Tracks

Throughout the novel, the weather and the Chippewa people directly symbolize one another. For example, the opening sentence of the novel compares the falling of the snow to the falling of the Chippewa people in death. The Chippewa people see signs and wonders in the movement of the seasons, the forests, the animals around them, and specifically weather events.

Pauline describes the weather before the tornado that flattens the butcher shop after Fleur’s rape, saying “The sky was so low that I felt the weight of it like a door” (27). Such metaphors unite the everyday—a door—with the sky. Similar metaphors appear throughout the novel.

For example, when three of the butcher’s men came to fear and despise Fleur Pillager because of her prowess as a gambler who wins their money night after night, they rape her. Their damaged sense of superiority over the Native peoples and over women cannot let her dominance stand, so they attempt to degrade her, putting her in her “proper,” powerless place.

However, a tornado flattens parts of the town later that night, including the butcher shop, the smokehouse, and the freezer where the gambling men took refuge from the storm. Two of the men die in the freezer, while Dutch James dies slowly as the surgeon removes parts of him piece by frostbitten piece.