforce its military power,
considers himself lucky to have gotten his own job at the plant. which enables the country to administer its will on those with less
His name came from the muskrat, wazhashk, a “lowly,” power. Ultimately, though, while those on the Turtle Mountain
industrious rodent that loves water. Reservation have less power, the meaning of Thomas’s last name,
Wazhashk, muskrat, points toward how they will ultimately defeat
Arthur Watkins: through industrious, unglamorous hard work.
©2023 LitCharts LLC www.LitCharts.com Page 19

LARD ON BREAD
Pixie Paranteau fixes a jewel blank onto a block for drilling. Patrice bristles against the expectations others have for her. They
Rage helps her focus, and she fumes that everyone keeps think of her as “cute,” which connotes, to Patrice, something
calling her Pixie when she wants them to call her by her real childlike. Patrice wants to be taken seriously and to be thought of as
name, Patrice. Pixie means cute. But Patrice isn’t cute. She has a an adult because she has a job, she’s the main breadwinner for her
job. And she’s above the mess that happened when she family, and she feels like an adult and not a child. Mostly, though, in
accepted a ride from Bucky Duvalle and his friends when they her own life, Patrice doesn’t desire power so much as autonomy and
lied about what she had done. And Patrice is above finding the control. She doesn’t want to be at the whims of others, of men,
brown bile from her father’s binge on the blouse she left in the whether those men are Bucky Duvalle, who assaulted her the
kitchen. That morning she’d gotten a ride for the first time with summer before, or her father, who wreaks havoc on their family
Doris Lauder, a “white girl” new to the jewel plant. Patrice’s whenever he’s home.
best friend, Valentine Blue, had been there too, but the whole
time refused to use Pixie’s given name.
At the jewel plant, Mr. Walter Vold walks down the line, Walter Vold is another person who holds power, power that is tinged
“lurkishly” observing the women work. Walter doesn’t allow with lechery (how he “lurkishly” watches women) and that he uses
speech on the line, though the women still talk to one another to dehumanize others. At lunch, Patrice realizes that her father’s
all day. He leaves his office every few hours to do his outbursts have also rattled her to the point that she’s forgotten food
inspections. He tells Patrice she’s doing excellent work. At to eat. The women who she works with, though, come together in
lunch, with the cafeteria not yet set up, Patrice realizes she’d solidarity, counteracting the influence of individual men by coming
been so rattled by her father’s outbursts that she had forgotten together as a group and sharing food with Patrice.
to cook her bread; she only has dough. At first, she tries to eat
it, but then the other women pass her bits of food—a buttered
bun, an oatmeal cookie, half of a bacon sandwich—for her to
eat.
Doris gives Patrice and Valentine a ride home, and Pixie asks to Vera has left home with—or maybe has been taken away by—a new
be dropped off before the path to the house so that Doris won’t husband. Without Vera, Patrice feels like it’s just her against her
see their yard, which is filled with junk and debris. At home, her father, and she doesn’t have the same ability to neutralize him that
mother is boiling water for tea. Her brother, Pokey, is at boxing Vera does. And there’s no one to joke around with, to mitigate the
practice. Her sister, Vera, has gone to Minneapolis with her new pain with a sense of humor, which is a recurring theme throughout
husband through the Placement and Relocation Office, which the novel—particularly the way that humor can help soften
gave them some money, a place to live, and training for a job. suffering.
Pixie misses Vera and the way she would make fun of
everything. And without Vera, there’s no one to keep her father
in check, and no way to make jokes at his expense that help
soften the “shame” that comes with having him as a father. In
the kitchen, Patrice’s father pleads with her mother for money.
Patrice stacks wood behind the house. It would be Pokey’s job, Patrice’s position as the family’s main breadwinner is reinforced
but he’s at boxing practice. Pokey looks up to Patrice; she’s the here, as is her desire to eventually follow and find Vera. It’s also
first person in their family to have a job, not a job making a notable that Patrice thinks of her job, a reliable job that pays
living off the woods, like trapping, hunting, or berry-gathering, decently, as a “white-people job,” in part because it’s the kind of job
but a “white-people job.” Patrice saves a bit of every paycheck that hasn’t customarily been available to Native people.
so that she can eventually follow Vera, who seems to have
disappeared.

THE WATCHER
Thomas sits down at his night watchman job. He writes letters The novel references Thomas’s time in boarding school here,
using the Palmer Method of penmanship, which he had been foreshadowing the exploration of that time that will come later in
taught through painstaking exercises in boarding school. He the story. Thomas also “rewards himself” by writing letters to his
writes to a senator, then to a newspaper columnist he knows. children, showing that while he might be politically well-connected
He finishes, as a reward to himself, by writing to his son Archie to a certain extent, his true passion and joy come from his family
and daughter Ray. and from being a father.
Thomas drifts off to sleep. In his sleep, he sees a boy wearing Thomas sees the ghost of his boarding school classmate, Roderick,
the same canvas vest and pants that Thomas had worn at the for the first time. Roderick died after contracting tuberculosis as the
government boarding school. When he wakes up, he reads the result of harsh punishments at boarding school. Those boarding
newspaper, then other tribes’ newsletters, where he learns of a schools functioned with the stated purpose of “helping” Native
bill that indicates that Congress is “fed up” with Native people. people, but Roderick’s death shows how destructive those supposed
As he’s leaving, Thomas runs into the night janitor, LaBatte, and good intentions actually were. This is also the first mention of the
tells him about his dream of the little boy. LaBatte asks if the Termination Bill; Thomas then spends the rest of the novel trying to
little boy was Roderick, and Thomas tells him no, saying it had defeat that bill.
just been the motor of the bandsaw, which, out of the corner of
his eye, he had mistaken for a child.
THE SKIN TENT

Patrice wishes she had a watch so she could be sure to meet The connection between the jewel bearings made for watches at the
Doris and Valentine on time. If she doesn’t arrive on time, she’ll plant and the watch Patrice wants is notable. Patrice’s world is
lose her job and won’t be able to support her family. She feels governed by time, and being a second behind schedule could wreck
like “a skin tent,” like she’s the only barrier between her family her, and her family’s, lives. But, really, Patrice and her family are
and disaster. While Patrice is at work, her mother, Zhaanat, sits beholden not so much to time but to the bosses who enforce those
behind the door with an ax, on guard for when Patrice’s father rules, to the people who would fire Patrice for being late. Patrice,
returns. Zhaanat makes baskets and beadwork to sell, but her then, as well as her entire family, are at the whims of those with
real job is passing on knowledge to people who come, often more power, subject to their capriciousness with no clear way to
from far distances, to learn from her. Because of that exercise autonomy other than by doing what those in power want
knowledge, Zhaanat had been mostly kept out of school. and expect them to.
Patrice, on the other hand, grew up speaking Chippewa, but
she also had no trouble learning English and was valedictorian
of her class.
THREE MEN
Thomas and the tribal judge, Moses Montrose, meet at their The true, destructive, and dehumanizing intentions of the
meeting hall, which is really Henry’s Café. They talk about Termination Bill are cloaked in the language and rhetoric of
getting a new door for the jail, which has recently been kicked empowerment and helping. The word “emancipate” in particular
in, but the tribe is broke. Moses then tells Thomas that he has echoes the Emancipation Proclamation, shrouding the racism of the
seen the copy of a proposed bill that aims to “emancipate” bill’s authors and supporters behind a scrim of wordplay and the
Native people. When Thomas says he remembers hearing the pantomime of supposed good intentions.
word “emancipate,” Moses says he’s read the entire bill, and it
amounts to the same thing.

THE BOXING COACH

Lloyd Barnes’s smartest math student the year before also This section emphasizes the improvisation with which the
practices boxing with him. He goes by the name Wood community has faced issues related to a lack of resources in the
Mountain. Barnes is at the gym he’d set up at a community past: Barnes set up a gym in a community center; Wood Mountain
center, instructing his students. Wood Mountain took a made weights from scratch. In his coaching, Barnes also teaches
welding class and made weights for the gym by filling cans of all Pokey not to flinch when punches are thrown at him, a skill that is
sizes with sand and welding them back together. Barnes throws useful in the boxing ring but also serves as a larger metaphor for
punches at one of his students, Pokey, to teach him not to Pokey’s life. People will aim to harm him, the passage seems to say,
flinch. Barnes always drives Pokey home and insists on driving and when that happens, it’s important not to react with fear, but to
all the way down the path, even though it means he’ll have to stand there, ready to counter if necessary when the opportunity is
back out. At first, Barnes wanted to make sure things would be presented.
okay between Pokey and Pokey’s father. Then he saw Pixie, and
now, every time he drops Pokey off, he hopes he’ll see Pixie
again.
Barnes goes back home to the teachers’ quarters. The Barnes already sees himself, in some ways, as competing with Wood
caretaker/cook, Juggie Blue, always keeps a heaping plate of Mountain, even though Wood Mountain is ostensibly Barnes’s
food warm for him. Juggie is Wood Mountain’s mother. When student. This recourse to a competitive mindset, and the insecurity
Barnes goes back to the gym, Wood Mountain is already there, that it shows, foreshadows the competitiveness and jealousy that
working at a sawdust bag. Barnes tells Wood Mountain that Barnes will feel when it becomes clear that Wood Mountain also
he’s tightening up before he strikes and that he needs to relax. has feelings for Patrice.
As he helps Wood Mountain work out, Barnes’s arms start to
get tired, and he thinks that it’s a good thing he stopped fighting
before Wood Mountain started.
NOKO
Thomas wakes up. In the kitchen, his wife, Rose, has a kettle of Noko is experiencing some form of dementia, and Rose and Thomas
water going on the stove. Rose’s mother, Noko, dozes in a chair. try to alleviate her suffering using the limited means at their
When Noko wakes up, she has trouble recognizing Thomas and disposal while Sharlo brushes her hair. Thomas then goes to fetch
says, looking at Thomas, that the man she sees is old, while water with his son, Wade. The section as a whole shows how tightly
Thomas is a young man. Thomas’s daughter, Sharlo, brushes knit Thomas’s family is and also highlights how devoted Thomas is
Noko’s hair, and then Rose and Thomas put Noko to bed, to that family. In a sense, the family, as shown in this section, can be
placing a blanket under her to make the mattress more thought of as the most basic unit of solidarity and community, the
comfortable, which is the only thing they can think of that most fundamental form of coming together in the name of
might help alleviate her pain. Thomas then goes with his son something larger than your individual self.
Wade to haul drinking water. Wade, who has skipped grades
because he’s smart, tells Thomas that he got into a fight with a
boy in school who was picking on him. Thomas tells Wade he
doesn’t want him to fight, but if he did, he’d be as good as Wood
Mountain.

WATER EARTH
When Patrice returns home, she finds her mother’s family Gerald is a jiisikid, a kind of seer, who is trying to locate Vera. When
camped outside with frayed canvas tents and lean-to shelters he finally finds her, the cloth he sees across her throat seems to
stained with mud. Her cousin, Gerald, is a jiisikid and has come suggest that she’s in some kind of trouble, that she can’t breathe
to help the family find Vera. That night, Gerald flies for a long freely, and that she may have given birth to a child, a development
time, inhabited by a spirit. Eventually, he sees Vera, lying on her that will be significant for Patrice later.
back, wearing a dress with a cloth across her throat. Gerald
tells the family that he’s found Vera in the city, and he saw a
child beside her.
The next day, at work, Patrice gets a note from Betty Pye, who As information about Vera trickles in, Patrice starts to plan how
has just come back after being off for a week. The note says she’ll try and find her sister. Meanwhile, Barnes, who Patrice isn’t
that Betty’s cousin lives in the city and saw Vera and that interested in, has come to her house uninvited, not for the first time,
Patrice should be on the lookout for more news. The next day, with hopes of talking with her. Barnes’s fixation on his own desires
Patrice hitches a ride to the post office with Thomas, who sees (he wants to talk to Patrice) at the expense of caring about what
her on the road while he’s driving with Wade. Patrice reads the Patrice is going through (trying to find her missing sister) shows not
note from Betty out loud to him. Patrice walks back from the just Barnes’s obliviousness, but hints at the erasure of women’s
post office, needing time to think. When she gets home, she agency at the hands of men that will animate other parts of the
sees Barnes’s car stuck in the mud. He is trying to push it out novel, particularly Vera’s story. Barnes’s obliviousness is also
with Pokey behind the wheel. juxtaposed against Thomas’s selfless, community-minded action of
giving Patrice a ride simply because she needed one.
JUGGIE’S BOY
On the drive to Minot to see Wood Mountain fight, Thomas Joe Wobble’s family stealing land from Wood Mountain’s family
and his family debate how exactly he’ll beat Joe “Wobble” highlights how deeply-rooted, and intimate, exploitation of Native
Wobleszynski. Joe Wobble’s family, years back, had encroached people at the hands of white people is in the region, going back
on the land of Wood Mountain’s grandmother. Patrice and generations between families who still know each other. The
Valentine watch the fight too. During the fight, Wood Mountain injustice carried out by Joe Wobble’s ancestors is then echoed when
lets Joe Wobble’s punches slide off him without absorbing their someone rings the end-of-round bell 15 seconds early, an unseen
impact. Wood Mountain senses an opportunity and lands a authority acting unjustly on behalf of Joe, saving him from potential
combination. With Joe Wobble dazed, Wood Mountain steps defeat.
in, but the bell rings 15 seconds before the round is supposed
to end. “Foul! Foul! Fifteen seconds left,” Barnes yells.
On the ride home, Thomas remembers a trip south he took On a trip south with Wood Mountain’s father, Archille, Thomas also
with Wood Mountain’s father, Archille, and the discrimination faced racism, showing how racism against Native people has
and racism they faced. He then starts to talk to Archille, who permeated United States culture, regardless of region. That racism,
died years ago, and tells him how well Wood Mountain fought. then, has led to governmental policy, like the Termination Bill, which
He also tells Archille that he’s trying to fight the bill coming out aims to eliminate Native tribes.
of Washington. He doesn’t know what it is, he says, but he
knows that it’s not good.

