Winter Counts

Winter counts, Lakota pictorial calendars, symbolize the passing of time, along with periods of hardship. They are referenced in Weiden’s novel in relation to Virgil and his sister: The year their mother died, they used a picture of dead birds in their own crayon-drawn winter counts to represent her death, as it had been a cold year when many birds froze to death. While winter counts are not only used to represent the season of winter, Virgil remembers them in terms of his mother’s death, and also associates harder periods of his life with winter. When his nephew Nathan becomes an informant for the police and he is kidnapped as a result, Virgil states, “This was the winter of my sorrow, one I had tried to elude but which had come for me with a terrible cruelty” (271).

Birds

Along with winter counts, birds...