The Power of Water in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

The Ojibwa people, otherwise known as Chippewa, had territory spreading over thousands of miles, from Ontario in Canada, and across the upper Great Lakes of the US. Because their territory covered so much lake ground, water and lakes in particular had a large role in the lives and the fables of the Ojibwa people (“Encyclopedia”). In the novel, Tracks, Louise Erdrich places her Ojibwa characters beside a fictional lake called Matchimanito. The lake has a powerful influence over the events in the story, as well as over the lives of the characters.
Part of what makes Matchimanito so distinct in the novel, is it’s personification in the existence of a lake monster, Misshepeshu. In Ojibwa legends, Misshepeshu was half lynx and half sea-serpent (“Misshepeshu”). The role the lake monster plays in Tracks is an obscure one. Most of the time it is portrayed as being lusty and dangerous, “a thing of death by drowning” (Erdrich, 11). At other times it is portrayed as the protector of the tribe and this role becomes quite significant later in the novel, when the lake monster is supposedly killed by Pauline Kashpaw.
The main character, Fleur Pillage, is closely linked to the lake monster due to multiple near-drownings as a child. The people of the tribe see these events as an indication that “the water-man, the monster, wanted her for himself” (Erdrich, 11). Because of this supposed desire the lake monster has for Fleur, no man in the tribe is brave enough to court her except for Eli Kashpaw. Even her daughter, Lulu, is rumored to have been fathered by the lusty Misshepeshu. Fleur’s connection with the lake monster gives her power over the other Ojibwa and she comes to believe in this power as strongly as the rest of the tribe does. Whether the power is illusory or not is never made clear in the novel.
The power of water and the lake, itself, however, is unquestionably real. In Ojibwa legend, Kitchi-Manitou, or the Great Mystery, created the world (“Native Legends”). According to the legend, he gave the water in this world “the twin powers of purity and renewal (“Native Legends”). The lake as a life-giver provides food for the Ojibwa, heals both physical and mental damage, and enables Nanapush to out-talk death on more than one occasion.
Nanapush and Fleur use the powers of water twice to attempt to rescue Pauline from herself. First Nanapush uses the tea and the story of rain to force Pauline to relieve herself. Then Fleur uses warm water to bathe Pauline and it is only at this point in this story, completely engulfed in water, that we see Pauline at peace with the world. Later, when Fleur’s mental health is in danger, Nanapush, Margaret and Moses use water to cure her. Nanapush puts together a drum from a kettle and then fills it halfway with water “so that it would make a sound to attract trouble and then drown it inside” (Erdrich, 189).
Though water has the power to give life, it also has the power to take it away. This is made clear from the very beginning of the novel, when Fleur nearly drowns twice and two men take her place, one of them drowning in his own bathtub. Fleur, being intimately connected with the lake, seems to share all of the lake’s powers. Pauline comments that, “between the people and the gold-eyed creature in the lake, the spirit which they said was neither good nor bad, but simply had an appetite, Fleur was the hinge” (Erdrich, 139). Later, Pauline compares her to “a door in to blackness” (Erdrich, 200). Fleur, of course, has no fear of death or of her powers. When she is living in the town of Argus, she bathes “every night. . .in the slaughtering tub” (Erdrich, 21). She is also suspiciously connected with the subsequent deaths of three men.
The imagery of water is also used in descriptions of living and dying. When Nanapush is trying to keep Lulu alive by talking, he says, “I talked on and on until you lost yourself inside the flow of it, until you entered the swell and ebb and did not sing but were sustained” (Erdrich, 167). Pauline, while on death-watch for Mary Pepewas, describes how she “let [death] fill her like dark water and then, a narrow-bottomed boat tied to shore, she began to pull away” (Erdrich, 67). When she dies she is described as having “drifted” instead of passed away (Erdrich, 68).
The connections of the lake and water to life and death are not insignificant but are, in fact, crucial to the story. In real terms, the lake is crucial to the survival of the tribe. It is their home, their food and their livelihood. Nanapush comments that “land is the only thing that lasts life to life. Money burns like tinder, flows off like water. And as for government promises, the wind is steadier” (Erdrich, 33). Though he uses the word “land,” he is really talking about the lake. Lake Matchimanito is the “land” that belongs to the Ojibwa and that the government is trying to take. Because the lake is so intimately connected with the Ojibwa people, the death of the lake is indicative of the death of the tribe. Also, because Misshepeshu is the personification of the lake, the death of the lake monster is indicative of the death of the lake, itself.
Pauline’s conquest over the lake monster is symbolic of the government’s conquest over the lake. She says, after having supposedly killed Misshepeshu, ” I believe that the monster was tamed that night, send to the bottom of the lake and chained there by my deed. For it is said that a surveyor’s crew arrived at the turnoff to Matchimanito in a rattling truck and set to measuring” (Erdrich, 204). With the loss of both Misshepeshu and the lake, Fleur finds herself powerless. Though Nanapush sympathetically tells her that she “will not be to blame if the land is lostâÂ?¦or if the oaks and the pines fall, the lake dries, and the lake man does not return.” she feels its loss deeply and with her inability to accept this loss, she loses everything else she cares about (Erdrich, 178).
While Fleur is the main character of the novel, the lake monster, Misshepeshu, is the central figure. He is the personification of nature, of the lake, the water, and most importantly, of life and death. Though the novel is a fiction, the essence of it is a true story. Nature holds the power of life and death. It feeds us, shelters us, heals us and sometimes destroys us. Water is the most crucial of all human needs, and while it may not always be the most benevolent of natural forms, it is to be treated with respect.
The destruction of the lake in Tracks is really the destruction of life and therefore the destruction of the Ojibwa people. What Nanapush says to Lulu at the very end of the novel seems to be not just directed at Lulu, but also at the white settlers who came to America and the destruction they brought with them. As Nanapush says, “We gave against your rush like creaking oaks, held on, braced ourselves together in the fierce dry wind” (Erdrich, 226).

Works Cited

Encyclopedia of North American Indians. 1 Dec. 2004
history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_026100_ojibwa.htm>.
Erdrich, Louise. Tracks. New York: Perennial, 1988.
Mishipeshu. 1 Dec. 2004 .
“The Creation of the World.” Ojibwa Native Legends. 1 Dec. 2004
www.native-art-in-canada.com/creationstory.html>.