Description

This novel chronicles one year in the life of Northwoods Native Americans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Enriched by the author’s first-hand knowledge, learned while traveling among the Ojibway early in the 20th century, this fictionalized account is a valuable ethnological record incorporating legends and traditional lifeways of the northern Ojibway Indians. The plot centers around a young Ojibway man coming of age in a demanding physical, hence social, environment who, late in the year of this story, becomes badly scarred during a fight with a bear. Years later, Old Mosh, with the disfigured face and mauled leg, served as a wilderness guide to the judge, the engineer, the banker, and the banker’s teenage son — John Peyton.