Meanwhile, distant thunder sounded from another source. The year that Lewis and Clark completed their journey was also the year that Indians all over the Old Northwest learned of the Shawnee Prophet, an Indian messiah who performed miracles and preached a message of native revival. The holy man called himself Tenskwatawa, the Open Door, a name that underscored a message of divine revelation. Indians, he declared, should renounce white culture and return to the old ways. If Indian peoples embraced this new religion, the Great Spirit would overturn the land and cover up the white people, restoring the Indians’ world.2
The apocalyptic message resonated with Indians of various tribes, who felt downtrodden by white culture and threatened by land-hungry Americans in particular. While the new, pan-Indian religion was critical of virtually all European influence, the Shawnee Prophet reserved his harshest invective for the Americans. Tenskwatawa said that the British, French, and Spanish had been brought into the world by the Master of Life and were the Indians’ friends, whereas the Americans were the spawn of the Great Serpent and a scourge on the land. The Master of Life had revealed to him that the Americans “grew from the scum of the great Water when it was troubled by the Evil Spirit. And the froth was driven into the Woods by a strong east wind.” He preached that “they are numerous, but I hate them. They are unjust. They have taken away your lands, which were not made for them.”3
The heavy strain of anti-Americanism in the Shawnee Prophet’s pronouncements did not go unnoticed by American and British officials. As the religious movement gained in strength, the British invited Tenskwatawa to Canada. They hoped to make him a tool of their Indian diplomacy, which aimed to block US expansionism. Tenskwatawa declined the invitation, but his older brother, Tecumseh, went instead. A rising Shawnee chief, Tecumseh dreamed of establishing a sovereign Indian nation within the Great Lakes region, possibly under British protection. But Tecumseh’s immediate goal was the same as Britain’s: to maintain peace with the Americans.4
The Shawnee Prophet began to attract believers from various tribes in the winter of 1805–6. In the spring his disciples fanned out across the country to spread his message. It was probably in the summer or fall of 1806 that one of these disciples, an Ojibwa, hailed Tanner as he was out hunting on the Canadian prairie. Subsequently this disciple spent time in Tanner’s village, initiating the people into the ceremony of “shaking hands with The Prophet,” winning many converts to the new religion. The account Tanner gave of this episode stands as one of the most valuable historical sources on the Prophet’s commandments, the secret handshake ritual, and the early spread of his religious movement.5
When Tanner related the episode years later, he began by saying that he first mistook the Prophet’s disciple as an enemy Sioux when he approached across the prairie. Tanner’s apprehension slowly turned to curiosity as the man came up and showed himself to be “strange and peculiar” in manner, avoiding his eyes while telling him by sign language to return at once to his lodge. Tanner’s way of storytelling, which employed techniques he had learned from the Ottawas and Ojibwas, made frequent use of premonitions, dreams, and omens to foreshadow later developments. In this instance, his premonition that the man was a foe served to foreshadow the grave problems he would have with other holy men starting a few years later. Even at this point in his life, religion seems to have become a matter of friction for him. There are hints in Tanner’s Narrative that religious differences with Red Sky of the Morning were an undermining factor in their marriage. What is clearer is that Tanner’s growing religious skepticism eventually undermined his second marriage and finally drove him out of the tribe. Although he could not possibly have foreseen it at this juncture—when the Shawnee Prophet’s peculiar messenger arrived in their midst—in hindsight Tanner must have viewed the coming of the Prophet as a major turning point in his life, one that would eventually strip him of his Indian identity.
