85 pages • 2 hours read
The Birchbark House
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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: "Zeegwun (Spring)"
Part 4, Chapter 12 Summary: “Maple Sugar Time”
The first sign of spring arrives with the boom of the lake ice breaking up, and it is finally certain that the family has survived the winter. Angeline begins attending school and teaches Omakayas how to make letters. Nokomis finds the concept akin to the Anishinabe practice of documenting information through picture writing, and she urges Omakayas to keep an open mind about literacy despite its foreignness.
Fishtail visits the family and tells Omakayas how fond Ten Snow had been of her. He also admires the connection Omakayas shares with animals, as evidenced by her relationship with Andeg. The family treats Fishtail kindly, and he is clearly still grieving his wife. Fishtail and Deydey begin planning the annual sugaring, which requires harvesting sap from maple trees and boiling it down to syrup.
They all go together to the family sugaring spot and set everything up for the process. Omakayas feels cheered by the warmth of the spring. She and her cousins eagerly await the first taste of maple syrup. Omakayas loves maple, yet her first taste sends her into sorrow because it reminds her of the previous year when she fed a lump of maple sugar to baby Neewo.
Stricken with grief, Omakayas runs alone into the woods. As she sits down to cry, she hears the white-throated sparrows and feels that Neewo’s spirit is comforting her. Just as Omakayas relaxes, the young bears she encountered before arrive and stand curiously before her. Unsure what to offer them, she warns the bears about the traps and guns of humans. Omakayas offers the bears some tobacco, and without intending to, she asks, “Will you give me your medicine?” (202).
The bears leave, and Omakayas sets about gathering wood. She feels as though voices from the woods are speaking to her, and when she returns to the sugaring spot, she tells Nokomis about her encounter. Nokomis understands Omakayas’s story and reveals that she also hears these voices. Nokomis tells the girl that she has been chosen as a healer, and Nokomis promises to teach the girl about medicine so that she can understand the voices of the woods.
The sugaring goes unusually well, and Omakayas finds happiness playing with her friends and cousins. Sacred drums beat, and ceremonies celebrating Anishinabe culture take place in a big lodge.
One day, Pinch finds a dead deer and tries to arrange it so that it looks like he killed it. As he announces the kill to his family, Pinch bumps into Deydey, who spills boiling hot syrup on the boy’s feet. As everyone rushes to fetch Nokomis for her healing ability, Omakayas stays with Pinch. She fashions a salve for Pinch’s feet. The salve works, and when Nokomis arrives, the old woman announces, “I couldn’t have done a better job […] My girl, you’re strong in healing” (214-15).
Pinch surprises himself by telling the truth about the dead deer, and his feet recover quickly from the burns.
Part 4, Chapter 13 Summary: “One Horn’s Protection”
After the successful sugaring, Deydey is able to pay off the family’s debts. Andeg begins to bring twigs to Omakayas, indicating that he wants to build a nest with her. Omakayas suggests that Andeg find another bird, and he begins to spend more time away from home after this. One day, as a flock of crows circles overhead, Andeg flies away and joins them.
Omakayas is saddened at the loss of her friend, but she takes comfort in the knowledge that Andeg is simply behaving as a crow ought to. She learns to accept her own failings and uncertainties by this same principle: “Like Andeg, she couldn’t help being just who she was” (220).
Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “Full Circle”
The family builds a new birchbark house for the coming summer, and Omakayas feels the absence of Neewo, Ten Snow, and Andeg keenly: “Although spring, with all the force of its poised new growth, called to her […] there would always be a shadow to her laughter, a corner of sadness in her smile” (221-22).
Albert LaPautre comes to visit and announces that he has a new spirit helper. He describes how he was going to steal a trap from Old Tallow when a crow appeared and started speaking to him. The family recognizes the few words that Andeg can speak, and they fall into such fits of laughter that LaPautre leaves, bewildered.
Pinch and Omakayas work together in the garden, and Pinch finds that his family’s gratitude for his helpfulness makes him feel good. Andeg reappears, and while Omakayas alarms the bird by moving and shouting, Pinch knows to stay still to make the bird feel safe. Andeg lands on Pinch’s head, and instead of gloating, Pinch generously hands Andeg over to the grateful Omakayas.
Old Tallow comes over to speak with Omakayas. Although Omakayas is inexplicably reluctant to hear what the old woman has to say, Old Tallow explains why Omakayas didn’t catch smallpox during the outbreak. Omakayas learns that she already had smallpox when she was a baby. She was the sole survivor of the outbreak on Spirit Island that killed her entire family. Old Tallow’s then-husband was among the fur traders who found and then abandoned the baby, and when Tallow learned of this, she paddled to the island herself to rescue Omakayas. Mama and Deydey then took the girl in, adopting her, and raised her as their own.
Old Tallow tells Omakayas that despite the loss of her original family, the girl’s previous exposure to smallpox allowed her to nurse her parents and siblings back to health, essentially completing the circle of life.
As Old Tallow describes her rescue of the baby, Omakayas finds that she remembers the island. She remembers the song of the white-throated sparrows, who comforted her with their song and kept her alive.
The next morning, Omakayas goes outside and follows the music of the white-throated sparrows. She rests on the grass, listening, and finds that she hears Neewo communicating with her through the birdsong. He says, “I’m in a peaceful place. You can depend on me. I’m always here to help you, my sister” (239). The comfort of the birdsong heals Omakayas’s broken heart.
Part 4 Analysis
The final section of this book shows the family gradually emerging from the grief and sorrow that dominated the winter, just as the world around them emerges from the cold and darkness. The interconnectedness of these cycles is reflected as the family prepares for their maple sugaring: “There was a feeling to that time before the sap began, a quietness that had the going-out taste of winter. All that happened in the snow and cold, the storytelling and the sadness, too, was left behind” (197).
For Omakayas, who took the loss of Neewo especially badly, this recovery comes alongside a growing awareness of her own identity and her place within the family. She begins to understand her healing powers after she asks her bear guides to share their medicine with her. When Omakayas begins to hear voices in the woods and tells Nokomis about it, the girl’s path in life becomes clear: “Nokomis understood the meaning of what had happened [and] understood what it meant for Omakayas’s future and was proud and glad to have a granddaughter who was chosen to be a healer” (206). Omakayas has the chance to put her new power to use almost immediately when she successfully treats Pinch’s burnt feet.
While the events of the past year and her personal development threaten to overwhelm Omakayas, she begins to accept herself when she reflects upon Andeg’s inalterable identity as a crow: “She couldn’t change that any more than she could change being who she was, Omakayas, who heard the voices of plants and went dizzy […] Omakayas, who missed her one brother and resented the other, who envied her sister […]” (219). This first step toward understanding and accepting herself is followed by the revelation imparted from Old Tallow of Omakayas’s true identity. Later, on her own, Omakayas reflects upon her new knowledge: “She was the girl from Spirit Island. She lived in a birchbark house. This was the first day of the journey on which she would find out the truth of her future, who she was” (238). Having made her peace with her past and her present, Omakayas is finally prepared to set her grief aside and look to the future.
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