My research for writing Creating
Esther wasn’t limited to documents. I also dragged Roland along on a trip
through Ojibwe country in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to visit museums
and reservations and the shells of former Indian boarding schools.
It isn’t always possible
to take research trips to the sites in our fiction, but it has always been
worthwhile for me when I had the opportunity. And this one kept me from falling
into the pitfalls created by regional differences.
I already knew, of
course, that different tribes had different customs and ways of life. But I
didn’t know that a few hundred miles could make a difference within a tribe.
The main elements of
Ojibwe life and history were the same at each location. Every exhibit we saw
referred to the Ojibwes’ seasonal way of life: collecting maple syrup in the
spring, fishing and berrying and planting gardens in the summer, harvesting
wild rice in the fall, and hunting in the winter. (Actually, fishing and
hunting took place all year long, but they were more predominant at those
times.) Families moved from one place to another for these seasonal activities but
tended to return to the same spot every spring, every summer, every fall, and
every winter. In all regions, the members of the tribe also had the same clan
system (although not always the same clans) and the same teachings passed down
through their oral history.
But they didn’t all live
in the same type of birch-bark housing.
Before we left, I thought
all of the earlier Ojibwe lived in birch-bark wigwams with the rounded shape
shown in the museum exhibit above. On the research trip, I learned that the construction
materials varied somewhat depending on the season. Woven birch-bark mats
covered the frame in the hot summer months, which allowed the wall coverings to
be raised so that air could circulate through the lower part of the frame. In
the winter, the walls were insulated with moss and the floors used a radiant
heating system.
All of that was helpful
new information, and none of it surprised me.
What did surprise me was
that some Ojibwe used a birch-bark teepee during the winter. We saw no evidence
of this in Michigan or Wisconsin, where winter dwellings were built using the
wigwam shape. But that changed when we got to Minnesota. A guide at the Mille
Lacs Indian Museum told us that the teepee shape keeps the dwelling warmer.
(Since heat rises, the smaller air space near the ceiling would keep more of
the heat down by the floor.) During the warmer months, there were no regional
differences—all dwellings were built as wigwams. But the winter shape seems to
have been modified as members of the tribe moved farther west and closer to the
plains Indians, who lived in animal skin teepees.
I’m very glad I took that
trip and learned about Ojibwe regional differences. They don’t show up in the
book because I kept the settings in Wisconsin and Michigan. But without location
research, I could have gotten it wrong.
And I’d rather be true to
the culture.
__________
I took the first picture
at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabek Culture and Lifeways at Mount Pleasant,
Michigan, and the second at Grand Portage National Monument in Grand Portage, Minnesota.
__________
This post was repurposed
from the September 22, 2016 post I wrote for the Hoosier
Ink blog sponsored by the Indiana Chapter of the American Christian Fiction
Writers.
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