Around this time, Tanner fell out with his wife, Red Sky of the Morning. Although he avoided the subject when he gave an account of his life many years later, there is a suggestion in the Narrative that the rupture had something to do with the new prophets, that their revolutionary teachings drove a wedge into his marriage. At this point in his life, Tanner had come to embrace his tribe’s traditional religion, with its focus on prayer and medicines for invoking the Great Spirit’s blessings. He addressed his prayers primarily to Nanabozho, whom the Great Spirit long ago sent to Earth to create fur animals, edible plants, and healing herbs for the benefit of humankind. Or he prayed to the Earth itself, the great grandmother Nokomis, whom the Great Spirit bid stay home in her lodge forever. In the traditional view, these two were the primary intercessors between human beings and the Great Spirit. Tanner felt indignation toward those who now claimed to be in direct communication with the Supreme Being. As time passed he ridiculed the new prophets more openly, even when his contempt offended some of the more credulous Indians around him. Once, when Tanner was bursting with sarcasm about these pretenders, Red Sky of the Morning coldly shut him down in front of their relatives. After that, she no longer confided her own spiritual leanings to her husband but instead joined the conspiracy of silence slowly forming around him.23
30
A Loathsome Man
In the spring of 1808, the Nor’ West trader Alexander Henry left Pembina after an eight-year residence. Another Nor’ Wester, Daniel McKenzie, occupied the post through the winter of 1808–9. Then, in the summer of 1809, the North West Company leadership decided to abandon the place and establish a new post at the Forks. The Nor’ Wester assigned to the task was John Wills. He arrived in the year 1810 with a force of twenty men and proceeded to build a large fort where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red, the site of today’s Winnipeg. This impressive installation, named Fort Gibraltar, consisted of a square palisade about fifteen feet high made from oak logs split in two, with a pair of bastions at opposite corners, and eight buildings arranged within the fort’s walls. The interior buildings included a residence for the trader, two houses for the engagés, a blacksmith shop, a stable, a kitchen, and an ice house. A watchtower rose from the roof of the ice house. The Red River Indians watched with interest as Wills superintended construction and the new fort took shape. As Wills was a very large man, the Indians nicknamed him “The Sail” for his wide beam.1
The North West Company had two purposes in view in establishing Fort Gibraltar at the Forks. One purpose was to support the movement of Métis into the area and thereby secure the company’s important provisioning trade in pemmican. Its second purpose was to prevent the Hudson’s Bay Company from making a southward advance up the Red River valley. Wills aimed to oppose the trader Hugh Heney, who was lately in charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Brandon House.
Wills returned from the Nor’ Westers’ rendezvous at Fort William in the fall of 1810 to find his anticipated rival absent. He assumed that the construction of Fort Gibraltar over the preceding months had convinced Heney and the Hudson’s Bay Company to abandon the area. Rashly, Wills took the opportunity to drive a hard bargain with his Indian trading partners and call in some of the Indians’ debt. While giving the Indians their customary “fall drink” when they gathered at his trading house before the winter, he used the occasion to announce a new limitation on credit: no material items would be provided to them until they brought in skins during the coming winter.2
Tanner avoided the Indians’ drinking bout according to his pattern, so he missed Wills’s announcement. At the onset of winter, he went to the newly occupied fort for his first encounter with the new trader. Ushered into the trader’s house, he asked for woolens to clothe his family. He was taken aback when the trader refused. Tanner pleaded on behalf of his children, saying that they were hungry and ill clothed and might die without the trader’s assistance. Wills rudely cut him off and told him to leave the house. Tanner then placed eight silver ornaments on the table. Having purchased these items a year before at twice the standard price of a capote (a hooded coat), he proposed to pawn them for a single capote. Wills could hold the ornaments as collateral until such time as he could return with the necessary skins to pay for the capote and get them back. Wills found Tanner’s offer to be as impudent as it was irregular. With a sweep of his arm, he scattered the ornaments on the floor.3
Tanner took great offense at this treatment. When Wills’s competitor, Heney, showed up in the valley after all, several weeks later than usual, Tanner decided to get back at Wills. He would broadcast to the Indians his intent to trade his skins with Heney, not Wills, at the end of the winter season. In the language of the traders, he would be going over to the opposition—breaking trust—even though he currently owed no debt to the North West Company. With that in mind, Tanner wintered on the Rat River, a tributary on the lower Red, where he took large numbers of beaver, otter, marten, and muskrat. Early in the spring, he went to the Forks and ostentatiously set up camp on the east bank of the river directly opposite Fort Gibraltar, expecting to intercept Heney as the Hudson’s Bay trader made his way back northward from Pembina.4
