Tracks by Louis Erdrich

Introduction

Louise Erdrich's Tracks is the third installment in a five-book sequence that began with Love Medicine (1984) and The Beet Queen (1986) and concluded with The Bingo Palace (1994) and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001). Often compared to William Faulkner because of her use of multiple narrators, her sustained development of a single fictional setting (the imaginary town of Argus, North Dakota), and her exploration of family life across generations, Erdrich has also been deeply influenced by traditional Anishinaabe (Chippewa) mythology and culture. In Tracks, she draws heavily on this heritage to tell a story about the cultural fragmentation following the passage of the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) of 1887. By reinterpreting a number of archetypal figures from Anishinaabe myth, especially the trickster, the gambler, and the weendigo, Erdrich produces a powerful and nuanced account of the struggle against cultural extermination in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Discussion

Tracks depict the reservation as the first changes wrought by the incursions of the whites are taking place. A tuberculosis epidemic is decimating the Chippewa, and the Dawes Act is costing many tribal members their land. The novel never mentions Dawes by name, but the act is the root cause of many of the difficulties that characters face in Tracks. Indians were often unable to pay taxes on their allotments and had to forfeit their land to the government, which sold it to whites. That is the case with Fleur Pillager, the primary female character, who loses her land at the end of the novel (Erdrich, 7)

Tracks tells the story of Fleur Pillager, the last of a line of midewewin tribal shamans who draw their power from a spiritual connection with the dangerous, lake-dwelling spirit, or manitou, known as Misshepesshu. Throughout the book, Fleur struggles to protect her lands from tax collectors and logging companies and to keep her family together in the face of a range of threats including infidelity, famine, and tribal politics. Fleur's connections to the traditional world of Anishinaabe spirituality are not only complex but also ambiguous. Early in the novel, for example, while working at a butcher shop in Argus, she reenacts the mythic story of the trickster Nanabozho's contest with Nina Ataged (the great gambler). In that myth, Nanabozho (acting here as a culture-hero) tricks the gambler at his own game and saves the spirit of the people from eternal destruction. In the novel, Fleur's uncanny card-playing skills enable her to win a large sum of money from her white coworkers, money that she uses to pay the fees on her lands and temporarily save them. The mythic parallel to Nanabozho's victory is not perfect, however, for Fleur is then brutally raped by the enraged and drunken men. Although nature itself seems to avenge this violation as a tornado sweeps through Argus, and Fleur's assailants are frozen in the meat locker, this early episode sets up some of the novel's recurrent questions. What are the limits ...