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Vera
Sagastis is Howie’s mother. She has a close relationship with her sister, Auntie Mae, and it’s on a visit to Mae that she loses Howie to the Arrowhead Bay Mission School. Instead of returning to Saskatchewan, she stays in British Columbia and tries to advocate for his return until she, Mae, and Charlie finally rescue Howie. Subsequently, she takes him to the United States. When Howie ends up in prison, Sagastis returns to her home in Saskatchewan, where she dies of a heart attack several years before Howie’s release.
Sagastis Quotes in Five Little Indians
The Five Little Indians quotes below are all either spoken by Sagastis or refer to Sagastis. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 16: Howie Quotes
He knelt and started planting the tiger lily bulbs in front of the headstone, remembering a time, when he was very little, when she would tell him the old stories about Tiger Lily and Weesageechak, and the living stories of her parents and theirs. He knew she would love having a bright-orange spray rising, year after year. The flowers reminded him of her sturdy beauty. He rose and shook the dark earth from his work gloves, picked up his tools, gave his handiwork one last look and headed for his truck.
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Get the entire Five Little Indians LitChart as a printable PDF.
Sagastis Character Timeline in Five Little Indians
The timeline below shows where the character Sagastis appears in Five Little Indians. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 13: Howie
In the story, Howie is five years old, living with his mother Sagastis on a reservation in Saskatchewan. When Sagastis’s sister Mae, who followed her white husband Charlie...
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...of their return home, the priest returns with a police officer and kidnaps Howie over Sagastis’s protests that she will send him to school in Saskatchewan. Howie isn’t too scared or...
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...time in the hospital because the nurses are kind and because Auntie Mae (but not Sagastis) is allowed to visit him. Mae tells Howie that his family has a plan to...
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...to the dock and onto Charlie’s boat. They race across the bay where Howie and Sagastis jump into a waiting car and head for the US-Canada border. As they go, Auntie...
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Chapter 16: Howie
Five years to the day after Sagastis’s death, Howie and his relatives finally place a headstone on her grave. Afterwards, Howie plants...
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...summer, as they write letters back and forth, Howie works double time to fix up Sagastis’s place, using some of her $6,000 life savings. Her neighbor Maggie tells Howie that she...
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