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Nanapush is Akii and Mirage’s son, a hero of Chippewa mythology who reappears in many different Chippewa stories. In the story that Mooshum tells, Nanapush remains loyal to his mother even as his father tries to kill her. Akii sends Nanapush in search of buffalo, and he finds and kills one, saving his village. Nanapush then follows the instructions of the buffalo he kills to build the round house in homage to the buffalo’s body.
Nanapush Quotes in The Round House
The The Round House quotes below are all either spoken by Nanapush or refer to Nanapush. 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:
).
Chapter 8 Quotes
As he dragged himself along … Nanapush sang the buffalo song although it made him cry. It broke his heart. He remembered how when he was a small boy the buffalo had filled the world. Once, when he was little, the hunters came down to the river. Nanapush climbed a tree to look back where the buffalo came from. They covered the earth at that time. They were endless. He had seen that glory. Where had they gone? … people had seen white men shoot thousands off a train car, and leave them to rot.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Round House LitChart as a printable PDF.
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Nanapush Character Timeline in The Round House
The timeline below shows where the character Nanapush appears in The Round House. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Eight: Hide and Q
...woman took away her children except for her oldest son. The group told the boy, Nanapush, to kill Akiii, but he refused. Instead, Nanapush stabbed one of the men holding Akii.
(full context)
...she used to ice fish. After they submerged her in the freezing water, Mirage gave Nanapush a gun to shoot his mother if she emerged again. After the men left, Akii...
(full context)
...When he wakes the next morning and sees Mooshum in the kitchen, Joe asks who Nanapush is, and Mooshum tells him that Nanapush was a greedy but good healer to whom...
(full context)
Mooshum returns to Nanapush, who had just begun his journey to look for the buffalo. Nanapush sang the buffalo...
(full context)
Nanapush was cleaning out the chest cavity when a blizzard started. Nanapush crawled inside the buffalo...
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Chapter Nine: The Big Good-bye
...left off. Mooshum begins by explaining that wiindigoos can sometimes by cured without murder. After Nanapush saw how easily his relatives would have killed his mother, he resolved to be nothing...
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Chapter Eleven: The Child
...never did. As they drive, Joe thinks about the round house and the story of Nanapush. Joe suggests that they drive all night, so they keep going, switching drivers on and...
(full context)