The Prophet’s disciple accompanied Tanner to his lodge and joined him in a smoke. Then, after a long silence, he began to expound on the Prophet’s teachings. Indians should give up the white man’s firewater. Men should never strike their wives or children. They should not steal or lie or make war on their traditional enemies. Ojibwas who practiced the new religion would be able to hunt in the Sioux lands without fear, for they would be invisible to the enemy. As a proof of their fidelity to the new religion, practitioners must kill their dogs, throw away their medicine bags, and make fire the old way by rubbing two sticks together instead of with the white man’s flint and steel. When they felt ready to follow this path they should light a new fire in their lodge, which they must henceforth keep burning at all times. “You must remember that the life in your body, and the fire in your lodge, are the same, and of the same date,” the messenger intoned. “If you suffer your fire to be extinguished, at that moment your life will be at its end.” Although Tanner thought the man crazy, he respectfully listened to his pronouncements long into the evening. However, the next morning he could not contain himself. Rousting his guest, he pointed out that the fire had gone out while everyone slept. Get up, he told the man, and observe for yourself how many of us are alive and how many are dead! The messenger responded to his jest without emotion, saying only that Tanner would feel differently once he had had the opportunity to shake hands with the Prophet.6
The messenger stayed with Tanner only one night. But, proselytizing from lodge to lodge, he remained with the tribe for some time. As the weeks went by Tanner saw the population of dogs in the village plummet. Many Indians were killing their dogs in obedience to the new strictures. It was the clearest sign he had that the Prophet’s religion was taking hold. Apparently he did not feel comfortable discussing these matters with other members of the tribe, or they with him. Unnerved by what was happening and feeling increasingly isolated, he went to the trading house to consult with the whites. Did they think it possible the Creator might be revealing new truths to this Shawnee holy man? The traders insisted that such a notion was blasphemous and ridiculous. To think God would choose a poor Shawnee medicine man to be His prophet! Tanner was relieved when the traders confirmed his doubts, yet the meeting left him feeling even more alienated and alone than before. He refused to kill his own dogs, but he did not openly challenge the new doctrine. And he did follow along to the extent of laying aside his flint and steel and medicine bag.7
In time, the chiefs announced that their guest would be given an opportunity to present the Prophet’s message to the whole village. A ceremonial lodge was built for the purpose and everyone was invited to come. Upon entering the lodge on the appointed day, Tanner saw an effigy covered by a blanket. Two men sat guard by it, and though the object presented a curious sight, lying in plain view in the center of the floor, no one was permitted to approach it or turn back the blanket. The messenger then rose and made a long speech describing the Prophet’s revelations. At the conclusion of his speech, he drew four strings of beans from under the blanket, saying that these were made of the flesh of the Prophet. Then, selecting certain men in the assembly, he invited each one in turn to hold the four strings of beans at one end and gently draw them through his hand. He called this action shaking hands with the Prophet. Only those men who had already killed their dogs were allowed to partake in the ritual. In doing so, they pledged to obey the Prophet’s injunctions and accept his teachings as divine revelation. Tanner was unimpressed, noting that the beans were moldy.8
By the time the Prophet’s messenger moved on, the new religion had acquired a considerable following. Many of the male practitioners stopped drinking, gave up talk of war, and began treating their wives and children with extra kindness. But when winter came and everyone felt the pinch of hunger, Tanner reckoned those same practitioners must now have regrets about killing their dogs. After his own dogs helped him find and kill a bear one day, he tried to get his fellows to admit their folly. But his words met with cold silence.9
The wedge created by the religious excitement must have been d
oubly frustrating for Tanner, as it coincided with his coming fully into manhood. It probably denied him a certain status he might otherwise have attained in the tribe. Now in his midtwenties, he had twice gone to war against the Sioux. He had taken an Ojibwa wife, who had by this time given him a son. He had become a skilled hunter, as evidenced by the remarkable growth of his lodge. His lodge now contained not only Red Sky of the Morning, their firstborn child, and old Net-no-kwa but also a half dozen orphan children. The adoptions were probably made on Net-no-kwa’s initiative; nevertheless, they were proof that Tanner had come into his own as a principal hunter. Yet he did not get the respect that taking on so many dependents should have afforded him.10
