Indian Horse

Chapter 2 describes how Saul’s great-grandfather brought the first horse to his people. At first they are suspicious, but the horse’s usefulness shows itself quickly and they embrace “Kitchi-Animoosh” or “Great Dog.” His great-grandfather, Shabogeesick, calls his people to the teaching rocks to tell them that the spirit teaching of the horse is that ‘A great change will come. It will come with the speed of lightning and it will scorch all our lives’ (7). At the end of Chapter 2, it states that his family name became Indian Horse after the white man (“Zhaunagush”) discover that his great-grandfather was the one to bring the horse to their people.

Chapter 3 returns to the life of Saul Indian Horse directly. In this chapter, he describes how his grandmother, Naomi, endeavored to hide them from the white man and “the school.” He describes how the Zhaunagush abducted his sister the year before his birth, and how he and his brother hid from them thereafter. However, in 1957, when Saul is four, they capture his brother Benjamin as well and his mother is never the same afterwards: “When Benjamin disappeared he carried a part of her away with him, and there was nothing anyone could do to fill it” (11). He describes how his family turns to alcohol, but he is comforted by his grandmother’s stories of the old days and Ojibway songs.

This chapter describes Saul’s family’s move to transient camps on the outskirts of sawmill towns in the pursuit of “brutal work for little pay” (14) and whiskey. They move from tent village to tent village, learning to “endure the stench of roasted dog” (14) and hunting squirrels to survive. After three years, in 1960, they settle in Redditt, where they buy a wood stove and start to live more comfortably, causing his father to drink less due to the “infusion of hope” (14).

In this chapter, his brother Benjamin returns. He escaped the school in Kenora and walked sixty miles to find their camp. However, he is quite ill with tuberculosis. His grandmother Naomi says that they need to go to Gods Lake to help cure Benjamin and keep Saul away from the white men. Without arguing, they leave and journey ten days, while Naomi tells the tale of Gods Lake. It was discovered by a group of hunters seeking moose who found it to be a perfect hunting spot. However, when they explored the area, they heard voices speaking in the Old Talk and laughing, though no one was there. They felt compelled to leave, as did everyone who visited. Saul’s grandfather, however, had a dream of contentment at Gods Lake and made a ceremony and offering, after which point it was the territory of the Indian Horse family and their family alone.

Saul explains that his family settled in nicely to Gods Lake, where they “ate like [they] never had before” (21). He then describes a vision he receives one morning when standing atop the ridge. He is startled to hear his name whispered, and then sees a group of people at the lake; a community of a dozen wigwams with people busily gathering cattails and preparing deer carcasses. A man by the fire looks up at him and nods, changing the scene to night, where the man sings in the Old Talk before his face is displayed in the moon. Saul then hears a rumble, and watches as boulders descend down the cliff, obliterating the camp and its entire people below.

Saul realizes that his vision was of his ancestors dying on the land he now inhabits. His grandmother, aunt, and mother clash briefly over his grandmother’s insistence on the role of “Creator,” which his mother refers to as “blasphemy,” saying they are “God-fearing” (26). Naomi says it is the school that planted these ideas in them. It then comes time to harvest the rice, and the adults go out in canoes to gather the plants while Saul and Ben prepare the fires they will use to dry out the crop. They perform the “dancing of the rice” while their grandmother sings, crushing the hulls so that the rice can be separated. They work for hours, and Benjamin cannot stop coughing, though he tries to hide it. Eventually, he collapses, and Saul holds him, noting it was “as though the land were already reaching out and claiming him” (29). Benjamin dies that night.

Saul’s grandmother suggests that they honor Benjamin in the old way and lay him on the earth. This angers Saul’s mother, who says that they will take his body to a priest, and yells at Naomi for bringing them to Gods Lake, crying: ‘You brought him to this forsaken place. You told us by coming here that we would return to how things were. But those ways are gone. Those gods are dead” (31-32). Saul’s parents, aunt, and uncle pack the canoes with rice to sell and depart to give Benjamin a Christian funeral, leaving Saul and his grandmother alone at Gods Lake.

The adults do not return and the season begins to shift toward winter. Naomi prays but tells Saul that she can’t locate the rest of the family, and that “they have moved beyond the reach of the Old Ones” (35). She proposes that they go to Minaki and stay with her brother’s son Minoose through the winter. Otherwise, they will die.

Saul and his grandmother set out in the fast-coming winter. Within three days, they run out of food and the water becomes too cold to drink. As the snow deepens, they fall asleep on the canoe and wake to it crashing into a boulder. They escape to shore, watching the broken canoe drift off with the remainder of their supplies. Naomi continually sacrifices her comfort for Saul, giving him her canvas shawl and rope holding her boots together, saying her gumption will keep her warm. She asks Saul if he can see a trail that his great-grandfather cut that will lead to the train tracks. At first he sees nothing, but closes his eyes and hears a whisper, after which he is able to locate the path. Frozen, hungry, and exhausted, they follow the tracks. Saul falls and is carried by his grandmother. When she too falls, they see a structure and realize that it’s the railroad depot at Minaki. Naomi says that they’ll rest a bit before finding Minoose, but, huddled together, Saul “felt the cold freeze her in place…she had left” (42). Saul is discovered by passersby and taken away, “cast adrift on a strange new river” (42).