VALENTINE’S DAYS
Mr. Vold tells Patrice that she has three days total that she can Patrice needs to travel to try and find her sister, who has
take off for work. After she explains that she needs to go to the disappeared. Even though Patrice’s trip is dire, potentially a matter
city to look for Vera, Mr. Vold says she can take a weeklong of Vera’s life and death, she is still at the mercy of the whims of a
leave of absence without pay. When Patrice asks if she can man in power. He gets to decide whether Patrice will keep her job or
think on it overnight, he says, “Go right ahead,” and he seems not if she goes. His power, though, is countered through Valentine’s
pleased with himself for offering this kind of false generosity. act of solidarity, her gracious offer to let Patrice use her sick days.
At the end of the workday, Valentine tells Patrice that she can Notably, Mr. Vold can act exploitatively with little to no regard for
use her sick days. She explains that she talked to Mr. Vold and, the humanity of people who work at the jewel bearing plant and still
under the circumstances, he’ll allow Valentine to let Patrice use think of himself as a good person, insulated by the rules and bylaws
her three sick days in addition to her own three days. of bureaucracy, which enable him to avoid looking at his actions
honestly.
Back home, Patrice packs for her trip. She goes to the As Patrice leaves to look for Vera, Zhaanat tells her not to disappear
Relocation Office to find a train schedule and then goes home too. The statement carries with it the ache that Zhaanat feels not
to get the money she has buried. She’ll get a ride with Doris to knowing where Vera is or what has happened to her, and also an
the train. “Don’t go disappear on me too,” Zhaanat whispers to acknowledgment of the threat that Patrice could potentially face on
Patrice as she leaves. her trip, an understanding that the place where she is going might
not be safe for her.
PUKKONS
Thomas carries his rifle on the trail to his father’s house, hoping Biboon expresses the strategy that will become the key to defeating
to scare out a partridge or deer. When he reaches his father’s the Termination Bill: they must fight it as a group, and as large of a
house, he tells his father about the bill coming from the group as possible. Solidarity, then, extends beyond individual
government and says that the government aims to take away communities and tribes to include diverse groups with common
the treaties. His father, Biboon, says that because they’re interests.
targeting other tribes as well, it might be possible to fight it as a
larger group.
PERFUME
On the ride to Rugby, Doris asks Patrice if she has a boyfriend. Patrice describes the sexual assault she experienced the summer
She says she’s heard that Barnes likes her. Patrice says she before. It’s an example of the violence that often, though not always,
hasn’t heard anything about it. After a while, Doris asks her accompanies sex in the novel. Patrice is able to escape when she
what she thinks of Bucky Duvalle, and to Patrice, it’s like fights back and swims to the boat belonging to Thomas, a man with
someone is poking an electric wire into her brain. Patrice tells power and standing in the community who uses what standing he
Doris about how Bucky and his friends gave her a ride last has to help others instead of using it to try and get what he wants.
summer and at first promised and then refused to take her
where she wanted to go. They trapped her, and Bucky threw
himself at her, then they took her down the road to have a
“picnic” at Fish Lake, where Patrice pretended to go along with
what they wanted. But then she jumped into the lake and swam
to her uncle, Thomas’s, boat.

Doris tells Patrice that her brother is friends with Bucky. Patrice confronts complex and competing loyalties while she’s
Patrice understands then that Doris’s brother was one of the talking to Doris, complicating the novel’s theme of solidarity. On the
boys in the car with Bucky and that Doris heard about what one hand, Patrice might expect Doris, a new friend from the jewel
had happened from him. Patrice knows she can’t trust Doris bearing plant, to understand how horrific her experience in the car
anymore. Patrice asks what her brother said, and Doris says was, that it was sexual assault that would have escalated if she
that he told her that “Bucky was a jackass” and that he didn’t hadn’t escaped. When Patrice understands that Doris’s brother was
know why Patrice went into the bushes with him. Patrice says in the car, though, Patrice knows she can’t trust Doris, that Doris
that’s not what happened, and Doris says she defended Patrice will potentially twist events without regard for what actually
to her brother. She then says that her brother told her that happened, until those events fit the narrative her brother told her,
Bucky made him say that. When Patrice asks why, Doris tells that she’ll ultimately betray Patrice if it helps her brother save face
her that Bucky thinks if he ruins Patrice’s reputation, then she’ll or maintain some kind of innocence. Doris seals her after-the-fact
have no choice but to pick him, as he’ll be the only option left. complicity in what her brother did by bemoaning Patrice’s inability
Doris says that Bucky likes her just like Barnes does. She tells to be happy that someone likes her, a sentiment that shows how
Patrice she should be glad that at least someone likes her. gender norms and expectations of the time didn’t just lead to
gender-based violence by men directed against women, but also
impacted how women interacted with each other.
THE IRON
At home, when Thomas steps inside, Rose is busy ironing. She’d Again, the actual intentions of the Termination Bill are shrouded by
asked for a plug-in iron before they had had electricity. It didn’t language that connotes empowerment, and the word “emancipate”
quite make sense to buy one, but Thomas bought it anyway, and specifically aims to link the Termination Bill with the Emancipation
Rose guarded it and kept it shined like a trophy. Later, Thomas Proclamation in the minds of people in the 1950s. The supporters
wakes up at 11:04 p.m. to go to work. He’s been a night and writers of the Termination Bill can hide their racism by claiming
watchman for seven months. At first, he could do his role as to be acting in the best interest of the people they aim to harm and
chairman of the Turtle Mountain Advisory Committee in the against whom they are prejudiced. This is part of why Erdrich may
afternoons and evenings, but now that the government has have written a novel focusing on this period of history in the 21st
introduced its bill, he has more and more work. In the century, and why she opens and closes the novel with nonfiction
newspaper, he reads that the United States Congress intends segments situating the events of the novel in a historical context;
to “emancipate” Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and through Erdrich’s telling, it becomes clear that the same kinds of
Thomas thinks of the treaties that his father and grandfather tactics are still used in politics and political discourse to this day and
had signed and that were supposed to last in perpetuity. that the events of the novel both directly impact, and are in
communication with, the present moment.
THE FRUIT CRATE

In his mind, Barnes, a math teacher, attaches numbers to Zhaanat has noticed that Barnes is interested in Patrice and that
people. Patrice he sees as a 26, even though she’s just 19. He Patrice isn’t interested in Barnes. This disparity in affection could be
loves the curl of the two and loop of the six. One night, he harmless, but Zhaanat also knows that it could lead somewhere
brings Pokey home and says he’ll stop in to meet his parents, truly destructive, that if Patrice tried to reject Barnes, his true
who he hasn’t met before. While Barnes, Pokey, and Zhaanat ugliness might come out (as Zhaanat warns Patrice later in the
are eating, Pokey says his mother wants to know why Barnes story). With that in mind, Zhaanat tries, ultimately unsuccessfully,
has come. Barnes says he’s just come to visit. Pokey’s mother to dissuade Barnes from taking an interest in Patrice. Interestingly,
speaks again in Chippewa, and Pokey translates to Barnes. Barnes’s association between Patrice and the number 26
Zhaanat has said that Pixie doesn’t like him, and she doesn’t like foreshadows Patrice going to Log Jam 26 later in the novel.
him because he smells bad.

A SEAT ON THE TRAIN

On the train, Patrice is unsure what to do when a man asks her Patrice is at the very beginning of her journey and already she
to change seats so he and his wife can sit together. A different experiences the discomfort and shock of being in a new and strange
man volunteers to switch seats. The man who wants Patrice to situation where you don’t know the rules and norms. She also
move says, “You two belong together.” When the other man sits experiences racism almost immediately, foreshadowing the dangers
next to Patrice, she sees that it’s Wood Mountain. He says he’s of the world that Patrice will enter when she follows Wood
getting off in Fargo, where he has a fight, and talks about his Mountain’s advice to find the “scum.”
training process. When Patrice tells him her plan to find Vera,
he tells her that if she wants to find Vera, she should find the
“scum.”
A BILL
At work, Thomas reads through Congress’s proposed bill. As he As Thomas reads through the Termination Bill, he dismantles the
reads, he automatically replaces the word “emancipate” with language tricks that the bill’s author is trying to play. After he talks
“terminate” in his mind. In the news, the author of the bill used to Martin, he also begins to consider the role that religion plays in
lofty words like freedom and equality to cloak the truth, which the racism that motivated Arthur Watkins to propose the bill in the
is that he aimed for “termination.” Earlier in the morning, first place.
Thomas had talked with his friend, Martin Cross, a tribal
chairman of Fort Berthold. Martin tells Thomas that the man
who proposed the bill, Arthur V. Watkins, is the most powerful
person in Congress and, though he’s not sure if it matters or
not, that the man is a Mormon. Martin says it’s in their religion
to “change Indians into whites” and that “they think if you
follow their ways your skin will bleach out.”
WHO? [1]
At work the next night, Thomas reads through the bill again. He Thomas compares the physical violence Native people have
thinks about all that Native people have survived—smallpox, endured to the latest political and bureaucratic attempt to
the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss rifle, eliminate them. On the surface, the political tactics might seem less
tuberculosis—and thinks they’ll ultimately be defeated by a violent, but if they were to be more successful than all past attempts
collection of tedious words. He drifts off to sleep, and when he to eliminate Native people, then the violence contained in those
wakes up, he hears an owl. He goes outside to see it more tactics becomes clear.
clearly. Later, next to his time stamp, which is a few minutes late
and should have been punched on the hour, he writes, “Went
outside to answer Snowy Owl’s question, Who? Owl not satisfied
with answer.”
INDIAN JOKE
The next day, when Mr. Vold sees what Thomas wrote on his LaBatte interprets Thomas’s sighting of an owl, a bird that can hold
time card about the owl, he interprets it as a cryptic joke. significance in Chippewa culture, as an omen of death. Thomas’s
LaBatte plays along and offers an interpretation about Thomas inscription on his time card, though, makes any straightforward
smoking Snowy Owl brand cigars, but once he leaves Vold’s reading of the owl as a symbol in the novel difficult. While Mr. Vold
office, he stops laughing. If Thomas had seen an owl, LaBatte attempts his own interpretation—and seems to widely miss the
thinks, that would mean a death soon. He then shuffles through mark—later in the story the reader will find out that Thomas also
mental lists of who might die. recognizes the owl as a symbol, but doesn’t interpret it as
superstitiously as he believes LaBatte does.

WHO? [2]
Thomas is part of the “after-the-buffalo-who-are-we-now Thomas expresses one of the main themes of the novel here.
generation,” and it is up to them to determine their own Countless times, the most harmful acts—against Native people and
identity. But how could they figure out and maintain that others—have been done by people with supposed good intentions.
identity, he wonders, when the people who sought to take it Whether it was people who started the boarding schools through
from them often came with outstretched arms, seeking to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which ended up causing significant
crush them with what they called love? damage, or Arthur Watkins, it can be hard to protect yourself from
people who claim, and might even believe, that they are your
friends.
FLAGS
The year he went to boarding school, his father was gaunt, and This chapter illustrates the harm that boarding schools caused.
Thomas was always hungry. Thomas’s mother had been torn While they claimed to be built to benefit Native people, their true
about whether to cut his hair before he went because they motive was to attempt to eliminate Native culture. In place of
would cut it off when he went to school. To cut hair meant that Native culture, the schools attempted to inculcate into students the
someone had died, a form of grieving. She decided to cut it off kind of United States nationalism represented by the Pledge of
and hang it in the woods so that Thomas would have to come Allegiance and the sentiment that one should die for the flag.
home. At school, one of the first things Thomas noticed was the
blue flag. The teacher told him to put his hand over his heart
and recite words while looking at it. He had been there for a
few months when he heard the phrase about a flag that you
should die for and a chill went through his body.
LOG JAM 26
When Wood Mountain is about to leave the train at Fargo, he Patrice feels herself growing fonder of Wood Mountain, but, after
copies down the addresses where Patrice is going to check for seeing what alcohol has done to her father, she is ready to relinquish
Vera. Patrice gives him two addresses but has another address those feelings and never speak to him again if he goes into a bar,
that she doesn’t tell Wood Mountain about. That address is for illustrating Patrice’s independence and willingness to stand up for
Bernadette, Wood Mountain’s half-sister. When Wood herself.
Mountain gets off the train, he walks toward a bar. If he goes in,
Patrice thinks, she’ll never speak to him again, but he walks
past.
When Patrice arrives in Minneapolis, she doesn’t know how Patrice finds herself again in a new situation with unfamiliar norms
she’ll get to the first address where she wants to go. She asks a and expectations where she’s not sure what to do. The man who
woman working at the ticket window, who says that she can gives her a ride takes advantage of that. While leading Patrice into a
take a taxi, and Patrice thinks, of course, just like in a story in a bad situation, he also claims to be acting in her best interest.
magazine. After she sits down on a bench by the curb, a car
pulls up. She shows the address to the driver and asks how
much it will cost. The driver says it will be free because he’s
going there anyway. The driver tells Patrice to sit up front, but
that doesn’t seem right to her, so she sits in the back. The man
smells like Barnes, Patrice thinks, but also like he’s already had
a drink.