About this time, the Ottawas and Ojibwas began to hunt beaver in the upper reaches of the Red River. Hunting that far south carried greater risk of attack by the Sioux, but it brought greater reward, too. Pe-shau-ba, the old Ottawa chief who had once been like a father to Tanner, was the first to attempt it. With a companion, he hunted at Otter Tail Lake and along the Pelican River in the spring of 1806, returning to Pembina with 300 beaver and 40 otter. Though the pair saw some Sioux at a distance, they managed to avoid them. The following year, Tanner went with a large party to the same area, then ventured with his family still deeper into the disputed territory. Sure enough, the beavers were plentiful, and he managed to take 100 in a single month. But Tanner’s wife, mother, and adopted children lived in constant fear of attack. One night they heard rustling outside their lodge. Imagining Sioux sneaking up, they lay terror-stricken in their beds. Tanner quietly got his gun. In a low voice, he urged his family to be brave, saying their time had come and they would all die together. Then, squatting at the door of his lodge and pointing the muzzle of his gun in the direction of the foe, he slowly raised the flap. The unseen foe turned out to be nothing but a porcupine.11
Tanner and his family were lucky. Numerous Ojibwa and Sioux hunting parties clashed that year, and both sides suffered fatalities. Tanner supposed that one reason so many Ottawas and Ojibwas accepted the risk of hunting in that country was that they were persuaded by the Prophet to believe they were invisible to their enemies.12
Another reason for their southward advance was that they had depleted safer hunting grounds farther north. With more Ottawas and Ojibwas migrating west each year, competition between traders in the Red River country was peaking in the early 1800s. Beaver populations in the lower part of the watershed were decimated. Moreover, an extraordinarily wet spring and summer in 1806 caused the buffalo to move southward. That year, the fur trader Alexander Henry wrote in his journal, “I hear of nothing but famine throughout the Country.”13
The largely Ojibwa advance on the Sioux frontier may have signaled something even more portentous than a quest for bountiful hunts. Often those areas that tribes fought over contained more abundant game precisely because they were less hunted-out than the tribe’s home territory. Some Indian scholars go so far as to suggest that tribal warfare had evolved as a function of human ecology. War zones unintentionally served as game refuges. Hunted species found relative sanctuary in these areas and propagated, and the excess population of these species moved out and replenished the tribes’ hunting grounds.14 The incessant warfare between Ojibwas and Sioux was, according to these scholars’ interpretation, a cultural evolution that tended to reduce overhunting and famine. If so, then the Ojibwa advance into this area is an example of how the fur trade disordered Indian peoples’ relationship to their environment.15
Environmental stresses contributed to the overall climate of foreboding that allowed the Shawnee Prophet’s teachings to make such rapid inroads among the western Ottawas and Ojibwas. Tanner saw the Indians’ fear and gloom and recognized that in some way it made him vulnerable. The combined effects of famine and religious fervor caused the Indians to be more suspicious of outsiders. In spite of his many years living with them, he was still an outsider. And he had scoffed at the Prophet’s teachings.
Returning to the upper Red River with another large party of Ojibwas in the spring of 1808, Tanner was not altogether surprised when one of his own party challenged his right to hunt in the area. The leader of the expedition was a chief named Ais-ainse, the Little Clam. One night the Little Clam’s brother, Wa-ge-tone, entered Tanner’s lodge and woke him from a sound sleep. Half-drunk and brandishing a knife, he threatened to kill Tanner if he did not give up his plan to hunt with them. “You are a stranger,” he declared. “You are driven out from your own country, and you come among us because you are too feeble and worthless to have a home or a country of your own.” Tanner rose from his bed and answered that his right to hunt in that place was as good as any man’s. As Wa-ge-tone continued to bluster, someone else seized him from behind and muscled him outside. Afterwards, the Little Clam told Tanner to pay no attention to his brother’s words. But the incident still rankled. Only once before had anyone challenged Tanner’s right to hunt in a given territory. That challenge had come from an Iroquois hunter attached to the North West Company, so Tanner had disregarded it. This was different since it came from an Ojibwa—a member of his wife’s tribe and an individual he could almost call a kinsman.16
Seldom before had anyone rejected Tanner for being a non-Indian. Following the excitement over the Shawnee Prophet, however, he began to experience it more often. Not long afterwards an Ottawa man by the name of Wah-ka-zhe counseled Tanner to go back to the whites. Wah-ka-zhe spoke from experience, for he had spent ten years in the Rocky Mountains and other places far from his own people, mostly in association with white traders and missionaries, but had finally returned to his homeland. A sympathetic old man, he advised Tanner that if he went back to the whites he could not become a trader, since he did not know how to read and write. He could not become a farmer, since he would detest the endless toil involved. However, he could likely find a good situation as an interpreter. Wah-ka-zhe did not mean anything unfriendly by his counsel, but his words surely gave Tanner food for thought.17
