Before You Read

The Names of Women

Meet Erdrich entered Dartmouth

College in 1972, the first year of the
Louise Erdrich
college’s new Native American stud-
“families
People in [Native American]
make everything into a
ies department. From Dartmouth,
Erdrich went to the Johns Hopkins
story. . . . People just sit and the University, where she wrote poems
stories start coming, one after and stories and earned a master’s
another.
” —Erdrich
degree. She then returned to
Dartmouth as a writer in residence.
Before she turned thirty, Erdrich
The daughter of a German published her first novel, Love
American father and an Ojibwa (ō jib
wā´) mother, Medicine, a book about the Chippewa families
Louise Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North living on or near a North Dakota reservation. The
Dakota, the oldest of seven children. Erdrich’s book was well received by readers and critics,
parents, who both worked in a Bureau of Indian earning the National Book Award in 1984. Erdrich
Affairs boarding school, encouraged their daughter has continued writing novels known for their
to write. “My father used to give me a nickel for variety of characters and depth of characterization.
every story I wrote, and my mother wove strips of She has also written nonfiction and children’s
construction paper together and stapled them into books.
book covers. So at an early age I felt myself to be a
published author earning substantial royalties.” Louise Erdrich was born in 1954.

Reading Focus Building Background

What’s in a name? Does your name Erdrich’s People
tell people anything about you? The Anishinabe (a nish
i na´bā)—also known as the Ojibwa, Ojibway, or
Chippewa—are one of the largest groups of Native Americans in North America.
Journal Write about your own
After the mid-1600s, they migrated west from the Great Lakes region to areas such
name or the names of some of your
as Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Montana. Many Anishinabe families still live on the
relatives or ancestors. What can
Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota today.
people learn about you and your
family from your names?
Setting a Purpose Read to Vocabulary Preview
learn what one writer thinks about decimated (des
ə māt´əd) adj. undeviating (un dē
vē āt´in) adj.
the names in her family. destroyed or killed in large numbers; not turning away from; p. 1183
p. 1182 intricately (in
tri kit lē) adv. in a
presumptuous (pri zump
ch¯¯¯ oo əs) omplicated manner; elaborately;
adj. going beyond what is proper; p. 1183
excessively bold; p. 1182 novel (nov
əl) adj. new and unusual;
ecclesiastical (i klē´ zē as
ti kəl) adj. p. 1183
of or relating to the church; wane (wān) v. to decrease gradually;
p. 1182 to decline; p. 1184

1180
UNIT 7
Louise Erdrich

1181
Ikwe1 is the word for woman in the language of and watched for enemies at night. The woman
the Anishinabe, my mother’s people, whose named Standing Across could see things moving
descendants, mixed with and married to French far across the lake. The old ladies gossiped about
trappers and farmers, are the Michifs2 of the Playing Around, but no one dared say anything
Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. to her face. Ice was good at gambling. Shining
Every Anishinabe Ikwe, every mixed-blood One Side loved to sit and talk to Opposite the Sky.
descendant like me, who can trace her way back They both knew Sounding Feather, Exhausted
a generation or two, is the daughter of a mystery. Wind and Green Cloud, daughter of Seeing Iron.
The history of the woodland Anishinabe— Center of the Sky was a widow. Rabbit, Prairie
decimated by disease, fighting Plains Indians Chicken and Daylight were all little girls. She
tribes to the west and squeezed by European set- Tramp could make great distance in a day of
tlers to the east—is much like most other Native walking. Cross Lightning had a powerful smile.
American stories, a confusion of loss, a tale of When Setting Wind and Gentle Woman Standing
absences, of a culture that was blown apart and sang together the whole tribe listened. Stop the
changed so radically in Day got her name when at
such a short time that only her shout the afternoon
the names survive. went still. Log was strong,
And yet, those names. Cloud Touching Bottom
The names of the first weak and consumptive.3
women whose existence Mirage married Wind.
is recorded on the rolls Everyone loved Musical
of the Turtle Mountain Cloud, but children hid
Reservation, in 1892, from Dressed in Stone.
reveal as much as we can Lying Down Grass had such
ever recapture of their a gentle voice and touch,
personalities, complex natures and relation- but no one dared to cross She Black of Heart.
ships. These names tell stories, or half stories, We can imagine something of these women
if only we listen closely. from their names. Anishinabe historian Basil
There once were women named Standing Johnston notes that ‘such was the mystique and
Strong, Fish Bones, Different Thunder. There force of a name that it was considered
once was a girl called Yellow Straps. Imagine presumptuous and unbecoming, even vain, for a
what it was like to pick berries with Sky Coming person to utter his own name. It was the custom
Down, to walk through a storm with Lightning for a third person, if present, to utter the name of
Proof. Surely, she was struck and lived, but what the person to be identified. Seldom, if ever, did
about the person next to her? People always either husband or wife speak the name of the
avoided Steps Over Truth, when they wanted a other in public.’
straight answer, and I Hear, when they wanted Shortly after the first tribal roll, the prac-
to keep a secret. Glittering put coal on her face tice of renaming became an ecclesiastical