The driver says his name is Earl. He pulls up to a place with When they arrive at a bar, which Patrice doesn’t want to enter, Earl
neon letters over the door that say Log Jam 26. To Patrice, it takes Patrice in by force. The charade of his good intentions has
looks like a bar, and she says she doesn’t go into bars. The man been broken, but Patrice also doesn’t have the power, on her own, to
says it’s not a bar. When Patrice gets out, the man tries to push overcome him.
her forward, and then another man comes, and the two of them
hold her by the elbows and force her through the doors. In the
middle of the club, Patrice sees a lighted tank of water.
Patrice crumples on the floor and yells out that the men are Jack Malloy acts similarly to how Earl acted (and similar to how
trying to kidnap her. A third man approaches and asks Earl if Arthur Watkins frames his intentions): though he ultimately aims to
that’s true. The third man apologizes to Patrice and introduces harm Patrice for his own benefit (by making money off her
himself as Jack Malloy. Patrice tells the man that her name is performance), Jack claims to be helping her out and offering her
Doris Barnes, and Jack offers Patrice a hamburger. He also something for her own good.
offers her a job and explains that it would be swimming in the
tank of water wearing a costume like an ox. He tells Patrice
that it’s 50 dollars a night plus she gets to keep her tips every
other night. Patrice says she’ll look at the outfit just for fun.
Jack takes her to a dressing room and shows her a blue wetsuit
with the hands and feet painted white like hooves. When Jack
asks if she’ll try on what he calls the “waterjack” costume,
Patrice says that she certainly won’t.
When Patrice brings up finding her sister again, Jack offers to Jack continues his charade that he’s helping Patrice by taking her to
help her look and says that she can stay in the dressing room at different addresses to look for Vera. Patrice begins to understand
Log Jam 26. The whites of his eyes are yellow. Eventually, that something’s really wrong, though, when she realizes that the
Patrice says that she’ll let Jack drive her where she wants to go. car Earl drove to attempt to kidnap her is actually Jack’s.
Jack says they’ll part ways if Patrice finds her sister, and if not,
Patrice will do the waterjack show. As she goes to get in Jack’s
car—the same car Earl had been driving before—she thinks that
more new things have happened to her in the past day than in
the rest of her life.
THE WAKE-UP SHAVE

Thomas, tired at work, sees Roderick again perched on the This chapter shows Thomas’s ingenuity and also reveals his
band saw. He takes out his shaving kit, which he’d brought from optimism and the humor he uses to address challenges. Instead of
home as a kind of experiment. Maybe shaving might wake him lamenting where he is, that he has to stay up all night for his job and
up, he thinks. It works. And that morning, and every morning is having a hard time doing it, Thomas looks for a novel solution,
after, he greets the morning shift with a perfect shave and which ends up working.
combed hair.

THE OLD MUSKRAT

Thomas talks with his father, Biboon, about strategies to fight Biboon helps Thomas to come up with plans for the kind of
the proposed bill in Congress. Biboon tells Thomas what they community actions that might be most effective when taking on the
did when he was younger to keep their land, the contracts they powerful. He also points out that the treaties signed by people in his
signed, petitions they started. Biboon says the treaties were a generation were supposed to last in perpetuity, and the institution
promise to exchange what Congress gave them for the use of that guaranteed that, the United States government, is the same
Native land and are supposed to last as “long as the grass grows one that is now trying to pretend those agreements didn’t happen.
and rivers flow.” Thomas says they are still using Native land,
but they are trying to pretend they didn’t sign a contract to pay
rent.
Thomas then convenes a meeting of the advisory committee at Thomas begins to enact some of the plans that he talked about with
the community center to talk about the bill, House Concurrent Biboon, like starting a petition. The advisory committee, notably
Resolution 108, or HCR 108. Joyce Asiginak says that they working as a group rather than as individuals, also decides to cut
want to relocate Native people, but “relocate” is a fancy word through the language tricks of the bill’s author by referring to it as
for “remove.” As a group, they decide to explore possibilities for the Termination Bill, highlighting the bill’s true intentions rather
taking action. They start a petition, which Louis will take to get than let those intentions be disguised by the bland and innocuous-
signed by as many people as possible, and they move to start sounding HCR 108.
referring to HCR 108 as the Termination Bill.
THE WATERJACK
Patrice goes with Jack to the first address she has to look for There’s something foreboding about the first house that Patrice
Vera. The yard is dead, and the front steps have collapsed. visits. She’ll find out more later, when she returns, but at this point
Patrice knocks on the window next to the door. A dog barks, she isn’t quite sure what to make of the troubling sensation that
and its bark is high and whining and anxious to live. Patrice feels comes over her.
tears in her eyes. She calls out Vera’s name. Eventually, she
gives up and decides to go on to the second address. Jack says
that he’s familiar with the building and that if Patrice finds Vera
there, it won’t be good.
At the next place, Patrice goes to each apartment but doesn’t Jack continuously tries to shake Patrice off her plan by telling her
get an answer. Jack says that it must be exhausting for Patrice that the places she wants to visit are dangerous and that she
and that they can set up a cot in the dressing room so she can shouldn’t go. Again, his claim to be acting in Patrice’s best interests
rest. Patrice, though, wrenches her arm from him and tells him starts to become more suspicious.
she wants to go to the third address, which belongs to
Bernadette Blue. Jack asks if she means Bernie Blue and if the
two of them are friends. Patrice tells him a friend gave her
Bernadette’s address so she could stay there if she needed to.
Jack says she’d be better off staying at Log Jam 26. When they
get back to the bar, Patrice says she’ll consider being the
waterjack if she can get the tips every night instead of just
every other night.

The next morning, Patrice agrees to be the waterjack. She puts This chapter directly references another of the story’s main themes,
on the suit, and Jack shows her the moves that the waterjack the way that humor can help to soften pain and suffering. After she
does, moving his shoulders and hips and then doing a “tush agrees to be the waterjack, Patrice is surprised by the person she
wag” before blowing kisses over his shoulder. As she waits to has become in just a couple of days, and she uses humor
be lowered into the tank, Patrice wonders what her mother intertwined with danger and pain, which she thinks of as being
would think of her. She thinks to herself in Chippewa, “mayagi. embedded in the Chippewa language, to comprehend her own
Strange. Maama kaajiig. Strange people. Gawiin ingikendizo transformation.
siin. I am a stranger to myself.” Patrice thinks that the feeling is
one that can only be expressed in Chippewa, where the
strangeness is humorous and the danger something you could
laugh at, though you might get hurt as well.
LEFT HOOK
Barnes waits for Wood Mountain at a restaurant in the Powers Barnes starts to feel acutely jealous of Wood Mountain, afraid that
Hotel in Fargo. When Wood Mountain arrives, Barnes tells him Patrice might like Wood Mountain more than she likes him. Wood
that the fight is off, and Wood Mountain presses his fingers Mountain intentionally pushes Barnes’s buttons, but he isn’t just
together, trying to cloak how disappointed he is. Wood interested in continuing the competition that Barnes seems to be
Mountain tells Barnes he saw Patrice on the train, and that, waging with him. Instead, Wood Mountain also seems genuinely
since he doesn’t have a fight, he might go down to Minneapolis concerned, unlike Barnes, with Patrice’s well-being, and he boards a
to make sure she’s doing okay. Wood Mountain knows what train to Minneapolis to make sure that she is doing okay.
he’s doing by wheedling Barnes like this. But he’s sick of Barnes
taking an interest in Patrice and, from Pokey, Wood Mountain
knows that Patrice is sick of it too. Wood Mountain tells Barnes
he’s sure Patrice will be fine and that he plans to go home, but
when he goes to the train station, Wood Mountain hears
himself asking for a ticket to Minneapolis.
LOUIS PIPESTONE
Louis Pipestone, who has racing horses, drives to Zhaanat’s Louis Pipestone is in charge of circulating the petition, which helps
house, where he plans to get her to sign the petition against the garner support for the effort to oppose the Termination Bill and also
Termination Bill. Pokey is too young to sign, but he listens to helps in simply spreading awareness. The petition—a collection of
what Louis says, and then helps his mother sign. Louis leaves signatures—is also a perfect symbol to show that the effort doesn’t
and gets a remarkable number of signatures before going to involve just Thomas, or just the advisory committee, but the entire
Thomas’s house, where they talk more about how to counter community.
the bill.
AJAX
At night, Thomas and Rose lay side by side, and Thomas tells This chapter illustrates again the way that humor, pain, and danger
her that he had a drink. Rose says she’ll kill him if he takes can be intertwined. The story about Wade making biscuits with Ajax
another. Thomas asks if she’ll poison him. Rose asks if he is funny, but at the same time, it could have actually harmed
remembers the biscuits from a few days ago. She tells him that Thomas. Similarly, Rose tells the story in response to Thomas saying
Wade made them and couldn’t find baking powder. He held up he had a drink; she responds to that news with humor, but there’s
what he had used instead, and Rose saw that it was a can of also the sense that Thomas drinking could cause serious damage
Ajax powder. So, she tells Thomas, he’s already been poisoned. and could be dangerous, both to himself and his family.
But please don’t take another drink, she says. Thomas promises
that he won’t.

IRON TULIP
Patrice is lowered into the tank wearing the waterjack While Patrice doesn’t enjoy some of the more lewd or sexually
costume. She swings around on the rope with her leg pointed explicit aspects of the waterjack performance, she doesn’t seem to
up behind her. She remembers there are weights, props, at the entirely dislike performing. In other words, the novel establishes that
bottom and reaches for a pink one before realizing it is a neither the performance itself nor its sexual nature amount to
“shocking object.” She instead picks up an iron tulip, which she exploitation, and Patrice is still able to exercise agency in that
pretends to smell while looking over her shoulder. Twenty performance and in her decision to perform, which shows the
minutes pass easily, and when she gets out, Jack tells her that novel’s nuanced perspective on sex and gender dynamics. However,
she’s a sensation. the relationship between Jack and Patrice becomes more easily
understood as straightforwardly exploitative, and as one that has
erased Patrice’s agency, later on.
The next morning, Patrice takes a taxi to the first place where As she continues to look for Vera, Patrice also starts to look for
she looked for Vera. She also shows the driver the address of evidence that Jack is not actually helping her, as he claims to be.
the second place, which Jack had said was dangerous. Patrice When she returns to the first address where she looked for Vera, she
asks the driver if there’s anything wrong with the address, and finds an unsettling scene, which foreshadows the danger that Vera
he says not that he knows of. At the first place, she sticks a fork is in.
into rotted wood by the door handle to pry the lock loose. In
one of the rooms, she finds a dog at the end of a chain bolted to
the wall, pale, its bones sticking out. In each of the other rooms,
she finds a filthy mat, urine, and feces. And in each room, she
finds a chain with a dog collar at the end of each one. In the
bathroom, she finds dried blood and two used diapers.
Patrice goes back to the dog and asks where Vera is. The dog At the second address, after Jack shows up, Patrice also starts to get
gives four more breaths before a rheumatic sigh. Jack pulls up a sense of the danger that she might be in when she sees Hilda, the
outside. Patrice says they should go back to the other address, previous waterjack, who is now gaunt and bald. It’s not clear yet
and Jack says that no, they’re not going there. But Patrice that she became sick as a result of being the waterjack, or that Jack
insists. Patrice knocks on every door. From behind one door, is knowingly putting Patrice in harm’s way for his own gain, but the
someone asks who it is and Patrice says it’s the waterjack. The encounter is unsettling for Patrice.
woman who opens the door is gaunt and bald, and her name is
Hilda, the name of the person who had been the waterjack
before Patrice. Jack whisks Patrice away, and she asks if that
was Hilda. Jack says she’s angry at him because of professional
standards. Patrice fights Jack off and bangs on the door, but no
one comes to answer.

