Then one day, Benjamin returns unexpectedly. After this catastrophe, the family leaves the bush and the adults begin doing manual labor in camps around small Canadian towns. Despite her efforts, Benjamin is abducted when Saul is four. His mother and father were often distant, haunted by something they call “the school.” As Saul gets older, he realizes that this is what Naomi is hiding them from. When Saul was a child, he lived in a small, isolated camp with his brother Benjamin, his mother and father, a few aunts and uncles, and his grandmother Naomi. When the white settlers asked his ancestors for their last name, they called on the horse again, and took the name “Indian Horse.” Shabogeesick passed those warnings on to his people.

The horse arrived with the white man, and as Shabogeesick brought it out of the bush it warned him of them, of the danger they would pose to Ojibway life. He is remembered in legend because he brought the first horse to their people, taming it and drawing it out of the woods and into the village. Saul’s great-grandfather Shabogeesick is one of the men his grandmother speaks about.

He is writing a memoir as part of therapy for alcoholism, in an attempt to recover from his addiction, but also to regain a connection to the past and his abilities as a seer. For Saul, that history, so intimate for her, is cut off by the violence done to him and his people by white settlers. As a child, his grandmother told him stories about his ancestors, connecting him to a deep history. Saul Indian Horse is born to an Ojibway family in northern Ontario.

Indian horse the book