Nanapush begins narrating the story of his people with the consumption epidemic in the winter of 1912. Talking to his adopted granddaughter, Lulu, Nanapush relates the doings of the Chippewa people and specifically of Lulu’s mother, Fleur Pillager.

In the winter of 1912, Nanapush rescues 17-year-old Fleur Pillager from her family home, which contained the corpses of her entire family, and took her into his home. There was no one else who would have taken her in, and his own family, including his fourth wife and his two small children, had already died during the epidemic.

In the entire village of Argus, there is no one brave enough among the remaining families to take in a Pillager. The family is known for their wild ways and their abilities to manipulate nature to hurt others. Rumors fly about the community that the woods are haunted around the Pillager cabin.

Edgar Pukwan, an officer the tribal police have charged with burning the houses and bodies of the dead to stop the spread of the disease, so fears the sick girl that he runs away from Nanapush rather than help him get Fleur into his house. Edgar Pukwan dies, and his son, also a tribal police officer, reluctantly returns to Matchimanito to help Nanapush bury the Pillagers.