At Patrice’s insistence, they go next to Bernadette’s house. This section presents another complication in the novel’s theme of
When Bernadette recognizes Patrice, she cries out with solidarity and community action. While Patrice knows Bernadette,
“sorrow and intensity.” Patrice asks her where Vera is, and and Bernadette is ostensibly helping Vera by taking care of her
Bernadette says that she ran away and left Bernadette with the child, she isn’t doing so because she wants to, or out of a sense of
baby. Patrice tells her she’s not taking the baby until solidarity with Vera or Patrice, or because she wants to help Patrice
Bernadette gives her Vera. Bernadette says she doesn’t know fight against the more powerful people who may have taken Vera.
where Vera is, and Patrice tells her to find out then. Instead, Bernadette does it because it's not clear that there’s
another option. As soon as another option shows up—once Patrice
walks through the door—Bernadette wants to wash her hands of
the situation and be done with it.
WOODLAND BEAUTY
Wood Mountain gets off the train and walks to his sister To Wood Mountain, Bernadette reveals information about Jack
Bernadette’s house. Bernadette tells him that Patrice had been that’s been withheld from the reader up to this point. It’s implied,
there and that she was with Jack, who looked sickly and skinny. too, that Jack’s desire to fuel his addiction might be his motivation
She says he’s been a functioning “junkie” for years. Bernadette for exploiting people like Patrice.
says that her husband Cal wouldn’t believe Wood Mountain is
Bernadette’s brother and wouldn’t want him to stay with them,
so he goes to look for other accommodations.
Wood Mountain finds a room in the hotel next to Log Jam 26. This is the first time it’s revealed that there is something to do with
Later, after dinner, he goes to the bar and sees the glowing the waterjack costume that is poisoning the people who wear it,
water tank in the middle. A cardboard sign on the table reads, which shows the ways that Jack has exploited Patrice, and the
“Exotic Attraction! Woodland Beauty! Our Own World-Famous previous waterjacks, by luring them into a potentially deadly
Waterjack.” The waitress tells Wood Mountain that the current situation without them having any idea what they’re signing up for.
waterjack is the third one, that the first one died and the In that way, Jack has erased Patrice’s agency, disregarding her
second is fading fast. When the waterjack begins the show, humanity to try and use her to get what he wants.
Wood Mountain doesn’t pay much attention at first. But when
he looks closer, he sees that it’s Patrice. He walks toward the
tank, and when he raises a fist to pound on the glass, he’s seized
and dragged out the door.
After the show, when the waitress brings Patrice her meal, she Though it didn’t register at first, now Patrice realizes the horror of
also passes Patrice a note from Wood Mountain. The note says what she saw earlier as she begins to understand that humans had
that he tried to get her attention but got thrown out and that been chained to the walls in that house, again providing a glimpse of
he’s at the hotel next door in room 328. As she drifts off to the kind of violence that Vera is experiencing.
sleep, she has a sudden shock of clarity. Back at the first house
where she checked for Vera, she realizes the collar at the end of
the chain wasn’t a regular dog collar. It didn’t buckle. And it had
been cut in two. You would need pliers to remove the chain
attached to the collar. “And the dried shit in the corner,” she
realizes, “was human.”

THE AVERAGE WOMAN AND THE EMPTY TANK

Louis Pipestone works on the petition fastidiously, getting as Again, it’s made clear that the whole community will have to come
many signatures as possible, while Juggie Blue types a copy together to fight against the Termination Bill. Roderick’s story also
onto mimeograph paper so they’ll have more than one copy. At comes into clearer focus here, showing the ways that the boarding
work, Thomas writes a desperate letter to Senator Milton R. school, ostensibly designed to help him, ended up making him sick
Young. He then carries on a conversation with Roderick, who and killing him.
says that he’s not there to see Thomas, but LaBatte, whose jail
time he took on earlier by saying he did what LaBatte actually
did. Roderick then talks about going to the sanatorium to be
treated for the tuberculosis that he eventually died from.
In the morning, Thomas tells LaBatte that he saw Roderick last Instead of reprimanding him or turning him in to the authorities,
night and that Roderick was there to save LaBatte, who he said when Thomas finds out that LaBatte is planning to steal from the
was planning on stealing the jewels from the plant. LaBatte jewel bearing plant, he gives LaBatte money, an act of solidarity and
doesn’t deny it. He says he had a string of bad luck and needs looking out for another person. LaBatte, even though he doesn’t
money. Thomas gives LaBatte some money and then finds really have anything to give, responds by giving the food he has for
LaBatte’s lunch box, full, waiting for him in his car. lunch to Thomas.
THE MISSIONARIES
Two Mormon missionaries arrive at Thomas’s house. When The Mormon missionaries walk away from Thomas’s house “full of
Senator Watkins’s name is brought up, Thomas asks them why mystifying purpose,” a statement that hints at the idea that the
he wants to terminate Native people. One of the elders says Mormon missionaries—and maybe, by extension, Arthur Watkins as
that Watkins doesn’t want that at all. Thomas says he wants to well—do what they do, however wrongheaded or misguided it might
know who Senator Watkins is and what his message is. One of be, out of sincere conviction rather than manipulative
the elders hands Thomas a small book with a black cover. As maneuvering.
they walk away down the road, the elders walk in a straight line,
side by side, “full of mystifying purpose.”
THE BEGINNING
Thomas visits his father, Biboon, gives him a pinch of tobacco, The muskrat might not be the most valued or celebrated animal,
and asks for the story of his name. His father says that in the but, according to the creation story that Biboon tells, its efforts were
beginning, the world was covered in water. The creator lined up essential for the creation of the Earth. The novel as a whole follows
the best divers, but when they dove, none could find the an arc similar to that of the creation story. While Thomas might not
bottom. Finally, the creator landed on the muskrat, and when hold a conspicuous position of power, his industry and ingenuity
the muskrat dove, it came back up drowned but with a little bit prove essential for combatting the threat posed by the Termination
of silt in its paw. From that, the creator made the whole earth. Bill, Arthur Watkins, and the United States government.

THE TEMPLE BEGGAR

Patrice locks herself in her room and tells herself to wake up At this point, Patrice knows that Jack has been lying to her and that
when it’s pitch dark. When she wakes up, she finds her bag, her he put her in a situation that, if she hadn’t found a way to escape,
shoes, her coat. When she opens the door, she sees Jack could have killed her. Still, when Patrice sees him in the midst of a
slumped against the wall, his legs stretched straight out. His potential overdose in the hallway, she alerts someone who might be
eyes roll back in his head like a slot machine. Patrice makes her able to help him, showing that she is willing to go out of her way to
way to the hotel next door and then to Wood Mountain’s room. help others even when those people wouldn’t help her. At the same
As they leave to go to Bernadette’s, Patrice tells the attendant time, Wood Mountain has gone out of his way to try and support
at the hotel that Jack from next door is dying in the alley. When and be there for Patrice, and both of them will care for Vera’s baby,
they reach Bernadette’s she gives them some food and they illustrating in another way how essential solidarity is for the
take Vera’s baby with them before taking the train back home. characters in the novel to survive.
Patrice tells the baby that she’ll take care of him until Vera
comes home.
WILD ROOSTER
Thomas and other members of the advisory committee are in a Though they’re on the way to a meeting about a bill that could
car, driving to Fargo for a meeting to make their opposition to terminate their tribe, the members of the advisory committee still
the Termination Bill known. They joke with one another along joke along the way, showing again how humor is used as a tool to
the way. In Fargo, Thomas stays with Moses’s cousin Nancy and cope with challenges.
her husband, George.
ARTHUR V. WATKINS
If Arthur V. Watkins had been a boxer, which he wasn’t, he Arthur V. Watkins might be “ideal-looking” and “respectable,” but
would have been a brawler, surprising for someone who looks this chapter points out that even though he won’t get his hands
so “ideal-looking” and respectable. Joseph Smith and early bloody, he is every bit as violent as those who killed Native people
Mormons tried to kill all Native people on their way across the before him.
country. Arthur V. Watkins, on the other hand, uses the power
granted by his office to achieve the same thing, and he doesn’t
have to get “his hands bloody.”
COOL FINE
As they walk back to Patrice’s home, Wood Mountain tells Wood Mountain shows how much he already cares about Vera’s
Patrice that he thought of a temporary name for the baby: baby by naming him (temporarily, he says) after his father. Though
Archille, after his father. Patrice, though, keeps using she continues to develop feelings for Wood Mountain, she also
Gwiizikens for the baby, meaning little boy. Falling in love with remains attached to her independence and seems unwilling to give
Wood Mountain is how things would normally go, but she it up to follow the expected path of falling in love and getting
continues to say things she knows will discourage him. She married.
admits to herself, though, that it is much easier to discourage
Barnes than Wood Mountain.

At home, Patrice tells Zhaanat that she wasn’t able to find Vera With Vera still missing, the people in her life, even people like Wood
and only brought the Little Boy home. Eventually, Zhaanat Mountain who Vera might not know especially well, step in to be
gathers herself and takes the baby inside. Her thinking, as a surrogate parents for her child, strengthening the bonds of their
whole, is built on using great care with everything around her. family and community. Zhaanat’s desire to attempt to nurse the
She begins to nurse the baby, even though she doesn’t have baby, even though she doesn’t have milk to give, is another example
milk, saying that in the old days, when a baby’s mother couldn’t of how far people in the community will go in their efforts to support
nurse, older women could sometimes take on that role. one another.
THE TORUS
The next morning, Patrice goes to work with Doris and Similar to how Thomas and others are mobilizing the committee to
Valentine. At work, by the end of the day, people have promised help in the effort to oppose the Termination Bill, the larger
to give her more bottles, weeks’ worth of diapers, a diaper community also steps in and acts in solidarity with Patrice and her
bucket, baby clothes. Betty Pye tells Patrice about a woman family when they need help.
who might sell her leftover formula.
METAL BLINDS
The meeting in Fargo is held in a judicial building. As John This section highlights the ways that those in power have often
Cooper reads through the legislation, Thomas is frustrated. operated in bad faith, trying to hide their true motives behind
About 12 people there either don’t speak English or have a bureaucratic language or by using language that they know the
hard time understanding it and have gone to great expense and people they’re talking to won’t fully understand.
effort to be there. As they have for generation after generation,
they attempt to understand “a white man reading endlessly
from a sheaf of papers.”
After John Cooper finishes reading through the bill, Thomas The language games continue in this passage, as Mr. Holmes uses
and the group he traveled with voice their frustration. Mr. words like “equal” and “relocate” when he means, as Joyce Asiginak
Holmes says that according to the bill, there won’t be any says, “stripped of your rights” and “forcibly relocated.” The vote at
further government service for the Turtle Mountain people. the end also offers a straightforward rebuke to those kinds of
“You will now be equal with whites as far as the government is obfuscations as well as Arthur Watkins's claims to be acting in the
concerned,” he says. Joyce Asiginak says that their rights will best interests of Native people. If the Termination Bill were actually
decrease, so for them, it doesn’t seem like they’ll be equal. Mr. in the best interests of Native people, then why would they be
Holmes says that they will be relocated to other places with unable to garner a single vote of support among people who the bill
equal levels of opportunity, and Juggie Blue says that they don’t claims to want to help?
want to leave their homes. Eddy Mink adds that the services
the government provides to Native people are similar to rent,
rent payment for use of the entire United States. At the end,
they take a vote. For the bill: 0. Against: 47.
After the meeting, the group goes to dinner. When Thomas Thomas’s initial reaction to seeing Patrice’s father is to try and help
walks out of the restaurant, he sees Pogo Paranteau, Patrice’s him and take him home. After thinking for a second, though, he
father, who is drunk. At first, Thomas tries to get Pogo to let decides that it would be better for Patrice’s family if he didn’t, which
them take him home. Eventually, he gives up, thinking that it shows just how much damage Paranteau has caused and how much
would be better to let him stay in Fargo than return home he is still capable of causing. It also shows the consideration that
where he would have been a terror to his family. Thomas has for the people in his life.

