THE WINDIGO, WEMSTIKOSHIW, AND WAR:
THREE DAY ROAD AND THE INTERGENERATIONAL
STORY OF INDIGENOUS CANADIANS
DECLAN BURKE

The history of relations between the Indigenous populations of Canada and its
colonial government is an inherently militaristic one. Charting an
intergenerational story of this relationship from the early post-Confederation era,
to the end of World War One, Joseph Boyden’s historical fiction novel “Three Day
Road” provides a historically accurate and poignant reading of the oftunreflectively celebrated early years of Canada from a uniquely critical
perspective. This paper further expands the fictional interactions of the novel’s
characters, and their historical inspirations, with analysis and comparison to other
colonial examples from across the British Empire. In particular, it examines and
compares the approaches of policing and education in the cultural unmaking of
Indigenous peoples. Culminating in Canada’s ‘baptism in fire’ of the Great War,
the experiences of indigenous soldiers also find parallels with those of the other
soldiers serving across the Western Front, further underscoring the issue’s
historical complexity.

Canada’s founding is a story most often framed as one of relative peaceful
development, bound by good governance, and punctuated by our exceptional rising
to the task of supporting King and Country in the Great War. But the establishment
of Canada and its national baptism in the fires of the First World War can easily be
seen instead as the unmaking of its Indigenous population as a nation and culture.
In this respect Joseph Boyden’s historical fiction novel Three Day Road represents
a poignant reading of Canadian history as a story of the destruction of Indigenous
autonomy and identity through European nation building, and the war experiences
of its characters as a glimpse at both the unique suffering and struggles of
Indigenous soldiers, and the first winds of change that would soon rewrite the
landscape of Europe and Canada.

HiPo Vol. 3

9

March 2020

Three Day Road is a story of Indigenous endurance, both literally and
metaphorically, told by two major characters across a vast swathe of Canadian
history. In late 1918, the elderly Oji-Cree medicine woman Niska travels home
through northern Ontario by river, along with her veteran nephew Xavier Bird.
Recently returned from the Great War, and addicted to morphine after loosing his
leg, Xavier is haunted by the memories of his experiences overseas alongside his
now-dead friend Elijah Whiskeyjack. Niska commits to saving Xavier during their
voyage, sharing her story of life in the wilderness of Canada to remind him his
roots, while Xavier opens up about his experiences during the war in France. The
two narratives weave a cross-generational picture of Indigenous relations at home
and beyond, illustrating the depths to which Indigenous people were transformed
by Canada.
As Canada established itself, its approach towards Indigenous peoples was marked
by a combination of legislated marginalization, and often harsh enforcement of this
second-class status to ensure compliance. In contrast to other British colonies of the
period, Canada’s frontier was defined by established fur trading ties, as well as
various treaties that nominally defined jurisdiction and ownership of the land. 1 As
settlers began to move into frontier areas, the need to establish direct jurisdiction
and effective enforcement of law became paramount to the Canadian government. 2
To that end, the Northwest Mounted Police was formed to spearhead Indigenous
‘civilization’ through magisterial authority to try and sentence suspected
lawbreakers on the frontier, and to avoid repeating incidents like the Cypress Hills
massacre that had originally prompted the force’s creation. 3 To this end, the
NWMP were a highly visible and empowered tool of the Canadian policy of frontier
expansion and development, and one that the Indigenous communities there
disproportionately felt the presence of. 4 This was further underlined by the 1876
Indian Act, which formalized the legal position of Indigenous people as secondclass dependents whose status and rights were defined exclusively by the Canadian
state. 5 Informed by the same colonial ‘benevolence’ as the NWMP, the Indian Act
interfered directly in Indigenous self-governance by establishing band councils
with no consideration for the actual composition of the populations they were meant

Amanda Nettleback and Russel Smandych, “Policing Indigenous Peoples on Two
ColonialFrontiers: Australia’s Mounted Police and Canada’s North-West Mounted Police,” The
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 43, no. 2 (2010): 359.
2
Ibid. 357.
3
Ibid. 358, 360-361
4
Jeffery Monaghan, “Mounties in the Frontier: Circulations, Anxieties, and Myths of Settler
Colonial Policing in Canada.” Journal of Canadian Studies 47, no. 1 (2013): 123, 125-127.
5
Sana Z. Shahram, “Indigenous Pregnancy, Birthing, and Mothering in Colonial Canada,” in
Indigenous Experiences of Pregnancy and Birth, ed. Hannah Tait Neufeld and Jaime Cidro
(Toronto: Demeter Press, 2017), 17.
1

