![]() ![]() On the reservation, where we were forced close together, the clans dwindled. Whole families of Anishinabe lay ill and helpless in its breath. ![]() The outcome, however, was just as certain. This disease was different from the pox and fever, for it came on slowly. The consumption, it was called by young Father Damien, who came in that year to replace the priest who had succumbed to the same devastation as his flock. For those who survived the spotted sickness from the south and our long fight west to Dakota land, where we signed the treaty, and then a wind from the east, bringing exile in a storm of government papers, what descended from the north in 1914 seemed terrible, and unjust.īy then we thought disaster must surely have spent its force, that disease must have claimed all of the Anishinabe that the earth could hold and bury.īut along with the first bitter punishments of early winter a new sickness swept down. We were surprised that so many of us were left to die. We started dying before the snow, and, like the snow, we continued to fall. ![]()
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