X=?
Barnes feels anger rising in him, wondering how he’ll deal with Barnes is consumed by a kind of jealous anger, bordering on rage. He
Wood Mountain’s betrayal. After all the training he’s given feels this jealousy, which has a tinge of threat to it, without any
Wood Mountain, how could he go and pursue Patrice, who apparent regard as to whether Patrice reciprocates his feelings (she
Wood Mountain knew Barnes liked? Later, while teaching doesn’t) or consideration of what might be best for Patrice in the
algebra, Barnes constructs an equation in his mind, trying to given situation.
gauge his romantic chances with Patrice by totaling up how
good-looking and pleasant Wood Mountain is versus himself.
After boxing practice, Wood Mountain goes with Pokey back to
Pokey’s house to see Patrice, or the baby, or both, but when he
gets there, Patrice is asleep.
Barnes drives Wade home and talks with Thomas about the Thomas explains to Barnes, in the simplest terms he can find, why
meeting and the bill. Barnes says he doesn’t see why it seems so the genocide of Native people, followed by the continued
bad and that it seems like they’ll have the chance to be “regular persecution of Native people by the U.S. government, is wrong. Even
Americans.” Thomas tries to explain to Barnes the difference Barnes seems to understand the point he’s making.
between Native people and people of European descent in the
U.S. He asks Barnes what he would think if Native people had
landed in Europe, killed almost everyone, taken their land, then
made everyone take on their culture and language. Barnes says
he wouldn’t like that at all. He then asks if he married a Native
woman, could he be Native? Thomas says no, but they could like
him anyway.
TWIN DREAMS
After a week of trying, Zhaanat starts to give milk. Patrice had Barnes continues his advances toward Patrice without regard for
believed her mother but is still surprised. To try and get her feelings or what she’s going through. Patrice and Zhaanat have
Patrice’s attention, Barnes starts to give Pokey gifts, first also been having identical dreams. That’s promising because it
boxing magazines, and then a brand new red and black checked seems to suggest that Vera is still alive and she’s trying to reach
winter jacket. Patrice tells Pokey that he doesn’t have to give them, but the dreams can also be disturbing, suggesting that Vera
the coat back but that he shouldn’t accept any more gifts either. might be in serious danger.
Patrice has also been having dreams about Vera, where she
sees Vera slumped against the wall where Jack had overdosed
or hears Vera saying her name. When Patrice talks to her
mother about the nightmares, Zhaanat tells her that she’s been
having the exact same dreams. Zhaanat says Vera is trying to
reach them.

THE STAR POWWOW

Patrice and Zhaanat go to Thomas’s house, seeking advice. Thomas commits one of his only blunders in the novel, suggesting
Patrice tells him about the dog she found in the empty house, that they ask the police to help in finding Vera. Patrice and Zhaanat
empty rooms with chains fixed to the walls, the slashed leather point out that the police wouldn’t help them. Thomas’s suggestion
collars. Thomas thinks for a while and then says they have to go then also serves the purpose of reminding the reader how much the
to the police. Zhaanat and Patrice are both disappointed by the established institutions of power are not set up to work for or help
response. Zhaanat says the police won’t help them, and Thomas Patrice, Zhaanat, or Vera.
says he’ll sleep on it to try and think of another solution. At
work that night, Thomas thinks that what Patrice has told him
has shaken his fundamental beliefs about people. He thought
that people did bad things out of ignorance, drunkenness, or
weakness. He had never heard of such extreme evil.
Thomas falls asleep and is woken up by the sound of the owl Thomas has an encounter with the supernatural. Later in the novel,
again. He goes outside, and the door slams shut behind him. He the northern lights are mentioned, and there’s the suggestion that
realizes he doesn’t have his keys. He goes to his car and starts Thomas’s experience could have been sparked by the northern
the engine to keep himself warm. He hears drumming, coming lights. It’s important to note, though, that the novel doesn’t take one
from outside. He exits the car and falls down. The drumming side or the other. It acknowledges the existence of the northern
grows louder. Then he sees “the beings.” They float down from lights while also treating Thomas’s supernatural experience as just
the heavens, wearing ordinary clothes made from a glowing as real as a natural phenomenon. In the novel, one mode of
fabric. One of the people is Jesus Christ. They dance sight—scientific or materialistic—isn’t privileged over
counterclockwise, like spirits in the land of the dead, waiting for another—supernatural or spiritual.
him to join them. He begins to sing the song they gave him.
When the drumming stops, Thomas climbs on top of his car and
uses a wire he found in his trunk to get back into the building
through the window.
AGONY WOULD BE HER NAME

Unnamed men smell of hot oil, liquor sweat, and spoiled meat. This is the first glimpse into what Vera is experiencing. The way that
Another unseen character struggles against them. If she wants the passage is written—in brief flashes of vivid and violent
to get away, she’ll have to run through knives. She would be images—seems to suggest that the suffering that’s being inflicted on
“raw flesh” and in pure agony. Occasionally, she hears her Vera is almost too much to be captured in words.
mother call her name.

HOMECOMING
The Wazhashk family prepares for Homecoming the next day, Patrice’s account of her time growing up adds nuance to the theme
which will include a parade, a community feed, a football game, of community and solidarity that runs through the novel. Members
and the crowing of royalty. As Thomas works, he watches of the community where she grew up, the community that Thomas
others to see if they notice anything different about him after is helping to mobilize to oppose the Termination Bill, also bullied her
the visitation from the “shining people.” On Saturday, everyone when she was little. The community itself isn’t a utopia. Like most
gathers for the parade. Representing the jewel plant, Patrice communities, it’s full of people who do great things for one another
rides in the back of Doris Lauder’s car and tosses some candy and also terrible things to one another. The novel wants to highlight,
to the Mormon missionaries. When Sharlo, Thomas’s daughter, though, how much can be accomplished when people put their
is crowned homecoming queen, Patrice remembers when she efforts into acting in solidarity rather than working against one
was crowned homecoming queen years before. She thinks another.
about how poor she had been growing up, how she had had to
slice the ends off her shoes so her toes could stick out, and she
remembers how badly her classmates had treated her before
her face changed from “ravenous” to “enchanting.”
Later that night, there is a Homecoming dance, where Though Barnes still has Patrice on his mind, this section also
everyone dances to Mr. Jarvis’s records. After the dance, foreshadows the possibility that his life, and his obsession with
Valentine and Doris offer Barnes a ride and say they’re on their Patrice, might change soon.
way to a bush dance, which will have dancing, lively music, wine,
and beer. Barnes accepts, hoping that Pixie might be there.
THE BUSH DANCE

After the horses Teacher’s Pet and Gringo have sex, they plod This chapter presents a kind of miniature play where two horses
around, looking for grass to eat. They drink from a slough, roll have sex, and then they happen upon the bush party. In doing so,
in the mud. From the house, they hear noises that might be this section nods at one of the novel’s main themes, sex and gender
from ones like them or from the ones that are different, neighs dynamics, by enacting those conflicts through horses.
and chuckles, gasps, and whinnies. The wind blows a fence
open. Gringo knocks against Teacher’s Pet as they walk
through the fence. Teacher’s Pet lashes out and kicks Gringo in
the stomach, opening up a gash in his underbelly.
HAY STACK
The bush dance had gone on all night. In different visits to the It seems that Barnes’s obsession with Patrice can only fade if he has
woods, first with Doris and then Valentine, Barnes experienced other romantic interests to take her place, not out of consideration
kissing like he never had before. But he has feelings for Patrice, for Patrice herself. In his Barnes-like way, he begins to contend with
Barnes thinks. Or does he? Maybe, he thinks, he is becoming his own ideas about gender norms and his expectations for how he
“promiscuous.” is “supposed” to feel based on those norms.

Thomas finds Barnes in the church and floats the idea of While Barnes is presented in many ways throughout the novel as a
Barnes putting up a boxing card with a rematch between Joe character who is easy to deride, when Thomas approaches him
Wobble and Wood Mountain as the main event. Thomas’s idea about helping with a fundraiser to send a delegation to Washington,
is that they’ll use it as a fundraiser to help them raise money for D.C., Barnes agrees. This shows not only that Barnes is amenable,
a delegation to travel to Washington, D.C. to give testimony under certain circumstances, to considering the needs of others, but
against the Termination Bill. The repeat fight would draw a also how effective Thomas is at mobilizing members of the
crowd, Thomas says, because, after the issue with the early bell community to oppose the Termination Bill.
ring when Wood Mountain had the advantage, the first fight
wasn’t a fair fight. Barnes agrees, and the two begin planning.
The same week, Joe Wobble walks into the café where Barnes Joe Wobble is willing to acknowledge, and doesn’t condone, the
is eating. Barnes proposes the idea of the fight to Joe. Joe tampering that happened in the first fight against Wood Mountain.
thinks about it and says he didn’t like what happened in the first At the same time, though, both Joe and Wood Mountain are willing
fight and accepts. Afterward, when Barnes sees Wood to psych the other out by faking injuries. This dynamic interestingly
Mountain, he says that Wobble walks in a lopsided way. Wood puts Joe and Wood Mountain on somewhat equal footing. They
Mountain says Joe might just have been faking out Barnes. both seem to have a sense of which potentially underhanded
They decide they can do the same thing. Barnes says that methods are okay and which cross the line, showing that they share
Wood Mountain will wear a fake cast on his arm and will only an adherence to the same unwritten rules that undergird
take it off to train. community. This sense that they might belong to the same
community, though, is still complicated by the historical
encroachment of Joe’s family on Wood Mountain’s family’s land. If
Joe was aware of what had happened in the past, would he condone
it or do something to rectify it? Or would he break the bonds of
community by allowing the historical injustice to stand? The novel
interestingly leaves those questions unanswered, showing the
complex ways that the past impacts the present.
THWACK
While visiting the baby at the Paranteau house, Wood As Barnes’s romantic life becomes more complicated, he also seems
Mountain hears the thwack, thwack of an ax as Patrice chops to let go of some of the jealousy that led to tension in his
wood. With each thwack, Wood Mountain feels a crack in his relationship with Wood Mountain, allowing them to work together
chest. Barnes gets his uncle to give Wood Mountain some more easily. Wood Mountain, on the other hand, seems to only be
boxing lessons. He brings an electric turntable and teaches becoming more infatuated with Patrice.
Wood Mountain to coordinate his combinations to the music.

THE TONSILS
Since the Homecoming weekend, Patrice has noticed Doris and In contrast to Wood Mountain now, or Barnes before, Patrice isn’t
Valentine whispering to each other about something they won’t tormented by her romantic feelings. The only jealousy she harbors
tell her. Valentine says that “he” kissed us. When Valentine asks comes from wishing Vera’s baby was as affectionate with her as he
Patrice if she’s going to ask who “he” is, Patrice says, “Barnes?” is with Wood Mountain. At the jewel bearing plant, Mr. Vold has
Valentine asks if Barnes told her, and Patrice, feeling exercised his authority to unilaterally take away coffee breaks
mischievous, says that he did. Patrice, for her part, doesn’t care without any apparent regard for how it will impact the people who
either way. She certainly doesn’t care about Barnes. The only work at the plant.
person she’s jealous of is Wood Mountain because the baby
smiles at him when those smiles should belong to her.
Meanwhile, because of upcoming visits from the higher-ups,
Mr. Vold has taken away coffee breaks at work.
As she walks down the path home, Patrice sees that Wood Though under no obligation, legal or social or otherwise, Wood
Mountain is visiting the baby again. He asks Patrice if she Mountain begins to step even more firmly into his role as the baby’s
thinks the baby needs a warm bag and a cradle board. Patrice father, showing how strong and meaningful the bonds of care and
says yes, he does, and Wood Mountain offhandedly says he can community can be. At the same time, he puts together information
make it. Patrice agrees in the same offhanded way, though both he heard from Bernadette and begins to get an idea of the
are aware that it’s a big deal to make the cradle board. exploitation and subjugation that Vera is experiencing.
Normally, it’s the father who makes the cradle board. Patrice
asks him if he’s heard anything from Bernadette about Vera. He
says he hasn’t but that he remembers Bernadette saying that
Vera was in the “hold,” meaning the hold of a ship. When Patrice
doesn’t quite understand, Wood Mountain says that ships are
filled with men.
A LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Thomas writes a letter to Millie Cloud. Because she recently Thomas continues his work here of mobilizing the community, no
conducted a study on economic conditions on the reservation, matter how far-flung its members might be, to counter the
Thomas requests her assistance in testifying before the United Termination Bill.
States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
THE CHIPPEWA SCHOLAR

Millie Cloud spends her days studying at her favorite table at Similar to Patrice in some ways, Millie seems to resist conforming to
the Walter Library of the University of Minnesota or working the gender expectations of the time. She is instead guided by her
one of her three jobs. She doesn’t wear any makeup but lipstick, own ambitions and a desire to remain independent and also, after
wearing a bright shade of red that seems to highlight her Thomas reaches out to her, by a desire to help her community.
words. In general, people don’t like her. Men don’t take an
interest in her. She doesn’t care. She thinks she might try to be
a lawyer because she never backs down from anything. When
she gets Thomas’s letter, she’s pleased to be remembered by
anyone in the tribe outside her family and to hear that her
findings might be useful.