Indeed, Tanner was already pondering such a move. On one of his journeys to the new hunting grounds, he met an American trader who urged that he return with him to the States. The man informed him that one of Tanner’s relations had been to Fort Mackinac in search of him. How the fellow knew this is unclear; apparently the story of Tanner’s capture had spread by word of mouth and was still widely known more than a decade and a half after his disappearance. Upon reflection Tanner declined the trader’s offer; but he did take the opportunity to dictate a letter to his American family, even though he thought it likely they had been wiped out long ago by his original captors. The trader, whom he trusted, told him he would do his best to get the letter delivered.18
After mulling over the trader’s offer for about six months, Tanner finally decided to act on it. Presumably his purpose was to look for his white family as well as to test the appeal of the white man’s way of life. How he felt about leaving his Indian wife and children Tanner never divulged. As it happened, he did not complete the trip. On his way to find the American trader, British traders told him the United States was at war with Great Britain. The Americans were making attacks all along the frontier, they said, and he would have difficulty getting through. One year later, Tanner tried to make the journey again, this time by way of the Great Lakes, but was turned back by similar reports received at the trading house on Lake Winnipeg. Both times the intelligence was not true; there was no war. But on each occasion Tanner aborted his trip, accepting the British traders’ advice at face value.19
The British traders had their reasons for deceiving him. In June 1807, a British warship attacked a US frigate off Chesapeake Bay and seized four of her crew for deserting from the British navy, sparking an international incident that soon brought the two nations to the brink of war. Since British officials anticipated an American invasion of Canada in the event of war, they signaled the Indian Department to do whatever it could to shore up alliances with tribes throughout the Old Northwest. The Indian Dep
artment duly dispatched a communiqué to the traders: make sure the Indians are loyal and prepared to fight in case of attack. The traders took these instructions as carte blanche to manipulate the Indians through a campaign of misinformation. Rumors of war flew.20
Amidst these war scares, the excitement over the Shawnee Prophet spread like a prairie fire. In the summer of 1807, an eastern Ottawa convert and skilled orator named Le Maigouis went on a mission to the western Ottawas and Ojibwas. Threatened with arrest by the American commander at Fort Mackinac, he defiantly held his first assembly on Mackinac Island beneath the walls of the fort. From there he crossed over to Sault Ste. Marie, carrying the Prophet’s message from village to village around the southern shore of Lake Superior. That year, US agents reported hundreds of western Ottawa and Ojibwa pilgrims trekking eastward to witness the Prophet’s miracles. In one notable instance, the Indians carried a dead child in hopes that it could be restored to life. In the summer of 1808, a vast throng of believers gathered at Chequamegon Bay, Wisconsin, where they ceremoniously pitched their medicine bags into the lake before setting out in 150 canoes. However, when they were halfway around the lakeshore they met with disturbing news: many eastern Ottawa and Ojibwa pilgrims were returning to their villages disillusioned. This large party then turned back. In the winter of 1808–9, those Ottawas and Ojibwas who had proceeded all the way to Prophetstown in Indiana suffered an even crueler disillusionment. A coughing sickness entered the settlement and killed 160 of their number. Strangely, the outbreak took the lives of only five Shawnees. Fearing black magic, the surviving Ottawas and Ojibwas fled. When news of this disaster reached the Red River valley, the Prophet’s influence ebbed.21
Three or four years after the “Shawano excitement” began, the Prophet’s ideas were so discredited that many of Tanner’s kinsmen hung their heads in shame or lied about their past involvement whenever the subject came up. However, the western Ottawas and Ojibwas remained anxious and susceptible to the idea of a coming apocalypse. In the aftermath, at least three, and quite possibly more, holy men arose from among their own people, each claiming to be a messenger of the Great Spirit. Tanner regarded them as charlatans and resisted their influence. His opposition stemmed in part from religious conviction, in part from self-preservation. Their vision of a coming apocalypse and the restoration of a world without white people could only bring him trouble.22
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