Chapter summaries Great Circle Maggie Shipstead

# Chapter 11: An Incomplete History of Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Chapter 11 departs from the novel's main narrative to present a compressed, deliberately fragmented biography of a Kootenai woman who becomes known by several names, ending as Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly. The chapter opens around 1790 near a Kootenai winter camp in what will become Idaho. The girl is born after her mother walks and squats through the night, and she is described as ordinary in appearance. As she grows, she learns the skills expected of a woman—food gathering, preparation, weaving rush mats—but when she reaches marriageable age at thirteen, no man wants her because she is big-boned and quick-tempered. Spurned by the man she likes best, she bores holes in his sturgeon-nosed canoe.

Soon after, David Thompson's expedition passes nearby. In the night, the girl leaves her camp and finds her way to the white men's camp. In the morning, Thompson's servant Boisverd finds her staring at him. She crawls to him, and he takes her as his wife. She proves eager and tireless, learning English and some French, laughing at the men's poor shooting, and wading naked across rivers without shame. She is also sexually generous with many of the men, which leads Boisverd to beat her, though she fights back and gives him black eyes. Thompson decides she must go, fearing Boisverd might kill her, and sends her back to her people.

Walking through the forest with a gun she took from the white men, she hunts for food and begins to imagine herself a warrior. When she rejoins the Kootenai, she announces that the white men used their supernatural powers to transform her into a man. She adopts the name Gone-to-the-Spirits, dresses as a man, hunts, fishes, and refuses women's work. She acquires a horse and gun, follows a raiding party despite being told to go away, and in battle takes three horses and two scalps. She then seeks a wife, but the girls she approaches reject her. She claims the white men's powers have rubbed off on her and warns of punishments if crossed.

The chapter explains the term berdache—a French word for catamite, derived from Persian via Spanish and Italian—which white trappers and traders used for native people who were neither fully man nor woman. Gone-to-the-Spirits begins to prophesy, starting with boasts about her own transformation. She predicts giants will come and overturn the earth, and that smallpox will return, brought by white men. She offers protective rites for gifts, but people dislike her prophecies. She becomes more popular when she foretells a great white chief who is angry at the lesser white men and will send riches as an apology.

She meets a woman sitting by a lake, doing nothing, whose husband has abandoned her. Gone-to-the-Spirits asks if she wants a new husband. She has made a buffalo-leather phallus, but her new wife laughs at it and at her breasts. They find a way to give each other pleasure, and the wife joins her in traveling and prophesying. The wife tells others about the phallus, and Gone-to-the-Spirits beats her, suspecting infidelity, though the wife insists she wants nothing to do with a cock.

The couple travels to Astoria on the Oregon coast. The Astorian traders note a husband and wife dressed like Plains Indians; the husband speaks several languages and draws an accurate map of the rivers and mountains to the east. He is possessive and menacing, gambles, and cannot hold his drink. When David Thompson arrives, he recognizes the woman as Madame Boisverd. In July 1811, the party decides to go up the Columbia River. Gone-to-the-Spirits offers to guide. Along the way, they meet four men carrying salmon who ask Thompson if he is bringing smallpox and giants. Thompson reassures them, writing in his journal that the white men had not brought smallpox and that things would remain as they were for their grandsons—but the narrator notes nothing will be the same.

The party splits. Thompson heads north, telling the story of the berdache as an amusing anecdote. The Astorians continue east with Gone-to-the-Spirits and her wife, who now have twenty-six horses loaded with goods thanks to optimistic prophecies. One evening they ride off without farewell and disappear from white records for a time.

When Gone-to-the-Spirits reappears, she has a new wife but has lost the horses. She shows up around the Flathead trading post near Missoula, appearing in journals as Bundosh or Bowdash. She trades furs, gets liquor, and translates between Flathead and Blackfoot for pay. A story is told of a warrior who spies on her at a river crossing and sees she has breasts and no cock, despite her claim of full transformation. Later, at Lake Pend Oreille, when warriors are allowed to choose new names, she chooses Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly, trying to make the best of the situation. The spy mocks her, and she draws her knife but is driven off.

She becomes an unlikely peace messenger, running among tribes and translating, described as a natural go-between. In 1837, a band of Flathead is surrounded by Blackfeet. Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly brings a misleading message to stall the Blackfeet while the Flathead escape. When the Blackfoot warriors realize they have been deceived, they stab her in the gut.

The chapter ends with conflicting accounts of her death. One story says her wounds kept closing as if by magic until a warrior cut a piece of her beating heart, after which she died. Another says her body lay in the forest without decaying and no animals touched it. People debate whether this means she had powers or not, and the chapter closes with the ambiguous line that it might mean something.

