The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

At some point between 1919 and 1920, Napoleon Morrissey’s decayed body is found in the woods near Little No Horse reservation, shocking the community. Father Damien conducts an investigation and finds that Napoleon has been strangled with a barbed-wire rosary. Later, in a moment of private reflection, the priest deduces that the rosary would have inflicted painful wounds on the hands of the murderer.

At Napoleon’s funeral service, tensions between opposing tribal factions explode when Margaret Kashpaw arrives and deliberately provokes Bernadette Morissey, Napoleon’s sister, by insinuating that the late Napoleon sexually abused both Mary Kashpaw and Pauline Puyat. This provocation enrages Bernadette, who was in charge of Mary at the time. Bernadette responds with outrage, but in her private thoughts, she acknowledges that her brother did indeed commit those crimes and had once “taken advantage of her too” (165). The funeral erupts into a violent brawl between the Kashpaw/Pillager and Morrissey/Lazarre factions of the Ojibwe community.

Watching the drama unfold in her role as a priest, Agnes sees the turmoil as a test for Father Damien, thinking to herself, “Was her priest to be driven from his own church?” (167). In this moment, she rallies, and Damien dramatically intervenes by leaping onto the coffin and declaring that his behavior is no more disrespectful than that of the entire congregation.