Wills soon learned of Tanner’s presence across the river and sent him repeated invitations to come over and trade. Twice Tanner refused, but on the third invitation a kinsman persuaded him to go. Leaving his furs behind, he took only a little tobacco as a peace offering. Wills greeted him respectfully and offered him brandy and whatever provisions he might need. Tanner had not been visiting long when some of Wills’s engagés came through the door toting his packs of furs—the very same that he had intentionally left in his lodge. Not stopping or saying a word as they passed by him, they placed the packs in a back room. Tanner knew this trick. The traders at Grand Portage had attempted to take possession of Net-no-kwa’s packs in just that way many years before. But he said nothing, pretending to be oblivious both to the seizure of his peltries and the surliness that suddenly came over his host as soon as they were stowed away. Calmly he waited until the engagés were out of the house. Then, when Wills stooped to get something out of a trunk, Tanner slipped past him into the back room. The fat, old trader was too slow to stop him. Tanner gathered his packs in his arms and, staggering under the immense load, made for the front door. Wills interposed himself. In their short struggle, one of the bundles fell from Tanner’s grasp, breaking apart when it hit the floor. As Tanner went to gather up the skins, Wills fetched his pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Tanner’s breast. Tanner momentarily froze, thinking he was about to be shot and killed, since the trader was so obviously frightened. But Wills only stood there, shaking. Tanner grabbed his wrist and turned the pistol aside with one hand while drawing his knife with the other. In an instant he was holding the trader at knifepoint.5
Wills called out to his wife and interpreter. Very soon they entered the room, together with his French Canadian engagés. Tanner held the trader hostage in the middle of the floor while Wills’s allies stood back against the wall. With their numbers, the French Canadians could have overpowered him. Yet when Wills growled at the men to disarm Tanner and get him out of the house, no one made a move. At length, Wills started bargaining. He offered Tanner an even split: half the skins for the Hudson’s Bay trader, half to the North West. Released from knifepoint, he began separating them into two piles.
Never in his life did Tanner find a trader more loathsome than this man. Answering him through the interpreter, Tanner reminded Wills of his refusal to provision his family at the start of winter. He informed him that he had obtained all of his ammunition on credit from Heney; therefore, all the skins would go to him. Then he excoriated Wills for being such a coward.
You have not so much courage as a child. If you had had the heart of a squaw, you would not have pointed your pistol at my breast, and have failed to shoot me. My life was in your power, and there was nothing to prevent your taking it, not even the fear of my friends, for you know that I am
a stranger here, and not one among the Indians would raise his hand to avenge my death. You might have thrown my body into the river, as you would a dog, and no one would have asked you what you had done, but you wanted the spirit to do even this.6
As the interpreter finished translating, Wills retreated to the company of his wife and took a seat. He looked so pale and shaken, Tanner thought he might collapse. When the fat, old man at last regained his composure, he went outside. Tanner retied his skins, loaded them on his back and took them to his canoe, saying no more to Wills as they passed in the yard.
The next day, Wills sent his interpreter over to Tanner with a peace offering: he would give him his horse if the unfortunate matter could then be forgotten. Tanner refused. Tell the man he is a child, Tanner responded, since he expects to quarrel with me one day and pretend that it never happened the next. Tell him I will keep my skins, and I will not forget how he pointed his pistol at my heart and lacked the courage to shoot me.
Wills persisted. A few days later he sent four armed men to claim Tanner’s skins. The clerk in charge of this gang stated that the skins rightfully belonged to the North West Company because ten years ago Tanner’s brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew, had failed to repay a debt, and that this old debt still attached to Tanner as his close kin. To this, Tanner replied that he would pay his brother’s debt if in turn the North West Company would pay him for the four packs of beaver his family had shipped to Mackinac around the same time. He referred to the promissory note that had burned up in their wigwam. The clerk ignored this and moved to take the skins by force, but as Tanner remained sitting on them he changed his mind and led the men back to the fort.
When more days went by with no sign of Heney, Tanner packed up and went down to the mouth of the Red River to do some more trapping. When Heney finally did come down the river a few days later, passing by Fort Gibraltar, Wills went after him with a canoe of armed men. Heney saw he was being pursued and landed his canoe. Telling his men to stay with the canoe and its cargo, he walked alone to a spot above the river where he could confront Wills face to face. Seeing him there, Wills landed his canoe and approached with an escort. Heney made him stop at a distance of ten paces, and the two men argued over their respective rights to the territory. Finally, Wills agreed to let Heney continue on unmolested. Farther downriver, Heney found Tanner and related to him what had happened. Tanner traded him all of his skins as he had intended. Heney gave him a gun as a token of their new alliance.
