The Birchbark House

This chapter establishes the basic traits and daily routines of the book’s main characters. We meet Omakayas, a seven-year-old Anishinabe girl living on an island on Lake Superior in 1847. She is helping her grandmother, Nokomis, to find a birch tree whose bark will cover their family’s summer home. As Nokomis prepares to strip the bark from the tree, she prays to its spirit:“‘Old Sister…we need your skin for our shelter’” (7). Together, Omakayas and Nokomis strip bark from the tree. According to their tradition, the women of the family—Omakayas, her Mama, her big sister Angeline, and her grandmother Nokomis—are to build the birchbark shelter. The women do so, and the family, minus Deydey, move in.

Summer approaches and is marked by the first thunderstorm of the season. Omakayas wakes up in the night to the sound of thunder, which frightens her, but the rumbling sound becomes less scary as it recedes: “The dull thuds of thunder falling in the distance now felt comforting, and before the sounds entirely faded, Omakayas was asleep” (14). The next day, Omakayas wants to go play, but she knows that she must help Mama scrape down and tan a moose hide, a chore the girl hates. Omakayas attempts to wriggle underneath a wall of the birchbark house to escape unseen, but Angeline catches her. Humiliated and frustrated, Omakayas prepares for her chore, but Mama instead sends her to retrieve a pair of scissors from Old Tallow, a woman who lives nearby. Omakayas rushes off before Mama can change her mind.

Omakayas walks into the nearby town to visit Old Tallow. We learn that Old Tallow, an intimidating woman who owns several vicious dogs, respects Omakayas’s parents. Omakayas is unsure what to make of Old Tallow because “for some reason, Old Tallow seemed to treat her, Omakayas, somewhat differently than other children” (20). While Old Tallow is usually disdainful of children, she treats Omakayas with kindness.

As Omakayas approaches Old Tallow’s cabin, the old woman’s dogs try to scare her off, particularly a big yellow one. Omakayas pushes the dog aside and shows no fear, but she senses that the dog will come after her again someday. Old Tallow gives Omakayas the scissors, and despite her gruff demeanor, she also gives the young girl a lump of maple sugar as a treat.

Walking back home, Omakayas delays her return and the task of scraping the moose hide by stopping to pick some berries. She hopes that Angeline will be envious of her berries and beg her to share. As she gathers the berries, Omakayas meets two young bear cubs. She greets them, “Ahneen [greetings], little brothers” (28), and offers them some berries, which they accept. Omakayas decides that they must be orphans. Just as she is plotting to bring them home with her, the mother bear arrives and knocks her down. Omakayas lies still, ready to attack the bear with her scissors, but the bear hesitates as it examines the girl. Omakayas speaks to the bear, calling her “Nokomis” (31), or “Grandmother.” She asks the bear for forgiveness, explains her task, and promises that she will leave the bear and her cubs in peace. The bear sits back, gathers its cubs, and leaves Omakayas free to run home.

Shaken by her encounter with the bear family, Omakayas returns home. Angeline is scraping the moose hide, but Omakayas sends her sister away to play and takes up the chore herself. Though she hates scraping the hide, she uses this opportunity to reflect quietly on the encounter. She believes that she achieved a level of communication with the bear that she does not understand, and she reflects upon the human-like qualities of bears that make humans treat them with respect. Omakayas feels the presence of the bear and realizes that it will protect her in the future. She does such good work on the hide as she ponders these things that the rest of her family members praise her highly: “Her mother promised her a very special pair of winter makazins [moccasins] and Angeline even braided her hair with one of her own red ribbons” (37).

Omakayas loves to play with her little brother, Neewo, whose name means “Fourth,” even though she isn’t allowed to take care of him: “She felt, in her heart, streams of love for the baby pouring through” (37). Neewo doesn’t yet have a real name because he is so young and could still rejoin the spirit world. Several people in the town have the power to dream of names for babies, but so far no one has been able to find a name for Neewo.

Half the summer passes, and Omakayas remains quiet and reflective after the bear encounter. She has moments where it seems like the spirits are trying to communicate with her, but she is too young for the ritual of blackening her face with charcoal to seek a vision from the spirits.

One day, the rest of the family decides to go to town to find news of Omakayas’s father, Deydey. Omakayas is finally allowed to watch Neewo unattended, and Mama instructs her just to rock the baby and do nothing else. Despite Mama’s instructions, Omakayas takes Neewo out of his cradle and restrictive swaddling and brings him to a sunny spot near the lake. The baby plays happily with a stick, and Omakayas imagines she hears him say that this is the happiest day of his life and that he will never forget it. She takes him back to the house, and as he begins to cry over being swaddled again, she pops the last of Old Tallow’s maple sugar in his mouth to soothe him: “Omakayas thought she heard him tell her this was the best day of his life so far” (45). After this secret outing, she and Neewo share a special bond, which is contrasted with Omakayas’s strained relationship with the overbearing Pinch.

One night, late in the summer, Omakayas wakes up to find that her Deydey has come home from his fur-trading expedition. She sees his makazins by the door, and imagines all the joy, excitement, and gifts that will come the next day. With these happy reflections, Omakayas falls back asleep.

With Deydey home, the atmosphere in the birchbark house changes. Everything becomes more orderly. Although he has an excellent sense of humor and loves to tell stories, Deydey is also strict and prone to annoyance. Noticing that hungry crows are threatening the excellent corn crop, Deydey tells Omakayas and Angeline to guard the corn with sticks. The two girls argue on the way to the cornfield and fall into an angry silence, which allows them to creep up on a local deer called One Horn. The deer is not frightened, and the girls enjoy an awestruck moment with him until Deydey comes down the path and scares One Horn away.

When they arrive at the cornfield, the girls become hungry, and Angeline fetches a fishing net to try to catch some crows. The girls set up a trap, capture a huge number of crows, and set about snapping their necks. Omakayas regrets killing them, and she notices one last young crow struggling to escape. Omakayas sets it free, but it is injured and can’t fly away: “She looked around to see if Angeline was watching. She wasn’t. With a swift movement, Omakayas reached down and scooped the bird into the small carrying sack at her waist” (59). Omakayas then forgets about the bird.

The girls bring their crows home, and Mama makes a wonderful meal out of them that feeds the whole family. Deydey praises Angeline and Omakayas, and as the family gathers around the fire, he tells them a ghost story. As he was paddling with the other traders, a bad storm hit and forced the group to bring their canoes to shore. Sleeping underneath his canoe, Deydey heard the voices of two women arguing over how to divide up the meat and bones of the voyageurs. He realized that they were bad spirits who had called up a storm to lure the fur traders. Deydey shouted out, pretending to be a bear, and convinced the women that he had eaten the voyageurs. He irritated them further by whacking them with his rifle butt, causing the two women to start fighting each other. As the women fought, Deydey and his men pushed their canoes back in the water and escaped, but one of the spirits grabbed his shirt and ripped it to shreds. With that, “Deydey solemnly produced the pieces of shirt” (67).

Deydey concludes his story and distributes gifts to the family. For Omakayas, since she has become so good at scraping hides despite disliking the task, Deydey has fashioned a special scraper out of the barrel of an old gun. Omakayas expresses gratitude, but she is secretly dismayed by the gift.

Just as the gifts have been distributed, Omakayas sees one of Deydey’s makazins move. She shouts, “Neshkey[look]!” (69). Everyone cries out in surprise, and the bird that Omakayas had tucked into her sack pops out of the shoes.