Ghost Supper

By Grace Dickinson Johnson
Sun contributor
It was a good day for the Ghost Supper in Peshawbestown, Leelanau County. The early evening clouds were leaden and hung low in the sky. The late fall air was crisp and very still. Indian people in this land of the Ottawa and Chippewa were remembering their dead today. The Ghost Supper—Feast of the Dead by tradition falls on All Soul’s Day, usually on the second of November.

I sat by my Indian friend Archie Miller as we made our way up the road through Peshawbestown in his old Chevy sedan. There were campfires glowing red, with smoke curling up through the pine trees around some of the small houses. I thought about what Archie had once told me, that Indians were never lonesome when they were near their fires.
We reached the other end of the village and turned into a dirt road and parked in front of a clapboard house. A young Indian was splitting wood while a few others were gathered around the fire. The woodpile was neatly stacked nearby for winter use. As darkness fell, the beauty of the earth was all around. Many of the plants had pulled in their summer finery and were wearing the starkness of single leafless stems. The damp air was filled with the sweet fragrance of pine pitch. Chickadees, up in the branches of the hardwoods and pines, cheerily sang out their welcome.
Archie explained that it is the custom of this day to enter through the door without knocking. We moved silently into a dimly lit kitchen. The rich aroma of cooking and wood smoke permeated the air. A fire crackled and blazed in a potbellied stove at one end of the kitchen, radiating a comfortable heat. There was a lived-in feeling, with stalks of sweetgrass tied together, black ash baskets of various sizes, and bundled dried plants for medicinal use hanging about, and a cedar bough stuck up by a window: it all represented a culture that has been here for a long time.
The hostess was strikingly attractive, tall, and slender. Her straight black hair hung loosely over her dark print dress. She wore an apron and quietly moved about in her handmade beaded moccasins, worn especially for this day. The table was neatly set and included a birch-bark container of napkins and the ever-present jar of bacon fat called “midah.”
More people entered the room and we all gathered around the table. A prayer of thanksgiving was offered by an Indian elder; some of the words in the native tongue. Another Indian of the Catholic religion offered a prayer, and a few of the Indians made the Sign of the Cross. I thought about the religious conflict brought about when the missionaries came to teach their religion to our first people, who were already profoundly religious with a highly developed sense of the sacred.
It was time for the sharing of food. venison, turkey and dressing, wild rice casseroles, Indian corn relish, fry bread, potatoes, squash, and corn soup—all reflective of native food and cooking. A pretty teenaged girl stood quietly in the shadows of the kitchen. She appeared in her apron, served corn soup, and kept platters filled. I liked her immediately even though we shared few words. Archie sat next to me and spoke quietly of his grandparents and talked about old ways. Across from us sat an elder over ninety years old. She had snow-white hair and sat very straight. Her eyes held a squint as she was slowly going blind. I saw a glow in her eyes, and as she ate her corn soup I wondered to myself if she was thinking of earlier days when corn soup was prepared in a cast iron pot over an open fire.
I had an overwhelming feeling of reverence while sitting among these soft-spoken, kind, and primal people with their sense of being together, of being Indian, sharing food, and carrying on an important tradition.
By tradition, when the last person finishes dinner and leaves the table, the hosts and hostesses leave the dishes of remaining food on the table and reset the table for the departed spirits that might pass by in the night.
Following dinner, Archie and I stood together out on the back porch facing Grand Traverse Bay. A gentle breeze had come up and moved slowly through the trees as if mentioning a quiet message speaking of the departed ones. The remaining dried red leaves fell steadily from the hardwoods. I could hear tiny scraping noises as the leaves touched branches as they journeyed towards the damp earth. The last of the leaves were leaving the trees, fulfilling their cycle for the season.
Archie and I drove away from the clapboard home and headed for his house at the other end of Peshawbestown. As we passed by an occasional campfire and the wandering foot trails that paralleled M-22, I thought about the departed spirits and their early days when they used these fires for heat and cooking and moved about on foot over their trails. Their life must have been harsh, but tuned into the rhythms of nature and it’s sense of time, the completion of each cycle of seasons.
I valued this day for the sharing of a custom that I found beauty in, which is a special part of Indian life in northern Michigan. Archie is gone now, and this Ghost Supper of years ago lives on in my spirit, just as thoughts of my departed loved ones live on—my son Luke, my father Fred Dickinson, and my friend Archie and the old Indian stories he shared with me over his open fire.