WHAT SHE NEEDED

Vera has been sick for as long as she can remember, locked in a This is the first time when the reader begins to understand what
room where men enter and “use her body,” all day and night. Vera has been going through. It seems that she has been sold into a
The cook’s assistant, who’s supposed to take care of her, is kind of sexual slavery on a ship. It also seems that the people
using what she needs for himself. Now she’s in perpetual agony. profiting off of her can maintain control over her in part because
Her brain throbs in her skull. She “foamed and shat herself.” they have made sure she became addicted to drugs; by being the
Things get so bad that they dress her in a dead man’s clothes ones who control when she can get those drugs. When the cook’s
and drop her, unconscious, at the end of an alley in Duluth. assistant begins using the drugs allotted for her for himself, though,
Vera goes through withdrawal, where she “foamed and shat herself,”
which still doesn’t stop men on the ship from “using her body.”
Eventually, though, they abandon her in an alley in Duluth. Vera’s
whole story is the diametric opposite of Thomas’s story. While
Thomas sees injustice and mobilizes the community to oppose it,
the people who came into contact with Vera committed every kind
of injustice without regard for her humanity, and not a single person
stood up to stop it.
OLD MAN WINTER

Sometimes Biboon thinks his spirit can fly from tree to tree like Similar to Thomas’s experience of the supernatural and the star
a bird. Beneath the ground, he senses beings, and beneath that, powwow, Biboon has an encounter with the supernatural, which
the fire of creation, which is buried at the center of the earth, ends with him seeing his wife, who he thinks he’ll see for real soon.
put there by stars. He watches a circle of women dance in a Again, it’s notable that this experience of the supernatural isn’t
snowy field. One turns and gestures. It’s Julia, and Biboon dismissed or treated as more or less real, or more or less important,
thinks that he’ll see her soon. than other scenes in the novel.
THE CRADLE BOARD

Wood Mountain trains with Barnes in secret so that he won’t Wood Mountain only tells the baby that he is faking his
be seen not wearing the fake cast. The only person he tells injury—because the baby is the only person he can’t lie to—and his
about the fake cast is the baby. Wood Mountain feels guilty fake injury is also discovered while he is working on the cradle board
lying to him. Publicly, he blames the injury, without giving much for the baby, showing how devoted Wood Mountain is to Vera’s
other detail, on the horse Gringo. Later, when Wood Mountain baby.
is working on the cradle board and she realizes that he’s faking
his injury, Grace says she won’t tell anyone and also tells him
that Joe Wobble is trying to fake him out too. She also teases
him about him liking Patrice before she walks away, lamenting
that Wood Mountain doesn’t have feelings for her.

BATTLE ROYALE
Thomas makes a flyer for the fight between Joe Wobble and Thomas continues to hone his strategy for how to defeat Arthur
Wood Mountain, hoping for a suggested two dollars admission Watkins and the Termination Bill, noting that he’ll have to find a
price. At work, he reads through the Book of Mormon, which way to convince Arthur Watkins not necessarily that he is wrong or
the Mormon missionaries had given him, to try and understand that what he is doing is evil. Instead, because Watkins believes
the enemy. Afterward, Thomas remembers something from his himself to be “righteous,” Thomas will have to find a way to convince
boarding school days. The only way to fight people who think of him that there is an even more righteous option for him to consider.
themselves as righteous is to present an argument that makes
giving you what you want seem like the most righteous option
available.
TWO-DAY JOURNEY
Vera finds herself walking and thinks she’s on the journey to the Vera becomes aware of her surroundings again, but she also knows
next life. As she sees signs—Highway 2, Firewood For Sale—she that she had been dead while she had been alive, meaning that
begins to suspect that she’s still alive. But she’d been dead what had happened to her had destroyed her spirit, that even
when she’d been alive, she thinks. She’s sure of that. though scientifically she might have been alive, her soul had
effectively died.
BOXING FOR SOVEREIGNTY

Patrice and Valentine come early to the fight and stand close to The whole community comes together to help the fight happen and
the ring. Juggie Blue sells tickets. Joe Wobble is a little leaner to raise as much money as possible for the delegation to travel to
than the last time they fought, and Wood Mountain has put on Washington, D.C. With such high expectations for the fight, Wood
more weight without sacrificing any speed. The fight seems Mountain and Joe Wobble go all out, to the point that they don’t
evenly matched until Joe Wobble lands a blow, cracking Wood want to put themselves through anything similar ever again.
Mountain’s nose. Wood Mountain counters, striking with fury,
ahead on points but not definitively winning. By the end, the
two are just hitting out at each other with no strategy or
intention. Wood Mountain does end up winning on points, but
it doesn’t really matter. Both men sit with their eyes swollen,
eyebrows taped, brains swelling in their heads. It’s the last time
that either of them fight.
THE PROMOTION
It was so unfair, Patrice thinks. Even though Patrice is the best The tension between Patrice and her supposed best friend,
worker, Valentine had been given the promotion. And she won’t Valentine, continues, as does the abuse of authority carried out by
stop talking about it. On top of that, Mr. Vold took away the Mr. Vold. Since he has been designated as the one with power, he is
coffee breaks and never reinstated them. The next day, Mr. able, and willing, to make decisions that impact hundreds of people
Vold puts Betty Pye at the workstation next to Patrice. They without any sense of how those effects will be felt within those
start talking, and after Betty Pye talks about her plans to meet individuals’ lives.
up with her boyfriend, Patrice says she’s never had anyone
explain to her the details of “what happens.” Betty tells her
she’ll explain everything, and the two plan to meet for coffee.

At coffee, Betty Pye tells Patrice how to get away from men she Betty Pye talks to Patrice about sex. Betty talks about how to get
doesn’t like and how to find out if a man likes her. She talks with away from men you’re not interested in, and about the risk that
detached practicality while describing positions that make many men pose, but she also talks about how to enjoy sex and
Patrice put her head in her hands, laughing. She also tells makes it clear that sex doesn’t have to be something that is
Patrice how to have sex and not get pregnant. Betty asks intertwined with violence or something that men are in control of.
Patrice who she’s going to have sex with, and Patrice says she
wants the information just in case, that she doesn’t have a
specific plan. Betty also explains prostitution to Patrice, saying
there are men who come to the reservation, tell women they’ll
get married, then they abandon the woman and “sell her to
someone who puts them out for sex.”
EDITH, PSYCHIC DOG

Harry Roy, a retired army medic, sees Vera sleeping by the After the countless people (men in particular) who have brutalized
highway. He carries her to his car and brings her to her home. and exploited Vera, she finally comes across someone whose
He gives her a soup with tender meat, carrots, onions, barley. intentions seem to be only to help. Still, because of everything that
Vera’s not afraid of the dog, Edith, but she trembles when has happened, she can’t help but be afraid of him.
Harry comes into the room. He has records that belonged to
his mother, and he puts on something calming, Debussy, and
waits.
THE HUNGRY MAN

As she enters the train station, someone bumps into Millie. She Thomas again shows not just how seriously he takes his role in
strongly dislikes being jostled by strangers. She only has one opposing the Termination Bill, but how he is able to effectively find
onionskin copy of the report, and the precarity of that one copy others to help in that effort by taking what they do seriously,
makes her nervous. When she meets with Thomas and Louis, respecting their agency, and treating them as full human beings (in
she’s comforted by the seriousness with which Thomas treats contrast to figures like Arthur Watkins or Mr. Vold).
the study. The two of them decide to twine a rope through the
handle of the suitcase and tie each end to their wrists.
GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS

As Thomas reads Millie’s report, he thinks the good news is Millie’s report stirs up contradictory feelings in Thomas; it presents
that they’re poor enough to require continued government the evidence that will give him a good argument to use to testify
assistance. The bad news is how poor they are. The good news before Congress, but that argument is also dispiriting.
is that they have schools, but the bad news is that so many
people are illiterate. The good news is that they have this
report, but the bad news is also the report.

FLYING OVER SNOW

After the first snow, Patrice thinks that she’ll have to wait until Patrice shows again how much she values her agency and
spring to test Betty Pye’s information. She had decided on independence, wanting to have sex but not wanting the guy she
Wood Mountain because he is less “sticky” than Barnes. Patrice chooses to latch onto her. Her love for her sister outweighs
thinks of different possibilities and thinks maybe she and Wood everything else, though, which is why Vera’s old cabin no longer
Mountain could use the old, abandoned cabin up the hill from seems like a suitable place for a romantic rendezvous with Wood
her house, the one Vera had worked on, hoping it might one day Mountain.
become her house. Patrice puts on long underwear, padded
overalls, and two layers of wool socks and heads up the hill with
a pair of snowshoes Zhaanat had made her. She sets snares
leading up to Vera’s cabin. When she gets there, she thinks of
Vera and wonders how she could have thought of using the
cabin with Wood Mountain for “crude love.”
Patrice falls suddenly and then sits in the leaves. She takes off Patrice has a potentially dangerous encounter with a bear, but when
her snow shoes and then smells the unmistakable scent of a she emerges unscathed, she feels free, strong, powerful, and fearless,
bear. She knows the bear is hibernating. She drifts off. When feelings that reassert how important her independence and agency
she wakes up, she feels so much stronger than before. And are because they’re the things that make her feel truly alive.
fearless.
SNARES
Patrice and Pokey set snares outside. They walk back up to Instead of feeling pain or sadness when she hears that her husband
Vera’s cabin. After he looks in the window, Pokey says that has died, Zhaanat feels relief. Patrice, too, feels her dread lifting,
someone is sleeping inside. Patrice gets Thomas and Wood showing how deeply Paranteau had wounded his family, how his
Mountain, and the three of them go back to the cabin. When violence had left permanent marks.
they go in, from the person’s shoes, Patrice knows that it’s her
father and that he has died. When Patrice tells her mother, she
looks away. Patrice knows her mother doesn’t want Patrice to
see the relief as it spreads over her face. The next morning,
Patrice and Valentine get into a fight about who will sit in the
front seat of Doris’s car. Patrice also realizes that her dread is
gone and that it left when her father died. She hadn’t realized
before how heavy it was.
CRADLE TO GRAVE
Thomas works on the grave house while Wood Mountain Erdrich puts birth and death side by side, with Paranteau’s death
works on the cradle board. Thomas says he guesses they placed right next to the birth of his grandson. While Wood
shouldn’t tell Zhaanat that they’re making the grave house and Mountain worries about the risk that that might pose—placing life
cradle board at the same time. Wood Mountain asks if he thinks so close to death—the scene also seems to suggest how good things,
it might be bad for the baby. Thomas says he’s not like the baby, can come out of bad situations, whether that is
superstitious, though he knows he is, just not as much as Paranteau’s harassment of his family or the horror that Vera
LaBatte, who’s afraid of owls and sees omens everywhere he endured. That possibility, that good might come from bad, doesn’t
looks. justify or mollify Paranteau’s abuses or the abuses that Vera
suffered, but it does suggest the possibility of hope in the darkest of
times, similar to how humor is intertwined with pain throughout the
novel.

THE NIGHT WATCH

When Patrice comes back from work, she sees the bear Again, the community comes together to mourn Paranteau, not
hanging from a tree, ready to be dressed. Of course Zhaanat necessarily as a testament to him, but because they value Zhaanat
went after it, Patrice thinks. Inside, Juggie is holding the baby and her family. Zhaanat killing the bear also shows one possibility of
and Rose is making Bannock bread. And there’s one person where Patrice’s characteristic independence came from.
Patrice doesn’t know, who introduces herself as Millie Cloud.
Patrice would have much rather buried her father with no one
else around. Wood Mountain works at the grave with his pickax
in the frozen ground.
On the first night watch, Patrice eats a bowl of soup that Juggie When Patrice screams at the vision of her father that he can’t get
cooked. The sacred fire has been burning since her father was them now, she shows how deep her desire for independence goes.
found. On the second night watch, Thomas works on the grave After feeling threatened by her father for most of her life, for Patrice,
house, and Patrice sees something or someone at the edge of independence is vital to her well-being, essential if she is going to
the woods. On the third night watch, Patrice finds herself alone feel safe in the world.
at the fire again. Her mind unclasps, and she sees her father at
the edge of the woods and screams that he can’t get them now.
The next day, Thomas brings the grave house. Zhaanat and This scene draws a comparison between Bucky and Paranteau.
Pokey tie Paranteau into a blanket and cover him with bark. While Paranteau’s death means he can’t torment Patrice or her
Families begin to arrive. LaBatte weeps. Bucky shows up as family anymore, Patrice knows that if Bucky were to regain strength,
well. He asks Zhaanat to take the curse off of him. She says then he would strike out against them, showing the ubiquity of the
what happened is a result of his own actions, and she had threat that men like Bucky or Paranteau pose and the way that their
nothing to do with it. He’s helpless, Patrice thinks. But if he gets violence continues to reverberate and echo in perpetuity.
his strength back, he’ll hurt us. Finally, the men use ropes to
lower Paranteau into the ground.
TWO MONTHS
The congressional hearings for the Termination Bill are As two months pass, different characters go through their own trials
scheduled for the first week in March. Millie had never been to and tribulations. Millie begins to see that while her father, Louis, is a
a funeral like that of Paranteau before. And as the proceedings central member of the community, because she grew up away, she is
took place in Chippewa, she realized that when she conducted still considered an outsider. And Louis, for his part, continues his
her study, people had spoken in English for her benefit. Barnes work to get as many people as possible to sign the petition.
sits in what he thinks of as his monk cell, thinking of the three
women he has feelings for. Juggie is upset when Wood
Mountain unthinkingly shows her the cradle board to admire
what he made for the baby. While having sex with Norbert,
Betty Pye sees someone’s face in the window of the car he
borrowed from her mother. She knows the face but can’t quite
place it. Louis considers it a sacred mission of his to get every
person on the reservation to sign the petition.

