Living Our Language by Anton Treuer

Author:Anton Treuer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-87351-680-8
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2009-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

The Sacred Art of Hunting

[24] Hey, I want to tell you a little bit more about this here. There is still more that I remember in the morning about what has come to pass. Again in these things my mother’s younger brother was blessed as well. My mother’s younger brother killed nine deer, that Animikiins as he was called, he killed nine white-tailed deer; he killed all those deer. Then one time as he prepared to kill the tenth one, he saw a buck there, right there as we were crossing the highway. And so he shot him. “But after a while he was just standing there in the shadows,” he said. “I just stared at him the whole time,” he says. “What the heck am I doing,” he says. “Then that deer there disappeared as he was standing there in the shade, this big buck,” he said. He didn’t shoot him again. “Then he took off running,” he says. “And I was considered [blessed] in that.” He had killed too many of them. Something would have happened to him if he had killed that tenth one. So he was being watched over in a good way, at least that’s what he came to say of it, and he used to put tobacco down every time he went hunting; he would put that tobacco out. I used to help him when he was being considerate like that. Maybe that’s how that old man should have been.

[25] I used to hunt all the time myself, but not any more. Over this way I was having drives made for me, those white guys were making drives for me. I’m waiting in the stand there on the top edge of a slough again where I was put. I hadn’t heard a thing when a great big buck stops in mid-stride just close. It wasn’t far; he stood close there the whole time. When I looked at him, boy he was just beautiful. I was all decked out in blaze orange, but it was just like he stared at me the whole time, as he stared at me over there, and he stared and stared. Then my rifle was here. But I didn’t grab it, as I just kept my eye fixed on him. Boy, he [looked] so fine as he walked up close, just regal and right by the slough the whole time. Well, what am I doing, I thought as those white guys were so upset about [the deer] they had permitted to pass by them. Gee, that one white man showed up and I had him go over there.

[26] Then somebody talked to me close by in Ojibwe. “Near here, right near here he was so close to that deer over there,” he tells me. “Yeah,” I say to him. Again I spoke Ojibwe to him. “Truly,” I tell him. “I am tracking him down really close here. I’m searching for him so I can properly kill him,” I tell him. “I saw him the whole time,” I tell him.

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