HiPo Vol. 3

10

March 2020

to represent. 6 When resistance arose, the NWMP would step in to enforce the Act
through whatever tactics were necessary, combining their wide ranging powers
with the dictatorial letter of the law to brutal efficiency. 7 Following the defeat of
the1886 Northwest Rebellion, the overall stance of the Canadian government
hardened further. While records support that the NWMP did minimize violence in
prosecuting their duties, and maintained supportive relations with Metis and other
Indigenous groups that mirrored earlier fur trading dynamics, this changed
noticeably following the Rebellion and its hysterical aftermath. 8 Records of NWMP
correspondence, as well as the general pressure of rumour and fear of Indigenous
‘savagery’ among settlers show the common conception of Indigenous people as a
hostile ‘other,’ to be dealt with as an inherent antagonist, rather than an equal. 9 In
Three Day Road, Niska’s childhood is interrupted from its ordinary flow following
her father’s killing of a ‘windigo’ mother and baby. The following autumn the
NWMP appear to arrest him to stand trial for murder according to Canadian law.10
Illustrative of both the division between Indigenous and settler beliefs and
practices, as well as the de facto preeminence of the Canadian government to
unilaterally determine and enforce moral standards, this event is summed up best
by Niska herself; “At the time of my birth, the wemistikoshiw were still dependent
on us… until the day came when suddenly it was we who answered to them.” 11
This shift in dynamics was most infamously embodied by the Residential School
system. Included along with the establishment of reserves and promises of support
in the Indian Act, the schools were an attempt to eliminate Indigenous culture at
the proverbial roots. 12 In the novel, the reasons for each character’s involvement
vary dramatically, as do their outcomes. Niska is taken against her will, her sister
Rabbit goes willingly, while Xavier and Elijah are directly raised in the school. 13
Each would face abuses either physically, mentally, and in Elijah’s case sexually,
that have come to typify the legacy of the system. 14 But beyond individual cases, it
was cultural genocide combined with pathological abuses that elevates residential
schools in the pantheon of colonial crimes. 15 Disillusioned and wounded, the
constructed family Niska creates with Xavier and Elijah is an effective facsimile
for the resilience of Indigenous Canadians as a whole, just as their experiences in
the war would serve as a microcosm for both Indigenous, and broader effects of the
Great War.
Timothy C. Winegard, For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War.
(Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012), 19.
7
Ibid. 19-20.
8
Nettleback and Smandych, 361, 363-364.
9
Monaghan, 126-127, 129, 133
10
Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road. (Toronto: Penguin Canada Books, 2005), 47.
11
Boyden, 48.
12
Winegard, 19.
13
Boyden, 91-92, 214, 222-223
14
Shahram 21-22.
15
Ibid.
6

HiPo Vol. 3

11

March 2020

Where the imperial dimension of the creation and composition of Canada cast a
long and noticeable shadow prior to 1914, Xavier and Elijah’s service highlights
both the unique context in which the ‘alien’ soldiers of the Empire existed, as well
as highlighting some of the most tragic dimensions of the war suffered universally.
At the outbreak of the War, Canadian recruitment policy followed closely on that
of Britain; namely adopting a guarded pragmatism towards Indigenous inclusion
balanced between fear of ‘savage indians’ disrupting order, and harnessing such
presumed savagery for military and propaganda purposes. 16 This also served to
perpetuate the marginalization of Indigenous soldiers along the lines of existing
domestic and imperial policy. 17 In terms of service, Indigenous Canadians fought
across every branch of the military, except the new Royal Tank Corps, including
two predominantly Indigenous units: the 114th and 107th battalions.18 In the case
of the 107th, language was a noticeable issue as the majority did not speak English,
resulting in the wise decision by Lt. Colonel Glen Campell to push for Indigenous
language administration. 19 In the novel, the language barrier offers Elijah and
Xavier a degree of individuality beyond their fellow soldiers, and particularly
commanders, while highlighting their ‘otherness’ to these same people.
Interestingly, a similar sentiment of isolation and unit camaraderie developed in
Welsh speaking units, as testified by Captain L. Wyn Griffith, whose unit became
“an enclave within a community”, in which Welsh served as a barrier between the
military world of English and became a retreat and private dimension to their shared
experience that no English speaker could fully access. 20 In a similar respect the
stereotyped specialization of Indigenous soldiers as scouts and snipers, and its
recorded ‘success’ in the field, reinforced barriers as much as breaking them down.
Both Corporal Francis Pegahmagabow and Lance Corporal Henry Norwest would
reach record setting tallies over one hundred kills each, with the former reaching
an unofficial 378. Pegahmagabow is referenced several times throughout the novel
as a sort of supernatural legend, one that mirrors the racially located legends that
followed Indigenous soldiers on both sides of the trenches 21. Thus the war came to
define Indigenous Canadians as preternatural killers, while serving to instill a sense
of both mortality and humanity in others. While the novel’s British commanders
such as Lieutenant Breech are portrayed as either stereotypically combative or
regimental in their own right, the experiences of Lieutenant Basil Wiley speak to a
grand disillusionment of the principles and virtues of King and Empire instilled
since childhood. 22 In particular, Wiley’s experience of his men on the front quickly
Winegard, 30-32.
Winegard, 30-32.
18
Ibid. 67-68, 117.
19
Ibid. 71.
20
L. Wyn Griffith, “The Pattern of One Man’s Remembering,” in Promise of Greatness: The War
of 1914-1918, ed. George A. Panichas (New York: The John Day Company, 1968), 287-288.
21
Winegard, 110-112, 117.
22
Basil Willy, “A Schoolboy in the War,” In Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914-1918, ed.
George A. Panichas,(New York: The John Day Company, 1968), 323-324.
16
17