Thomas thinks they have two months to save their homeland Patrice’s health difficulties with her eyesight highlight the
and themselves but finds himself unable to focus on his work. precariousness of her job. That job functions in the opposite way
It’s because he’s afraid, he thinks. Just before Christmas, that a supportive community does. Instead of offering to help
Patrice’s eyes begin to smart. She bathes them in medicine in Patrice or acting in solidarity with her, she knows that if people in
secret at her job, afraid that if someone finds out, she’ll lose it. power at the jewel bearing plant found out what was happening to
Millie enters words into her notebook. The same word is used her, they would fire her. Millie also makes connections between sex
for both ejaculation and shooting off a gun: baashkizige. The and violence in the Chippewa language.
word for condom and gun case is also the same: biinda’oojigan.
She thinks it’s fascinating. People keep asking LaBatte to get
them things, but he tells them he doesn’t do that anymore. He
thinks Patrice has a jinx on her though. He can tell because of
her eyes.
NEW YEAR’S SOUP

This is the first time Zhaanat’s medicine hasn’t worked, Patrice When Wood Mountain proposes to Patrice, she feels swept up in
thinks about her eyes. “White-man diseases need white-man the emotion, but afterward, she is glad that she didn’t say yes or
cures,” Zhaanat says. She travels to a clinic, where a nurse gives promise him anything, knowing that, for her, independence is more
her ointment to rub into her eyes, saying she might have gone important than a relationship that might be expected and might
blind if it had been left untreated for much longer. After Patrice “check all the boxes” but for some reason still doesn’t feel quite right.
talks about all of the things she would have missed if she had
gone blind, Wood Mountain asks if she would have missed
seeing him too. He says that Patrice is the only one for him, that
he means it with his whole heart, and ends by asking her, for
god’s sake, to marry him. After, Patrice feels relieved because
she hadn’t promised anything, and Wood Mountain is relieved
that she didn’t say no.
In the moment, though, Patrice had wanted to say that she After being swept up in the emotion of Wood Mountain’s proposal,
wanted him too. Patrice thinks of something that her mother Patrice thinks of something else: that men might be charming when
told her, which she thinks is definitely true: you don’t really they want something from you, but you don’t really know who they
know a man until you tell him you don’t love him. That’s when are, and violence might be lurking under an apparently kind exterior,
his true viciousness, below the surface so he could charm you, ready to be unleashed if you don’t do what they want you to.
might come out.
THE NAMES
Things started going wrong, Zhaanat thinks, when places Zhaanat’s thoughts seem to suggest that issues began when people
started to be named for people and not the real things that started to be elevated above all else, when people were granted the
happened there, like dreaming, eating, death, where animals highest forms of estimation and power and, as a result, their egos
appeared. And, in her experience, once people talk about taking took over. Then people became willing and able to climb to the
land, it’s as good as gone. highest rung in a hierarchy and subjugate others supposedly below
them, according to their whims and desires.

ELNATH AND VERNON

Elnath and Vernon have grown sick of each other. One night, Elnath and Vernon, as Mormon missionaries, have their own ideas
Elnath sees Vernon coming out of the barn instead of from the about sex and morality; specifically, they think that sex outside the
outhouse, and he thinks Vernon must have been trying to “get bounds of marriage is the “worst kind of sin.” Even though Elnath is
up to the worst kind of sin” with Grace. Elnath considers put in a difficult position by what Vernon is doing, he chooses to do
turning him in—he’s sure Vernon would turn him in if the roles the harder thing and approach his fellow missionary personally
were reversed—but decides against it, opting to try to talk to instead of immediately appealing to authority.
Vernon instead, even though he knows that will mean wading
into difficult territory.
NIGHT BIRD
Patrice had been in school with Bucky since first grade. The Even though Bucky knew Patrice well—or because he knew her
summer before, when she got in the car, he had been the only well—he assaulted her and attempted to rape her, another instance
one in the back, then Myron Pelt slipped back beside her. in the novel where a person attempts to erase someone’s agency for
Looking back later, that didn’t feel good, and she wished she the sake of satisfying their own desires.
had said something at that point. Then Bucky threw himself at
her while Myron held her arms. Bucky tried to press her knees
apart and fumbled with his pants. She suggested going to the
lake, where she could show them all “a good time.” At the lake,
Bucky took her shoes and said that now she wouldn’t be able to
run. She dove into the lake and swam as hard as she could.
When she saw her uncle’s boat, she went toward him. That
night, she looked at the scratches, the bruises, even a bite mark
on her shoulder. She hadn’t felt any of it.
When Bucky’s mouth twisted and then the same illness spread Again, the novel doesn’t privilege a materialistic view of the world
down his side, Patrice knew she herself had done it. Her hatred versus a spiritual or supernatural view. Both are considered valid.
had been so powerful it had flown out of her like a “night bird.” Interestingly, it’s Patrice’s hatred that gives her the power to achieve
That bird flew straight to Bucky and attacked the side of his retribution. She has to seek this kind of retribution on her own,
face. especially because she knows there’s no authority, no legal system of
justice, that will do it for her, especially considering what happened
to Vera and what the institution in charge of the legal system, the
United States government, is attempting to do to her community.
U.S.I.S.
Juggie hands Barnes a cigarette as they sit at the kitchen table. With a nudge from Juggie, Barnes begins to finally give up on
Juggie tells him to give up, and he says that’s easier for her to pursuing Patrice, though he still seems to have a skewed view of the
say, since her son is the one who took Patrice from him. Barnes situation, saying that Wood Mountain “took” her from him, as if
feels sorry for himself, and Juggie feels sorry for him too. She Patrice had “belonged” to him to begin with.
offers to ask out Valentine, her half-niece, for him. When he
doesn’t say no, Juggie takes that as a yes. Juggie talks to
Valentine, and Valentine then comes over and asks Barnes out.

THE RUNNER
On his way back from work, Thomas sees a boy running This section gives more insight into Roderick’s story, showing that
alongside his car, even as he speeds up to 30, 40, 50. Of course even though he deeply cared about his job in the bakery, he was
the boy is Roderick, he thinks. When Thomas tells Rose, she driven to steal food because he didn’t have anything to eat. Similar
says she’ll come with him to work that night. At work, they to how Patrice knew that if the bosses at the jewel plant found out
share a cup of coffee. Thomas falls asleep and then sees about her issues with her eyes, they would fire her, instead of
Roderick sitting beside the motor, where Rose can’t see him. offering Roderick food, the authorities punished him, and those
Roderick worked in the bakery, a job which was the only thing punishments ultimately led to him contracting the tuberculosis he
he cared about, until he was caught stealing dough. After that, died from.
he didn’t care about anything, and he ran away, again and again.
That’s how he ended up in the cellar, where he got so cold. But
in the morning, he always woke up as a ghost.
MISSIONARY FEET
Vernon’s feet ached. He misses the family he’d been excited to Again, this chapter illuminates that the Mormon missionaries view
leave behind. And he misses the idea that someone might love sex, even between two consenting adults, as a sin, without any
him. He thinks to himself that he must not ever think of Grace. apparent awareness of the problems with what someone like Arthur
Most of his body complies but not his feet. On the way back Watkins is trying to do or how his actions would impact people.
home one night, he sees an old jalopy and looks in the window.
Only later does he understand what he’s seen, and he’s
disappointed in himself for not intervening to stop two people
from sinning.
THE SPIRIT DUPLICATOR

They’ve made 35 copies of Millie’s economic survey and four The community continues to come together to oppose the
more from a photocopier in the office of Superintendent Tosk. Termination Bill. And Millie puts her finger on the true intentions of
The copies will be sent to local and state officials, radio so many government actions aimed against Native people: They
announcers, and newspapers. In the past, an incorrect census want to steal land.
survey had been used to convince Congress that the Turtle
Mountain people were prosperous. “I suspect,” Millie says,
“they simply wanted our land.” And she thinks the government
acts like Native people owe them something, but isn’t it the
other way around?
PRAYER FOR 1954

At the jewel bearing plant, Thomas writes a letter to Senator Thomas continues to work diligently, while LaBatte, facing personal
Milton R. Young, laying out strategy, while others bring on the difficulties, has sought relief in Mormonism.
New Year, including LaBatte, whose brothers criticize his
recent conversion to Mormonism.

YOU CAN’T ASSIMILATE INDIAN GHOSTS

Even as a ghost, Roderick is never going to be assimilated. He Even as a ghost, Roderick doesn’t want to lose his identity to what
wouldn’t go to a white heaven or a white hell. He’d gone to he sees as irreducibly “white” alternatives. He’s lonely, but, in an
Paranteau’s funeral, thinking he might be able to follow him to attempt to find the last vestiges of agency, he seems to say that it’s
the afterlife. It’s hard to not be assimilated all alone, he thinks, better to be lonely, to be a ghost, than to give up on existing.
and he hopes he can go home.
CLARK KENT
Patrice goes to an eye clinic and is told she needs glasses. After This chapter presents another counterpoint to the violence that so
she gets glasses, the clarity of the world is breathtaking. Wood often accompanies sex in the novel. In this instance, Patrice is able
Mountain tells her she looks like Superman’s girlfriend, and to exercise her agency and enjoy sex after a little while.
Patrice says no, she looks like Clark Kent. The two kiss as they
leave the clinic. They find a place in the woods, and Wood
Mountain takes a packet from his jacket pocket. He puts it on,
and then he is “inside of her, too eagerly.” Tears blur her vision.
They start again, and it gets better. After, their breathing slows
until they’re breathing in perfect time.
CHECKS
Millie goes with Grace to look for new clothes in the mission This chapter gives more insight into Millie’s character by showing
bundles. She finds a dress with intricate patterns. When she that she enjoys patterns, that patterns hold for her the deepest
looks at the design, it takes her into the deepest wells of wells of meaning where she can feel in touch with her truest self.
meaning, a place that’s simple, powerful, indescribable, and
beautiful.
THE LAMANITES
Thomas reads the Book of Mormon, which describes the Thomas begins to grapple with the racism that seems to be inherent
Lamanites as “wild and ferocious, a bloodthirsty people, full of in Arthur Watkins’s religion and is also motivating his actions. On
idolatry and filthiness.” “It’s us,” Thomas says to Rose. Joe Garry, top of that, Thomas hears that Watkins doesn’t have a sense of
the president of the National Congress of American Indians, humor, which, to Thomas, is frightening and seems akin to saying
writes to Thomas about Senator Watkins and says that Watkins that Watkins is missing something essential that makes it
doesn’t have a sense of humor. Thomas thinks that’s even more impossible for him to truly connect with other people.
frightening than the Mormon bible. Thomas tries to
understand Watkins’s reasoning and why he’s targeting Native
people. According to his religion, Mormon people have been
gifted all the land they wanted. “Indians weren’t lightsome and
delightsome, but cursed with dark skin.” Thomas likes the
exploits of the figure Nanabozho better, who created
everything valuable and a lot of things that were vital, like
laughter.

THE LORD’S PLAN

One night while Betty and Norbert are in the car, the door After the chapter in which Thomas hears that Watkins doesn’t have
opens, and Norbert falls out. Someone outside then says, a sense of humor, the novel pivots to a very funny scene in which
“Could I have a minute of your time to tell you about the Lord’s one of the Mormon missionaries interrupts Betty and Norbert
plan for your soul?” having sex to try and proselytize.
THE COMMITTEE
When it comes time to form the group to go to Washington, While the community has been vital in fighting against the
D.C., people are reluctant and need coaxing. At first, the group Termination Bill, that community isn’t presented in utopian terms.
is only Juggie Blue, Thomas, and Millie Cloud. They drive to the When it comes time to go to Washington, D.C., Thomas has trouble
jewel bearing plant and eventually convince Patrice to come finding volunteers. Eventually, though, after some convincing,
too. At Patrice’s house, Millie takes notes when Zhaanat Thomas is able to put together a group to go.
explains the plants that she collects, and then Patrice takes
notes when Millie talks about how she went to college and
obtained a scholarship.
SCRAWNY
Barnes is frustrated that Valentine is spurning his advances. He Barnes shows again how deeply his understanding of people and
thinks that things won’t change until there’s a marriage relationships has been distorted by prevailing gender norms. By
proposal. On the one hand, he respects this. On the other hand, thinking that a “man’s a man,” he seems to express his idea that men
a man’s a man, he thinks to himself. are superior to—and hold a higher place of power than—women,
and, as a result, women are obligated to do what men want.
THE JOURNEY
On the way to Washington, D.C., they sleep in their coach seats By mentioning the ways that the delegation seeks to save money
and eat food they’d packed in an overnight bag, not wanting to during their trip, this chapter emphasizes how little power the group
spend money in the dining car. When they arrive, the vastness apparently has in comparison to the power, and wealth, of the
of the train station overwhelms them. At the hotel, the two men forces they are up against.
share one room and the three women another.
FALCON EYES
Patrice walks into the gallery that overlooks the floor of the Although Patrice knows that it’s wrong, she also feels excited by the
House of Representatives. She notices a striking woman in bold potential of revolution, of real, drastic change, of standing up for
lipstick. Later the woman yells, “Viva Puerto Rico!” and fires what one believes in, even if that stand is marked by violence. This
shots into the air. Guards crash the gallery and seize the passage probably refers to an actual historical event, when a
woman’s gun, then her. Authorities eventually question Patrice, militant Puerto Rican group wounded several congressmen on the
and she explains what she saw. Although she knows it’s terrible, House floor.
Patrice had been excited when the woman stood up and started
to yell.