Key Events

  • A Kootenai girl is born around 1790 near a winter camp in present-day Idaho.
  • At thirteen, she is spurned as a marriage prospect and sabotages the canoe of the man she likes.
  • She leaves her people and joins David Thompson's expedition as Boisverd's wife.
  • Thompson sends her back to her people, fearing Boisverd might kill her.
  • She returns claiming white men's supernatural powers transformed her into a man, taking the name Gone-to-the-Spirits.
  • She hunts, raids, takes scalps, and begins prophesying about giants and smallpox.
  • She takes a wife and travels to Astoria, where she guides Thompson and the Astorians up the Columbia River.
  • The party splits; she and her wife ride off with twenty-six horses and disappear.
  • She reappears as Bundosh near the Flathead trading post, translating and trading.
  • After being exposed bathing, she renames herself Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly.
  • In 1837, she deceives Blackfoot warriors to help a Flathead band escape and is stabbed to death.
  • Conflicting stories about her death circulate, leaving her legacy ambiguous.

Character Development

Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly is a figure of constant reinvention. The chapter traces her from an ordinary girl to a spurned wife, a white man's concubine, a self-proclaimed man, a prophet, a guide, a translator, and finally a peace messenger. Each identity is a survival strategy. When she is rejected as a woman, she claims transformation into a man. When her prophecies fail to bring lasting power, she adapts by becoming a go-between. Her character is defined by agency and self-determination, even as she is subject to violence and exploitation. She fights back against Boisverd, beats her wife, and draws her knife on those who mock her. Yet she also shows compassion, using her position to save the Flathead. The chapter presents her as a complex, contradictory figure whose story is filtered through the unreliable accounts of white men and native gossip.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Gender transformation and identity: The chapter explores how gender can be performed and claimed. Gone-to-the-Spirits's transformation is both a personal truth and a strategic fiction, blurring the line between identity and performance.
  • Two-Spirit and berdache identity: The chapter acknowledges the historical term berdache and notes the modern term two-spirits, situating the character within a broader tradition of native gender diversity.
  • Colonial encounter and its impacts: The arrival of white men brings disease, trade, and disruption. Thompson's reassurance that nothing will change is undercut by the narrator's comment that nothing will be the same for their grandsons.
  • Smallpox and disease as colonial weapons: Prophecies of smallpox reflect the real devastation brought by European diseases, which become a tool of conquest.
  • Prophecy and supernatural claims: Prophecy is used for personal gain and as a way to assert power in a changing world, but it also becomes a source of doubt and mockery.
  • Myth-making and unreliable history: The chapter is explicitly an "incomplete history," acknowledging that the story is patchy and contradictory, fermented into myth. This highlights the difficulty of recovering the truth about marginalized figures.
  • Survival and adaptation: The protagonist repeatedly adapts to new circumstances, from joining the expedition to claiming transformation to becoming a translator.
  • Identity as performance: The buffalo-leather phallus and the public renaming ceremony show identity as something constructed and displayed.
  • Violence and conflict: Physical abuse, raids, and the final murder are constant presences, reflecting the brutal realities of the frontier.
  • Self-determination and agency: Despite being used and discarded, the protagonist consistently makes choices to shape her own life.
  • Storytelling and legacy: The chapter ends with competing stories about her death, emphasizing how legacy is shaped by narrative.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter serves as a crucial counterpoint to the novel's main narrative, which follows the fictional aviator Marian Graves. By inserting a historical figure whose story is deliberately incomplete, Shipstead underscores the novel's themes of history, memory, and the erasure of women's and indigenous lives. The chapter also deepens the novel's engagement with gender and identity, showing a character who defies binary categories centuries before the modern vocabulary existed. It challenges the reader to consider how history is recorded and who gets to tell the story. The ambiguous ending—whether Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly had powers or not—mirrors the novel's larger questions about truth and myth. This chapter matters because it expands the novel's scope beyond Marian's life, connecting her personal quest for freedom to a broader history of people who lived outside societal norms.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the chapter use the term berdache to complicate our understanding of gender identity in the historical context?

The chapter explains that berdache is an imperfect, even insulting, term borrowed from French and Persian, used by white men to describe native people who were neither fully man nor woman. By acknowledging the term's inadequacy and noting the modern term two-spirits, the chapter suggests that gender identity is culturally specific and that colonial labels often fail to capture the reality of indigenous lives. Gone-to-the-Spirits's own claim of transformation is both a personal assertion and a response to the expectations of both native and white societies.

2. What role does prophecy play in Gone-to-the-Spirits's survival and eventual downfall?

Prophecy initially gives her power and material wealth—she gains gifts and twenty-six horses. It also makes her unpopular because her predictions are frightening. Her prophecy about giants and smallpox leads the native men to question Thompson, and her later misleading message to the Blackfeet is a form of prophetic deception that saves the Flathead but costs her life. Prophecy is thus a double-edged tool: it elevates her but also marks her as a threat.

3. Why does the chapter end with conflicting accounts of Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly's death, and what does this ambiguity suggest about history?

The conflicting accounts—one where her wounds heal magically until her heart is cut, another where her body remains undecayed—leave her legacy unresolved. This ambiguity suggests that history is not a single truth but a collection of stories shaped by belief, gossip, and the biases of record-keepers. The chapter's title, "An Incomplete History," reinforces this idea, implying that any attempt to capture a life is necessarily partial and contested.

Navigation

Published by What Happened?

How this guide was made Report an error