HiPo Vol. 3

12

March 2020

eroded his classist prejudices, while the brutality of the war did the same for much
of his imperial fervour. 23 The reality of the war was harsh and uncompromising,
and in his account of the opening days of 1915, French soldier Henri Massis noted
that he and others would never see the countryside without “peopling it with these
bloody realities.” 24 While Indigenous Canadians would serve an integral role in the
war, as well as suffer unique struggles thanks to the legacy of their historic
marginalization, Xavier and Elijah also reflect the common humanity and tragedy
that befell millions of young men in the trenches of Western Europe. As one of
Massis’ men would put it: “We are all here for misery.” 25 Though few others could
fully grasp the depths of that misery for the indigenous soldiers.
It is impossible to separate the creation of Canada from the unmaking of the First
Nations of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Through a mixture of overt
and cultural imperialism, the generations that Boyden’s Niska represent were
brought first into compliance, then subservience by the relentless march of
Canadian and British Imperialism. Yet paradoxically, the experiences of the
‘seminal tragedy’ faced by Xavier and Elijah would mark both a recontextualization
of Indigenous narratives, as well as a more profound shift in the mentalities of both
soldiers and civilians the world over. While Xavier would return broken from the
Great War physically, he would end the story a whole greater than the sum of his
experiences and losses; and in this way, serve as a fitting representation of the
weight of history on Indigenous Canadian’s shoulders.

Ibid. 325-327, 329-331.
Henri Massis, “The War We Fought.” In Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914-1918, ed.
George A. Panichas, New York: The John Day Company, 1968), 278.
25
Ibid. 283.
23
24

HiPo Vol. 3

13

March 2020

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOYDEN, JOSEPH. Three Day Road. Toronto: Penguin Canada Books, 2005.
GRIFFITH, L. WYN. “The Pattern of One Man’s Remembering.” In Promise of
Greatness: The War of 1914-1918, edited by George A. Panichas, 285294. New York: The John Day Company, 1968.
MASSIS, HENRI. “The War We Fought.” In Promise of Greatness: The War of
1914-1918, edited by George A. Panichas, 273-284. New York: The
John Day Company, 1968.
MONAGHAN, JEFFERY. “Mounties in the Frontier: Circulations, Anxieties, and
Myths of Settler Colonial Policing in Canada.” Journal of Canadian
Studies 47, no. 1 (2013): 122-148.
NETTLEBACK, AMANDA AND RUSSEL SMANDYCH. “Policing Indigenous Peoples
on Two Colonial Frontiers: Australia’s Mounted Police and Canada’s
North-West Mounted Police.” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Criminology 43, no. 2 (2010): 356-375.
SHAHRAM, SANA Z. “Indigenous Pregnancy, Birthing, and Mothering in Colonial
Canada.” In Indigenous Experiences of Pregnancy and Birth, edited by
Hannah Tait Neufeld and Jaime Cidro, 13-29. Toronto: Demeter Press,
2017.
WILLY, BASIL. “A Schoolboy in the War.” In Promise of Greatness: The War of
1914-1918, edited by George A. Panichas, 322-331. New York: The John
Day Company, 1968.
WINEGARD, TIMOTHY C. For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First
World War. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012.

HiPo Vol. 3

14

March 2020