TERMINATION FOR FEDERAL CONTRACTS AND PROMISES MADE WITH CERTAIN TRIBES OF
INDIANS
In the hearing, Senator Young begins and says that the state The delegation is strategic in its opposition to Watkins. Instead of
can’t take over the responsibilities of the federal government if arguing what they truly believe—that Watkins is motivated by
the federal agreements were terminated. Instead of arguing racism and that the United States government is, again, attempting
against termination, the tribal committee has decided to buy to steal their land—they try to delay and buy time. Notably,
time. Thomas describes the Turtle Mountain Reservation and Watkins’s testimony from this chapter is taken verbatim from the
states his strong opposition to the government plan before actual Congressional transcripts, a decision that Erdrich makes, in
thanking the government for its efforts. Senator Watkins part, to underline that the racism and injustice she is describing is
interrupts him. Patrice gives testimony about the jewel bearing not part of the fictional work she’s creating but is a very real part of
plant. Senator Watkins ignores Patrice and addresses his United States history, which continues to this day.
questions to Thomas. Millie then testifies by reading her report
about the economic conditions of the Turtle Mountain
Reservation. After the hearing, with the support of Roderick,
Thomas goes to Senator Watkins’s office to flatter him, hoping
that might help their case. After, Thomas thinks that’s a sign of
how bad things are, that he’s willing to forget about his dignity
to try and butter up Watkins.
THE WAY HOME

On the way back, Thomas thinks about how Senator Watkins As a result of his efforts over the past months, Thomas has a stroke,
had asked every person who testified about “their degree of echoing the creation story of his namesake muskrat, which dove to
Indian blood.” No one knew the answer. It isn’t something they the bottom of the ocean to bring back the silt to create the Earth
kept track of. It was a game, but one that interested Watkins, but died as a result. It’s notable, too, that Arthur Watkins
which meant it was a game that could erase them. Patrice feels presumably doesn’t suffer any ill effects after the hearing, suggesting
spent. She sees an article in the newspaper about the woman that for him, it was more or less another day, another hearing, and
who fired the gun. She wanted Puerto Rico to live so badly because he is insulated by the power granted to him by his position,
she’d been willing to kill. Would Patrice have been willing to do the stakes for him are, at most, success or failure, not life or death.
the same thing? Moses misses his wife; it’s the longest they’ve This fact again demonstrates his failure to grasp the seriousness and
been apart since they’ve been married. Thomas feels a sharp full implications of his actions.
pain on the right side of his face, and the strength drains from
his legs. He wakes up in a hospital, where a nurse tells him he
had a stroke.
IF
Wood Mountain lays the baby on the cradle board. Now would Vera is finally reunited with her baby and family with the help of
be the perfect time, he thinks. If Patrice came home now, he Harry Roy. While Wood Mountain thinks he’ll ask Patrice to marry
would ask her again to marry him. He’s sure she’ll say yes. A him again if she comes to the door, the fact that Vera is the one at
woman comes to the door. Wood Mountain feels dizzy. It’s not the door foreshadows the relationship that the two of them—Wood
Patrice. At first, he thinks it’s a stranger. The woman asks him if Mountain and Vera—will ultimately have.
he recognizes her, then says that she’s Vera. A grey-bearded
man walks in behind her and says he’ll have to leave soon. Vera
tries to give him the family rifle as he leaves, but he says he
can’t take it. Vera looks at the baby. Wood Mountain says that
the baby is hers. Vera collapses “like snow.” When Zhaanat
comes home, the two clutch each other with the baby between
them.

TOSCA
It’s a case of mutual exasperation. One night when Barnes While he’s going through a kind of breakup, Barnes worries that his
drops Valentine off, she says goodbye and that she means it. choice of music isn’t “manly” enough, showing again how gender
Barnes asks if that means goodbye for good, and he can tell by norms have contorted even his most personal and intimate
the look on her face that it does. At home, he plays an opera thoughts.
recording, even though he thinks it wouldn’t be considered a
“manly taste.” The record makes him “luxuriantly weep.”
THE SALISBURY
Millie had been the one to call the ambulance and make sure Another person seems to have fallen in love with Patrice, this time
Thomas went to the hospital. As a relative, Patrice is the only Millie. She wants to tell Patrice how she feels, something that would
one allowed in the room. When the nurse assures her that go against the gender norms of the time, but Patrice expresses her
Thomas will be okay, Patrice goes to Millie’s studio in the city to feelings first, feelings that are deep and familial but platonic, not
stay for the night. While talking, Patrice asks if she has a romantic. Millie is disappointed without knowing exactly why, but
boyfriend. Millie says that nobody is appealing to her. Patrice Patrice’s desire to adopt Millie into their family also gives Millie the
says she’s thinking about Wood Mountain. Millie says she’s chance to find more belonging by becoming more of a part of the
heard he’s handsome and then tells Patrice that she’s beautiful. community.
Millie opens her mouth to let words of love flow out, but the
words don’t come. Patrice says to Millie that she wants to
adopt Millie, for Millie to be her sister. Though Millie knows
that that would be a meaningful recognition in the Chippewa
tradition, she is both happy and, for some reason, disappointed.
THE LAKE, THE WELL, THE CRICKETS SINGING IN THE GRASS

In the hospital bed, Thomas drifts back and forth in time. He Though Thomas has been overworked to the point that he
thinks of when Patrice swam up to his boat in the lake and the experienced a stroke, he also feels a sense of rest, of completion,
fear he felt when he and Biboon had dug a well, afraid the earth knowing that he’s done everything in his power to oppose the
would give way beneath him and swallow him up. But now, he Termination Bill.
isn’t afraid. Now, it doesn’t matter. Nothing can harm him.
There is nothing left to do, and he doesn’t have to go back to
Washington.
THE CEILING
In Millie’s studio, Patrice asks her what she would have to do to Patrice asks Millie about college and becoming a lawyer, plans that
become a lawyer. She thinks of Wood Mountain. They had would help Patrice secure independence if she were able to
made love and looked into each other’s eyes. She loves him, she accomplish them. She also continues to feel ambivalent about her
thinks. Doesn’t she? She wonders how she’s supposed to know. relationship with Wood Mountain, not sure if she loves him, or, if she
She hopes that Vera coming home will help to clear things up. does, how much, or in what way.

GREATER JOY
When Elnath confronts Vernon about Grace and asks him if Vernon again equates sex and sin, as if there is something wrong
he’s “quitting the sin,” Vernon says that he’s quitting. The two with sex itself, while the novel as a whole suggests that the problem
hitch a ride into town to visit LaBatte. LaBatte has already isn’t with sex but with how power and violence are used to exploit
backslid and is unwilling to get baptized or even let them in the people, subjugate them, and erase their agency.
door. They then get a ride to Grand Forks, where there’s a
church member who would take them in. And they could get
Milda to send them their things.
THE OWLS
Louis feels guilty, convinced that his decision to not go to Though Louis put in as much effort as anyone to oppose the
Washington contributed to Thomas’s stroke. He goes to the Termination Bill, he still feels like he let Thomas, and the community,
hospital to pick Thomas up and bring him home. down by not going to Washington with the delegation.
THE BEAR SKULL IN THE TREE WAS PAINTED RED AND FACED EAST
Wood Mountain visits the baby day after day. And he starts to When Patrice sees Wood Mountain around Vera—and sees how he
notice things about Vera: a ragged earlobe, a crooked finger, a cares for her, for the baby, and how that care might help Vera
missing tooth. They both watch the baby with a similar kind of heal—her confusion fades, as she knows that the most important
joy. One day, Patrice comes home and recognizes it. Her thing to her, more important than anything she might want for
feelings of confusion and desire and possible love for Wood herself, and more important than her confusion about her desires, is
Mountain go away. Wood Mountain asks to talk to Patrice. for Vera to find a way to heal.
Patrice says she knows what’s going on. And that she’s not mad.
She would welcome “anyone and anything that could help put
together Vera’s demolished heart.”
THE DUPLICATOR SPIRITS

Millie prepares a report for Thomas about the trip to This chapter calls back to Thomas seeing the star powwow, and
Washington, adding her own details as well, which will be Millie states one of the novel’s themes explicitly: that science and
distributed to the tribe. When she goes outside with Juggie, spirituality aren’t opposed, that one explanation doesn’t rule out the
they see the northern lights. Juggie says the dancing spirits are other, and that one need not be privileged over the other.
looking after them. Millie decides that one explanation did not
rule out the other, that science and spirituality aren’t opposed,
that charged electrons could be spirits. She decides that she’ll
go out on a date with Barnes as well, especially because he had
asked her with an equation, and how could she resist that?

À TA SANTÉ
Back at work, they’ve signed a petition to try and get coffee The workers at the jewel bearing plant use the same strategies to
breaks reinstated. Patrice is working extra hard because she fight for their rights that the community used to oppose the
wants to ask for a raise. She’s now supporting four people at Termination Bill. They unite as a community and act in solidarity to
home instead of two. Though Wood Mountain had recently try and counter the people in power who would be able to easily
gotten a federal job driving school buses. And Millie had defeat them if they acted as individuals. Similarly, when Millie
decided to become an anthropologist. She wanted to study decides to study with Zhaanat, it’s important to her that Zhaanat is
with Zhaanat and had applied for money to make sure Zhaanat paid for her work.
got paid as well.
RODERICK
Roderick misses the train back home. But there are so many By referencing the number of Native ghosts in Washington, D.C.,
Native ghosts in Washington that could keep him company, he this chapter nods to the long history of violence and exploitation
thinks about staying. And they’re happy to have somebody new. carried out by the U.S. government against Native people and their
They ask why he wants to go back and who he would be waiting communities.
for.
THOMAS
Thomas goes back to work at the jewel bearing plant. At the After his battle against Arthur Watkins and his stroke, Thomas
bottom of his timecards, he signs himself “the muskrat,” identifies even more closely with the muskrat—its hard work and the
accompanied by a drawing of a muskrat. He’d been cleared power that overlooked people (or animals) can have—that gave his
after the stroke, but sometimes it still takes his brain a second family its name.
to catch up. Occasionally he has trouble finding the right words.
The battle with Arthur V. Watkins had been, he fears, “a battle
that would cost him everything.”
CLOSING NOTES
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa was not terminated. Erdrich connects her novel back to the actual history that inspired it
Erdrich’s grandfather recovered from the stroke and went on and highlights the ways that acting as a community, in solidarity
to work on improving the reservation school system, writing a with one another, allowed Erdrich’s grandfather, the Turtle
Turtle Mountain Constitution, and writing the first history of Mountain Band of Chippewa, and the workers at the jewel bearing
the Turtle Mountains. He worked at the jewel bearing plant plant to overcome obstacles that seemed insurmountable.
until his mandatory retirement in 1970. In 1955, the women of
the Turtle Mountain jewel bearing plant attempted to unionize.
Unionization was voted down, but pay increases were
authorized, the cafeteria completed, and workers regained
their coffee break.
AFTERWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Erdrich’s grandfather wrote a series of “extraordinary letters” Erdrich notes here that the novel was inspired by actual letters her
to her parents between 1953 and 1954. The letters paint a grandfather wrote, making it clear how much of a testament the
portrait of reservation life and were later given to Erdrich. character of Thomas, and the novel as a whole, is to him.
Erdrich also thanks several people and books who helped make
her own book possible.

To cite any of the quotes from The Night Watchman covered in the
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MLA Erdrich, Louise. The Night Watchman. Harper Perennial. 2021.
DeHaven, Ben. "The Night Watchman." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 24 CHICA
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Feb 2023. Web. 24 Feb 2023.
Erdrich, Louise. The Night Watchman. New York: Harper
CHICA
CHICAGO
GO MANU
MANUAL
AL Perennial. 2021.
DeHaven, Ben. "The Night Watchman." LitCharts LLC, February 24,
2023. Retrieved February 24, 2023. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/
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The Night Watchman

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Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins Explanation and Analysis

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Valentine’s Days Quotes Page Number: 68

Valentine said, “You can have my days.” Explanation and Analysis

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Who? [1] Quotes

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Related Characters: Louis Pipestone

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SUMMARY AND ANAL

TURTLE MOUNTAIN JEWEL BEARING PLANT

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THE SKIN TENT

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THE BOXING COACH

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THE FRUIT CRATE

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A SEAT ON THE TRAIN

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THE WAKE-UP SHAVE

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THE OLD MUSKRAT

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THE AVERAGE WOMAN AND THE EMPTY TANK

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THE TEMPLE BEGGAR

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THE STAR POWWOW

AGONY WOULD BE HER NAME

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THE BUSH DANCE

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A LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA