The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman is Patrice’s coming-of-age story. She experiences growth by leaving the reservation to find her sister, sleeps next to a bear, fights for her people, becomes sexually active, and ultimately, starts the process to go to college. A consistent struggle for her is the fact that, at the end of the day, she is the primary source of income for her family. At the beginning of the novel, Erdrich writes that:

There were times when Patrice felt like she was stretched across a frame, like a skin tent. She tried to forget that she could easily blow away. Or how easily her father could wreck them all. This feeling of being the only barrier between family and disaster wasn’t new, but they had come so far since she started work (30).

This economic precarity is a driving force in the novel. Patrice can only search for Vera after negotiating with her co-workers to cover for her. Her experience as the waterjack provides her with more money, but it also puts her in proximity to a likely human trafficking operation (Patrice notes that it is the cities where she encounters violence rather than on the reservation, “a place considered savage by the rest of the country” [396]).

When Patrice returns, she is faced with consequences of her decision, especially now that she is responsible for Vera’s baby. She debates whether she should pursue Wood Mountain. Though she eventually has sex with him, she sees that he is more interested in Vera, and, besides that, Vera is more interested in him. To her, this is critical, as “[s]he would embrace anyone and anything that could help put together Vera’s demolished heart” (432).

Patrice also feels very connected to the earth, a motif in the novel. This appears early in the novel as she walks through the forest with bare feet and again when she sleeps in the bear’s den while it hibernates. Afterwards, she feels rejuvenated, as though nothing could hold her down since she was someone who could sleep near a bear and live. The novel ends with Patrice standing with Zhaanat, drinking sap, when she is “sucked up off the bud tips into a cloud” (439).

In some ways, Vera is as much as symbol as she is a character. She embodies the theme of the specific danger of being an Indigenous woman. When Patrice discovers the house in which there are chains and filth everywhere, the reader is offered a glimpse into horrid conditions that a kidnapped woman can be subjected to, a fact that repeats again on the ship where Vera is raped repeatedly and left to die on the street. Patrice and Zhaanat contend with the lack of care applied to a missing Indigenous woman. Patrice goes to the relocation office, discovering how unhelpful they are despite having been the ones to help set up Vera in the Twin Cities. Then, when they bring up the matter to Thomas, his suggestion that they go to the police is appalling because they know that, as an Indigenous woman, “she would be the one blamed and punished” (221-22). It is noteworthy that the police had nothing to do with Vera’s return home.

Everett Blue is the son of Archille and Juggie Blue, though he primarily goes by “Wood Mountain,” as that is where he was born. He ends up accompanying Patrice during the beginning and ends of her journey in Minneapolis.

As a boxer, he is also seen as a symbol in his matches against Joe “Wobble” Wobleszynski, whose family had long been trying to take some of Juggie’s land. As a result, “it so happened that a boy from each family began to box in the same weight category” (53), creating a lasting rivalry between the families. The boys fight twice during the novel. The first time, Wood Mountain loses because the timekeeper cheats for Joe while the second, they continue to fight, getting increasingly bloody until Wood Mountain’s win seems to not even matter anymore.

Wood Mountain also serves as one of Patrice’s two love interests, though he is the only one she reciprocates. He asks her to marry him, but she doesn’t give him an answer. Once she returns from Washington, she discovers that he has fallen in love with Vera. Part of this is because he has grown so connected with Vera’s son, who he names “Archille” while she is gone, though he later learns the baby’s name is Thomas. He even makes the baby’s cradle board, a task typically completed by the father. When Vera returns, he dreads not being able to spend as much time with the boy.

Zhaanat is Patrice and Pokey’s mother and Pogo’s wife. Within the community, she serves as a reminder of Turtle Mountain’s traditions, having been “schooled from childhood in ceremonies and the teaching stories” (21). Unlike Thomas, LaBatte, Roderick, and her husband, she was hidden away from the boarding schools to preserve traditional knowledge. She is also described as “capable and shrewd,” as seen when she offers remedies like cedar tea or goes to hunt the bear that Patrice sees. She fiercely believes that Vera will return, sharing dreams with Patrice that Vera is reaching out to them.

The math teacher at the local school, Barnes is one of the only white men living on the reservation. He is the high school’s and Wood Mountain’s boxing coach and enamored with Patrice, though she is uninterested in him. He tries to get her attention by giving her brother Pokey things, to no avail. At the end of the novel, it is implied that Millie will agree to go out with him after his failed pursuits of Valentine and Doris Lauder. Because of his relationship with women, he is constantly questioning his own masculinity.

Aside from Arthur V. Watkins’s brief chapter, Barnes is the only white character whose perspective we see. Erdrich uses his character to challenge white readers to think more critically about the negative impact of dominant culture and government on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and other Indigenous peoples. Barnes arrives on the reservation with a stereotypical view of Indigenous people. When he goes into Pokey’s house, he thinks, “It was as though he had entered another time, a time he hadn’t known existed, an uncomfortable time where Indians were not at all like white people” (83).

Later, Barnes discusses the bill directly with Thomas, not understanding why it’s so terrible. Ultimately, he begins to understand more of what it would mean if the law was passed.

Millie Cloud is Louis Pipestone’s daughter. She was raised by her mother away from the reservation because her family did not approve of Louis. She recently conducted a study on the reservation about the economic situation of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and Thomas believes that her testimony could be critical to stopping the Termination Bill.

Millie feels both fascinated and connected to her family’s community; she is glad “to be considered useful by her father’s people warmed her” (263). As she immerses herself more and more in the community, she begins to see the ways in which the government’s legislation has negative affected Indigenous peoples. As she thinks about the small measures taken to undercut Indigenous people’s chances of survival, she “couldn’t set out in sequence or exactly form the why of into a paragraph. It was something about being Indian. And the government. The government acted like Indians owed them something, but wasn’t it the other way around?” (367).

She is fascinated by Zhaanat and her knowledge of the Turtle Mountain traditions. She is also awkward, often needing to calm herself down by thinking about numbers or patterns. It is briefly hinted that Millie may be romantically interested in women. She first comments that Patrice is beautiful. Then, Patrice suggests that she wants to adopt her, Millie “knew enough from her interviews to understand that being adopted by a Chippewa was a special mark of friendship and honor;” however, she is “left wanting” (418).