Faithful Unto Death

Death in the North Woods

Death in the North Woods pembina county, minnesota territory, 1854 charlotte lay gasping in the small upstairs room. It felt to her that the warm close air was a hot woolen blanket that would not go through the tiny opening that was her throat. “I thought we might ask Ruth to help,” Nelia had tentatively suggested to her husband. Ruth was an elderly Ojibwa healer who had attended the missionary church once to try to discover the magic that lay behind the strength of the white people, and then stayed because she found them so entertaining. She, like others in her community, was intrigued by these whites who had come to the area, so inept in so many ways but also so singleminded . One could envision them following their demons to the four points of the earth if the demon captured their imaginations, as the one they called “God” seemed to have done. And their arrogance! Ruth had to admire it. Nothing they did seemed to have any connection with reality, but this never deterred them in their quest to subjugate everything in their paths. Their ceremonies , too, intrigued her, devoid as they were of color, pattern, or the cycles of the earth, but accompanied by grotesque grimaces and bizarre utterances. “Why do you say,” Ruth asked David Spencer one Sunday, “‘take, eat, for this is my body’ and then eat only pieces of bread? Is your god so easily fooled that you can say you eat its ›esh without bothering to hunt and kill it?” “I’ve explained many times,” answered David wearily. “It’s something called ‘symbolism.’ The Bible is full of it. It’s like saying that something like, well, like that cardinal,” and he pointed to the small crimson bird that perched nearby and watched them warily, turning its tiny crowned head this way and that. “I might say ‘there was a single ruby shining in that tree.’ Of course it’s not really a ruby, but anyone who had ever seen a cardinal would know what I intended.” Ruth understood symbolism very well, and indeed carried many 3 symbolic articles in her medicine pouch; she nodded, though she hadn’t the slightest idea what a “ruby” was. Still, she knew the whites were fooling themselves in the matter of this “communion” ceremony. “When our ancestors used to eat the hearts of a respected enemy or drink the blood of an especially strong bear they had stalked and killed,” she explained, “they did it so that the courage or strength of the adversary would enter into them. It seems an especially weak sort of ceremony when you want the spirits of this god to enter you, but only eat the lumps of dry bread and drink some juice you squeezed from berries.” David shook his head sadly, despairing of ever teaching wisdom to these foolish heathens. He would have been more discouraged had he realized how similar Ruth’s feelings were to his own. Now he felt some annoyance at his wife’s suggestion that they turn to this old backsliding woman’s nostrums for help with their sick child. “Ruth,” replied David with some asperity, “is an illiterate savage. How could she help? And you know what the Bible says about witches.” “Are you suggesting we go to her house and murder her?” responded Cornelia tartly. “Well, no,” admitted David. “But you understand the sentiment. If American medicines aren’t good enough, then, well, it’s just the Lord’s will if Charlotte takes a little longer to mend,” he concluded, aware even as he said it how lame and futile this sounded. Neither realized the extent of Ruth’s pharmacy, which contained such items as a willow bark extraction that would have eased the child’s aches and fever, a form of horseradish that, in a poultice, loosened mucus in bronchial tubes, blackberry leaves and bark whose tea, sweetened with wild honey, soothed raspy throats, and many other helpful remedies. David sighed and sat down, leaving Nelia to return to the bedside of their wheezing, choking child, armed with nothing more than a bottle of sweetened alcoholic “patent medicine” and a basin of cool water. Nelia sat in the dim light of the lantern and read, pausing now and then to exchange the warm damp cloths on Charlotte’s forehead for cool ones from the basin. Charlotte, dazed with the fever and the tonic her teetotaling parents had dosed her with, watched her mother...