TRACKS: Form and Content

TRACKS shares with the other novels of Louise Erdrich’s Chippewa tetralogy—Love Medicine (1984, rev. 1993), The Beet Queen (1986), and The Bingo Palace (1994)—its form, a series of short interconnected tales reminiscent of oral Indian narrative cycles; its use of contrasting voices, often recounting the same episodes from different points of view; and many of the same characters. Erdrich’s continuing concern with American Indian family formation and with the development of character over many years here focuses on the crucial time of 1912 to 1924, when widespread disease; the consequences of the Allotment Acts of 1887 and 1904, when reservation land was divided and sold off (usually to whites); and the bitter division between full-bloods and mixed-bloods (in current slang, “skins” and “breeds”) over policy all tore apart the fabric of Chippewa society. This breaking of the “sacred hoop” is Erdrich’s main subject here, and she examines her subject through various memorable portraits of strong Indian women.

Strong is not always, however, good. Pauline Puyat—along with Nanapush, one of the two first-person narrators of the novel—is an unreliable and steadily deteriorating character. She does not have, like Nanapush, a direct narratee for her story. Nanapush reminds the reader throughout that his primary audience is Lulu, whom he has helped to rear, has saved from the government school she loathed, and now attempts to dissuade from an unwise marriage to a Morrissey) one of the “breed” families of villains, profiteers reminiscent of Faulkner’s Snopeses). Pauline, however, seems to be addressing herself, which is appropriate, considering the self-absorption that she constantly exhibits in the novel. Since no omniscient narrator spans both worlds, as is the case in Love Medicine and The Beet Queen, readers must choose between Nanapush’s and Pauline’s often conflicting reports. Because Nanapush’s is a seasoned, comic, and often touching voice, one tends to rate his account as being more accurate than Pauline’s, especially as she moves from the comparatively normal tone of her first narration through increasing psychosis and utter madness.

For both of them, the focal character is Fleur, “the last Pillager,” who comes from a clan that is legendary for its magic and shamanistic power. Three times she almost drowns in Lake Matchimanito, and three times she is saved. During her brief summer in Argus—the only time she lives away from the bush—she is raped (or so Pauline says), revenges herself on the three men responsible, and conceives Lulu, to whom her story is being told. Her passionate mating with Eli results in another pregnancy, Pauline’s jealousy, and Pauline’s deliberate causing of the death of her child. Eli’s familial connection with Margaret and Nector, who cheat Nanapush and Fleur of their land, causes the couple’s permanent rupture and, eventually, Fleur’s sending Lulu away to government school. In a stunning climax, Fleur’s magic and woods knowledge defeat, at least temporarily, a logging company’s attempt to rape her land. Nanapush’s late-blooming love for Margaret Kashpaw and Pauline’s murderous movement from marginal status to sisterhood in a convent and proclamation of her own pure white blood, as well as her bearing and discarding of Marie, are interwoven with Fleur’s fascinating but ultimately tragic destiny.