Chickadee

The fourth book in Louise Erdrich's Birchbark House series, Chickadee follows a new generation of an Ojibwe (Anishinabe) family as they are forced from their woodland homeland onto the Great Plains of the 19th-century American frontier.

The year is 1866. Omakayas, an Ojibwe woman, and her husband, Animikiins, have moved their family to a remote area near the Lake of the Woods to escape the illnesses that fur traders bring. Their eight-year-old twin sons, Chickadee and Makoons, are at the center of the story. Chickadee, named for the bird that stayed near Omakayas during the twins' premature birth in a snowstorm, is small and talkative, with a spirit that exceeds his size. Makoons, whose name means Little Bear, is his inseparable companion.

While the boys play near camp, Animikiins tracks a moose into a marshland and falls through melting ice into freezing water. He sees the spirit of his dead father seemingly beckoning him toward death but refuses to go, crying out that he must return to his family. His father's spirit points to a branch lodged in the ice. Animikiins reaches it, pulls himself ashore, and builds a fire. The moose has bled out nearby, providing meat for the rest of winter. A three-day blizzard follows, during which the family eats through all their remaining food. When the storm clears, the extended family gathers: Omakayas's father, Mikwam; her mother, Yellow Kettle; her grandmother, Nokomis; her sister Angeline; and Angeline's husband, Fishtail.

At the annual maple sugaring camp, an elder named John Zhigaag publicly mocks Chickadee as scrawny and weak. Humiliated, Chickadee hides and questions why such a small bird chose him as a namesake. When the bird flies away, Chickadee realizes he has been disrespectful. Nokomis finds him and teaches him that the chickadee survives winter by caching food, caring for its family, and staying cheerful through hardship. "Small things have great power," she tells him (27). She instructs him to leave cracked hazelnuts as an offering, and after an anxious wait, the bird returns and eats, a sign of forgiveness.

Makoons, furious at the insults to his brother, sneaks out at night and ties Zhigaag's moccasin laces together, then smears fat on his jacket. By morning mice have eaten through the coat, and the camp roars with laughter. But Zhigaag's two massive sons, Babiche and Batiste, arrive on horseback, scanning the camp with cold eyes for whoever humiliated their father. That night, Babiche reaches under the birchbark wall of the family's dwelling and snatches Chickadee, covering the boy's mouth and pulling him out before anyone wakes. Omakayas, warned by a dream, finds Chickadee's blanket empty and rouses the camp. The brothers and their horses are gone. Makoons, who has never been apart from his twin, cries with all his heart.

Animikiins and Two Strike, Omakayas's fierce cousin and a fearsome hunter, set out after the kidnappers. The rest of the family follows, planning to meet in the settlement of Pembina if they lose the trail. Chickadee arrives at Babiche and Batiste's squalid cabin in the Red River Valley, a flat, treeless expanse. He is put to work doing the brothers' cooking and cleaning. Chickadee decides to obey and feign contentment until he can escape.

The family's journey west introduces them to the harsh realities of the Plains. A spring blizzard tears away their birchbark house, which is never seen again. The narrator notes that birchbark houses are for the woods; the family has become people of the Plains but has not yet learned how to live there. When the Red River ice breaks up, the pursuers lose the kidnappers' trail and head for Pembina.

Chickadee's chance comes when Batiste falls ill and the horses eat poisonous jimsonweed. Babiche must carry his brother to deliver the mail, sending Chickadee back to the barn alone. Chickadee tries to head north but is too weak. A wagon arrives carrying nuns led by their stern superior, Mother Anthony. The youngest nun, Sister Seraphica, coaxes the hiding boy out with bread and kind gestures. At the mission school, Mother Anthony declares Chickadee will receive a proper baptismal name and dismisses his Ojibwe name as pagan. When she forces him into scalding water and picks up scissors to cut his braids, Chickadee rips free, grabs his traditional clothing, and flees into the woods. Using moss on the trees to determine north, he sets out for home.

After days of walking, Chickadee collapses from starvation and exhaustion. He asks for help from any spirit that can hear him. His namesake chickadee perches above him and speaks in a voice he can understand, explaining that it has followed him and will help because Chickadee apologized and fed it after his earlier insult. The bird teaches him a healing song about how small things have great power and speak the truth. It directs him to water, food, and two hawks whose claws are locked together from fighting. Chickadee frees the hawks and shares his food with them. Grateful, they adopt him as their child and promise to help him hunt. Strengthened, Chickadee follows the stream north, surviving on cattail roots, snared rabbits, fish, and turtle meat.

The family reaches Pembina, where Omakayas's brother, Quill, lives with his wife, Margaret, a Metis woman of mixed Indigenous and French heritage. Quill is away on the oxcart train to St. Paul. The family settles into an abandoned cabin and begins a new life, planting Nokomis's saved seeds and fishing in the Red River. Two Strike, Animikiins, and Fishtail intercept Babiche and Batiste, who confess that Chickadee was sent back to the cabin. Animikiins traces Chickadee's path through the forest, reading signs in the earth, and notes proudly that his son knows how to live as an Anishinabe. But eventually the trail vanishes.

Chickadee hears a tremendous screeching and hides as 200 Red River oxcarts pass, their all-wood wheels producing a deafening noise. He stays hidden, wary of capture, until he spots Uncle Quill driving a cart. Quill plucks him aboard and feeds him pemmican, a preserved food made from dried meat and fat, along with bannock, a flatbread, and water. The train carries Chickadee south to St. Paul, where he is astonished by the city's buildings, glass windows, and mansions on the bluff. A trader gives him a peppermint stick, his first taste of candy. He eats half and saves the rest for Makoons. That night, watching the city from below, Chickadee senses uneasily that it is consuming forests and animals and will never be satisfied.

Back in Pembina, Makoons has grown dangerously ill. He has a cough and fever, and Nokomis treats him with herbal remedies, but he does not improve. On the return journey north, Chickadee dreams of Makoons calling for help and wakes in tears.

In Pembina, Makoons insists he hears his brother. Omakayas fears Chickadee has died and his spirit is pulling Makoons to the other side. Animikiins takes out his father's drum and sings, calling on spirits to heal his son. Outside, a sound like a thousand mad fiddles grows louder: the approaching screech of oxcart wheels. Makoons shouts that his brother is there. The door slams open and Chickadee walks in. The family embraces joyfully. That night, Chickadee sings the healing song his namesake bird taught him, pouring all his love into each word. Makoons listens with a smile, slowly licking the other half of the peppermint stick, stale and faded but precious. He asks for the song again and again, and with each repetition, his strength grows inside him.