1. Ikwe (ik
wā) 3. Someone who is consumptive suffers from a disease (espe-

2. Michifs (mi
chifz) cially tuberculosis) in which body tissue wastes away.

Vocabulary
decimated (des
ə māt´əd) adj. destroyed or killed in large numbers
presumptuous (pri zump
ch¯¯¯ oo əs) adj. going beyond what is proper; excessively bold
ecclesiastical (i klē´ zē as
ti kəl) adj. of or relating to the church

1182  UNIT 7
exercise, and, as a result, most women in the had gathered from
next two generations bear the names of saints the wooded hills. Of
particularly beloved by the French. She Knows Elise Eliza’s industry
the Bear became Marie. Sloping Cloud was there remains in
christened Jeanne. Taking Care of the Day and the family only an
Yellow Day Woman turned into Catherines. intricately beaded
Identities are altogether lost. The daughters of pair of buffalo horns
my own ancestors, Kwayzancheewin4—Acts and a piece of real
Like a Boy and Striped Earth Woman—go furniture, a ‘high-
Did You Know?
unrecorded, and no hint or reflection of their boy’, an object once A highboy is a tall chest of
individual natures comes to light through the regarded with some drawers having two sections
scattershot records of those times, although awe, a prize she won and four legs.
they must have been genetically tough in order for selling the most
to survive: there were epidemics of typhoid, merchandise from a manufacturer’s catalogue.
flu, measles and other diseases that winnowed The owner of the other cart, Virginia
the tribe each winter. They had to have grown Grandbois, died when I was nine years old: she
up sensible, hard-working, undeviating in their was a fearsome and fascinating presence, an old
attention to their tasks. They had to have been woman seated like an icon behind the door of
lucky. And if very lucky, they acquired carts. my grandparents’ house. Forty years before I was
born, she was photographed on her way to fetch

I
t is no small thing that both of my great- drinking water at the
grandmothers were known as women with reservation well. In
carts. the picture she is
The first was Elise Eliza McCloud, the seated high, the reins
great-granddaughter of Striped Earth Woman. in her fingers con-
The buggy she owned was somewhat grander nected to a couple
than a cart. In her photograph, Elise Eliza gazes of shaggy fetlocked
straight ahead, intent, elevated in her pride. draft ponies. The
Perhaps she and her daughter Justine, both barrel she will fill
wearing reshaped felt fedoras,5 were on their stands behind her. Did You Know?
A fetlocked (fet
lokt) pony
way to the train that would take them from She wears a man’s has a tuft of hair on the back
Rugby, North Dakota, to Grand Forks, and sweater and an ex- of each leg, just above the
back again. Back and forth across the upper pression of vast self- hoof.
tier of the plains, they peddled their hand- pleasure. She might
worked tourist items—dangling moccasin have been saying Kaygoh,6 a warning, to calm
brooches and little beaded hats, or, in the sum- the horses. She might have been speaking to
mer, the wild berries, plums and nuts that they whomever it was who held the camera, still a
novel luxury.
4. Kwayzancheewin (kwā´ zan chē
win)
5. Fedoras (fi dor
əz) are soft felt hats with a curved brim and a
lengthwise crease in the crown. 6. Kaygoh (kā ō
)

Vocabulary
undeviating (un dē
vē āt´in) adj. not turning away from
intricately (in
tri kit lē) adv. in a complicated manner; elaborately
novel (nov
əl) adj. new and unusual

INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY  1183

 Virginia Grandbois was known to smell of get home, to be home. She wanted her own
flowers. In spite of the potato picking, water place back, the place she had made, not her
hauling, field and housework, she found the daughter’s, not anyone else’s. Hers. There was
time and will to dust her face with pale pow- no substitute, no kindness, no reality that
der, in order to look more French. She was would change her mind. She had to be tied to
the great-great-granddaughter of the daughter the chair, and the chair to the wall, and still
of the principal leader of the A-waus-e,7 the there was no reasoning with Virginia
Bullhead clan, a woman whose real name was Grandbois. Her entire life, her hard-won per-
never recorded but who, on marrying a sonality, boiled down in the end to one stub-
Frenchman, was ‘recreated’ as Madame born, fixed, desperate idea.
Cadotte. It was Madame Cadotte who acted as a

