BLUE RAVENS
GERALD VIZENOR
BLUE RAVENS
— — — — — — — HISTORICAL NOVEL — — — — — — —
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
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MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2014 Gerald Vizenor All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed and typeset in Parkinson Electra by Eric M. Brooks
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available upon request
5 4 3 2 1
Front cover illustrations: Top: Rick Bartow, Raven’s Dream, pastel on paper, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and Froelick Gallery, Portland, OR. Bottom: “Supports going up after battle…, photograph, c.1917. Image No. 10429058 © Kodak Collection/National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library.
› IN MEMORY OF IGNATIUS VIZENOR ‹
AUGUSTUS HUDON BEAULIEU
ELLANORA BEAULIEU
JOHN CLEMENT BEAULIEU
LAWRENCE VIZENOR
Ignatius Vizenor was born May 4, 1894,son of Michael Vizenor and Angeline Cogger,on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. He wasa dapper dresser, wore a fedora, and fought for a nation thatonce inspired natives in the fur trade. The surname Vizenorwas derived from Vezina in New France. Private Vizenorwas killed in action on October 8, 1918,at Montbréhain, France.
Ignatius Vizenor was buried atSaint Benedict’s Catholic Cemetery on theWhite Earth Reservation. The military coffin was sealed,and no one at the funeral could account for his entire remains.Thousands of soldiers were harrowed in the soil thatearly autumn at Alsace, Lorraine, Champagne,Ardennes, and Picardy in France.
Raven created the world for his amusement
and people were the most amusing
of all animals to him.
In the Company of Crows and Ravens
JOHN MARZLUFF, TONY ANGELL
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Blue is not aggressive and violates nothing;
it reassures and draws together…. The same is
true in many other languages: bleu, blew, blu, blau are reassuring and poetic words that link color, memory, desire, and dreams.
Blue: The History of Color
MICHEL PASTOUREAU
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The French early gained the utmost
confidence of the Ojibways, and thereby
they became more thoroughly acquainted
with their true and real character, even during the
comparative short season in which they mingled
with them as a nation…. The French understood
their divisions into clans, and treated each clan
according to the order of its ascendency
in the tribe.
History of the Ojibway People
WILLIAM WARREN
Today a bird flew near our battery during the chaos.
It seemed stunned and no wonder when man has so
upset the order of life. What a blessing will it be
when mother nature has the running of the
universe to herself again.
The Diary of Elmer W. Sherwood
EDITED BY ROBERT H. FERRELL
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Houses are eviscerated like human beings
and towns like houses. Villages appear in crumpled
whiteness as though fallen from heaven to earth. The
very shape of the plain is changed by the frightful heaps
of wounded and slain…. Turn where you will,
there is war in every corner of that vastness.
Under Fire: The Story of a Squad
HENRY BARBUSSE
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Touching war memorials, and in particular, touching
the names of those who died, is an important part of
the rituals of separation … thus testifying that whatever the
aesthetic and political meanings which they may bear, they
are also sites of mourning, and of gestures which
go beyond the limitations of place and time.
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning
JAY WINTER
CONTENTS