I
liaison8 between her Ojibway relatives and her started with the same idea—this urge to
husband so that, even when French influence get home, even if I must walk straight
waned in the region, Jean-Baptiste Cadotte across the world. Only, for me, the urge to
stayed on as the only trader of importance, the walk is the urge to write. Like my great-
last governor of the fort at Sault St. Marie.9 grandmother’s house, there is no home for me
By the time I knew Virginia Grandbois, to get to. A mixed-blood, raised in the
however, her mind had darkened, and her Sugarbeet Capital, educated on the Eastern
body deepened, shrunk, turned to bones and seaboard, married in a tiny New England vil-
leather. She did not live in the present or in lage, living now on a ridge directly across
any known time at all. Periodically, she would from the Swan Range in the Rocky
awaken from dim and unknown dreams to Mountains, my home is a collection of
find herself seated behind the door in her homes, of wells in which the quiet of experi-
daughter’s house. She then cried out for her ence shales away into sweet bedrock.
cart and her horses. When they did not mate- Elise Eliza pieced the quilt my mother
rialize, Virginia Grandbois rose with great slept under, a patchwork of shirts, pants,
energy and purpose. Then she walked towards other worn-out scraps, bordered with small
her house, taking the straightest line. rinsed and pressed Bull Durham11 sacks. As if
That house, long sold and gone, lay over in another time and place, although it is only
one hundred miles due east and still Virginia the dim barrel of a four-year-old’s memory, I see
Grandbois charged ahead, no matter what lay myself lying wrapped under smoky quilts and
in her path—fences, sloughs,10 woods, the dank green army blankets in the house in which
yards of other families. She wanted home, to my mother was born. In the fragrance of
tobacco, some smoked in home-rolled cigarettes,
7. A-waus-e (a
wos ē)
some offered to the Manitous12 whose presence
8. Here, a liaison (lē ā
zon) is a person who maintains or still was honored, I dream myself home. Beneath
improves communications between two parties. the rafters, shadowed with bunches of plants
9. Sault St. (or Ste., meaning Sainte) Marie (s¯¯¯ oo´ sānt
mə rē
), Michigan, and its sister city, Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario, lie along the St. Mary’s River between Lake Huron 11. Bull Durham was a brand of tobacco.
and Lake Superior. 12. Manitous (man
ə t ooz´)
¯¯¯ are spirits worshipped as governing
10. Sloughs (sl¯¯¯
ooz) are marshes, swamps, or bogs. forces of life and nature.

Vocabulary
wane (wān) v. to decrease gradually; to decline

1184  UNIT 7
 Louise Erdrich

and torn calendars, in the nest of a sagging consolidate14 their tonic and drop seed, when
bed, I listen to mice rustle and the scratch of animals store energy and grow thick fur. As
an owl’s claws as it paces the shingles. for me, I start keeping longer hours, writing
Elise Eliza’s daughter-in-law, my grand- more, working harder, though I am obviously
mother Mary LeFavor, kept that house of not a creature of a traditional Anishinabe
hand-hewed and stacked beams, mudded culture. I was not raised speaking the old
between. She managed to shore it up and keep language, or adhering to the cycle of religious
it standing by stuffing every ceremonies that govern the
new crack with disposable Anishinabe spiritual rela-
diapers. Having used and tionship to the land and the
reused cloth to diaper her own moral order within human
children, my grandmother configurations. As the wed-
washed and hung to dry the ding of many backgrounds, I
paper and plastic diapers that am free to do what simply
her granddaughters bought feels right.
for her great-grandchildren. My mother knits, sews,
When their plastic-paper cans, dries food and preserves
shredded, she gathered them it. She knows how to gather
carefully together and one day, on a summer tea, berries, snare rabbits, milk cows and churn
visit, I woke early to find her tamping13 the butter. She can grow squash and melons from
rolled stuff carefully into the cracked walls of seeds she gathered the fall before. She is, as
that old house. were the women who came before me, a
repository15 of all of the homely virtues, and I

I
t is autumn in the Plains, and in the little am the first in a long line who has not saved
sloughs ducks land, and mudhens, whose the autumn’s harvest in birch bark makuks16
flesh always tastes greasy and charred. and skin bags and in a cellar dry and cold
Snow is coming soon, and after its first fall with dust. I am the first who scratches the
there will be a short, false warmth that brings ground for pleasure, not survival, and grows
out the sweet-sour odor of highbush cran- flowers instead of potatoes. I record rather
berries. As a descendant of the women who than practise the arts that filled the hands
skinned buffalo and tanned and smoked the and days of my mother and her mother, and
hides, of women who pounded berries with all the mothers going back into the shadows,
the dried meat to make winter food, who when women wore names that told us who
made tea from willow bark and rosehips, who they were.
gathered snakeroot, I am affected by the
change of seasons. Here is a time when plants
14. To consolidate (kən sol
ə dāt´) means “to combine.”
15. Here, a repository (ri poz
ə tor´ē) is a person who stores
13. Tamping means “forcing or packing in with a series of light something.
taps.” 16. makuks (ma
kuks)

INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY  1185

 Active Reading and Critical Thinking

Responding to Literature
Personal Response 13. Theme Connections How does the fact that Erdrich’s
Discuss your initial impression of this selection with a ancestors are both Anishinabe and French relate to the
partner. theme “Variety Is Richness”?
14. How do the names you wrote about for the Reading
Focus on page 1180 compare with the ones in this
Analyzing Literature
selection for telling about the people they name?
Recall Which names do you prefer? Explain.
1. What does Erdrich reveal in the first paragraph about her 15. Do you think that writing about what people have done
ethnic heritage and about the history of her ancestors? in the past is important? Why or why not?
2. List five names that, according to Erdrich, appeared on
the rolls of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in 1892. Literary Criticism
3. What words does Erdrich use to describe her great-
grandmothers? Scholar Jean Strouse uses the following adjectives to describe
4. What do Virginia Grandbois and Erdrich have in the characters in Erdrich’s fiction: strong, original, funny,
common? tough, furious, and vivid. Do you think these adjectives also
5. Compare the things her mother does with the things describe the women in “The Names of Women”? Explain
Erdrich does. your answer in a paragraph. Use details from the selection
for support.
Interpret
6. In your opinion, what is Erdrich’s attitude about her
ancestors’ history?
7. What sense of the Anishinabe women do you get from Literary ELEMENTS
the listing of their names? Explain.
8. How do you think Erdrich feels about her great-grand- Catalog
mothers? Use specific details from the selection to A catalog is a list of people, things, or attributes. Many
explain your answer. forms of literature include catalogs. For example, ancient
9. What do you think Erdrich is saying about herself when epic poems listed the names of heroes or ships. The
she explains what she has in common with her great- poets Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg often included
grandmother Virginia Grandbois? Use details from the catalogs in their poems as Erdrich does in “The Names
selection to support your response. of Women.”
10. From the last paragraph, what conclusions can you make 1. Describe two catalogs that appear in this selection.
about the kind of person Erdrich is? How do you think 2. Why might Erdrich present this information in the
she feels about being this kind of person? Explain, using form of catalogs?
details from the selection for support..
• See Literary Terms Handbook,
Evaluate and Connect p. R3.
11. In your opinion, what is the theme, or message, of this
selection? Support your response with evidence from the
selection.
12. Find three examples of sensory details in “The Names
of Women” and describe how they affect your apprecia- Sensory detail Effect
tion of the selection. (See Literary Terms Handbook, 1.
page R14.) You may want to use a chart like the one on 2.
this page to help you.
3.

1186
UNIT 7
 Literature and Writing
Writing About Literature Creative Writing
Analyzing the Author’s Use of Factual Information Name Your Friends Make a list of ten friends or relatives.
Reread “The Names of Women” and find three facts that What distinctive characteristics or events in their lives might
strike you as particularly interesting or surprising. Analyze best be used to illustrate their personalities? Make up names
each fact and explain how Erdrich uses it, what makes it so for these people, using the kind of descriptive names listed
interesting, and how it adds to your understanding of the in the first part of “The Names of Women.”
world she describes.

Extending Your Response

Interdisciplinary Activity Literature Groups
History: Family Tree Using the information in the selec- Will She Make It? In this selection, Erdrich describes
tion, create a family tree for Louise Erdrich. Leave empty herself as someone with the “urge to get home, even if I
spaces where no information is provided but show the must walk straight across the world.” What does she mean?
relationships among the ancestors of Erdrich who are named Will she make it? As a group, agree on a statement of
in the selection. Erdrich’s goal and discuss why you think she will succeed or
fail in reaching it. Use passages from the selection to support
Listening and Speaking your view. Have one group member take notes on the
Readers Theater Read parts of this selection aloud, drama- explanations people offer. Outline your group’s ideas and
tizing, through sound or pantomime, the names or activities supporting details and then share your conclusion with
described. You might use this technique for the opening the class.
paragraphs or for the final paragraphs.
Save your work for your portfolio.

VOCABULARY
SkillMinilesson
• Antonyms
Antonyms are words that have opposite meanings from PRACTICE Choose an antonym for each of the
each other. Some antonyms are “true,” with meanings vocabulary words listed below.
that are exactly opposite; for example, hot and cold 1. decimate
or night and day. Often, a word will have several a. build b. destroy c. create
antonyms, each with a slightly different meaning.
2. intricately
For example, courageous and valiant are antonyms
for cowardly. a. simply b. elaborately c. curiously
While most words have at least one synonym, or 3. novel
word that has the same or nearly the same meaning, a. innovative b. dated c. literary
not all words have an antonym; for example, run and 4. wane
dog have no antonyms. a. increase b. slacken c. subside

INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
1187