Up until that time, Tanner had traded almost exclusively with the North West Company. There were one or two exceptions. He traded at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Brandon House until its former proprietor, John McKay, promised to sell him a horse and sold it to a Nor’ Wester instead. Miffed, Tanner ceased going to Brandon House. He probably traded at Swan River House, another Hudson’s Bay Company post, as well. All of his trading at Grand Portage, Rainy Lake, Pembina, Prairie Portage, Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, and Red Deer River was with the North West. He accepted the traders’ notion of company loyalty to a certain extent, but he based his own loyalty on personal relationships with individual traders. When Wills betrayed his trust, Tanner punished him for it by “crossing over” to the opposition. He then allied with Heney and the Hudson’s Bay Company for as long as the thieving North West trader still lived.7
31
Sorcery and Sickness
Around the time of his break with the North West Company, Tanner also broke up with his first wife. As he and Red Sky of the Morning grew apart, Tanner acquired a rival. His wife’s suitor was one Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo of the Red Lake band of Ojibwas. It seems that when Tanner and Red Sky of the Morning chose to part ways, she went and joined Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo in his lodge near Red Lake about one day’s journey from the Red River band’s wintering place, which was near the mouth of the Red River on the south shore of Lake Winnipeg.
All might have gone smoothly with the divorce but for the former couple’s disagreement over who should take the children. Evidently Red Sky of the Morning took the two girls, who were then toddler age, while Tanner kept the boy, their firstborn, who was then around six years old. But Red Sky of the Morning was not satisfied with the arrangement.
Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo made two attempts in four months to steal Tanner’s son. In both occurrences, Tanner returned from a day’s hunt to learn that Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo had come into his lodge and absconded with the child. Both times, Tanner leapt onto his horse, chased his rival down, and recovered the boy unharmed. When he caught up with his son’s captor the second time, he dismounted from his horse, handed the reins to his son, and advanced on Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo on foot with his knife drawn. Rather than attack him, however, he stabbed Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo’s horse in the neck twice until it fell. Then he challenged Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo to shoot his own horse if he dared. His rival did not make a move, nor did he ever again attempt to steal the boy.1
Tanner’s confrontation with Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo stands out oddly in Tanner’s Narrative. Tanner presented the episode out of sequence with the rest of his story. It was the only point in his long narration of his life where he felt compelled to go back in time to an event he had omitted to mention earlier. It would seem that his description of this episode was as much as he could bring himself to say about the breakup of his first Indian family. In the end Tanner did not keep his son. How he later lost the boy to his mother he declined to say. What Tanner’s Narrative does make clear was that in hindsight, at least, Tanner regarded the clash with Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo as an important harbinger of his mounting difficulties with the Indians.
Just as Tanner found it expedient to form a new trade relationship with Heney and the Hudson’s Bay Company when things soured between him and the North West trader, so too did he feel the need to form new alliances among the Indians after his breakup with Red Sky of the Morning. In 1809, his old friend Pe-shau-ba, the Ottawa chief, died of an illness. Pe-shau-ba was the closest person to a father he ever had among the Indians. Tanner stayed with Pe-shau-ba’s band for about a year and then joined another band led by the Ottawa chief Sha-gwaw-koo-sink. Sometime after that, Tanner moved with Sha-gwaw-koo-sink’s band to Lake of the Woods.2
At the urging of his companions, Tanner took a new wife. It seems to have been largely a marriage of convenience. He needed a young woman in his lodge to help care for his aging mother and the many small orphans she kept adopting. This young woman had no children of her own when they married. In telling his life story some years later, Tanner never stated her name even though they remained married for a decade and a half and had six children together. Toward the end of their marriage, after she converted to Catholicism on Mackinac Island, she took the name Therezia.3
Not long after Tanner married Therezia, a new prophet arose in their midst. This man, Ais-kaw-ba-wis, had no prior experience as a medicine man. Before his sudden emergence as a spiritual leader, Tanner knew him only as a poor hunter who had allowed his wife to starve to death. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding his wife’s death, two winters past, were suspicious. Tanner, for one, believed he had eaten her to save his own life. Had Ais-kaw-ba-wis admitted to such a thing, the other Ojibwas would have put him to death. Ever since that time, he had been withdrawn and listless. Then one day this marginal member of the band announced that he had received a message from the Great Spirit. Calling the principal hunters together, he produced from under his garment a perfectly round cobblestone about five inches in diameter, painted red, which he claimed the Great Spirit had given him with the injunction that he must show the way in making the whole Earth clean and new like the red ball—or like the Earth was when Nanabozho created it.4
Tanner wasted no time telling his fellow tribesmen that Ais-kaw-ba-wis was a faker. How ridiculous, he said, to think the Great Spirit would choose one so lazy and spiritless as this man to serve as divine messenger! Meanwhile, Ais-kaw-ba-wis retired to his lodge, where he began loudly singing, crying, praying, and beating his drum. The incantations went on for days and weeks
. Occasionally he stopped to make a round of the village, sharing with each family his latest word from the Great Spirit. Twice he predicted that one of the hunters would kill a moose that day. The first time he was mistaken; the second time he guessed right. His error in the first instance seems to have cost him little, while his lucky guess the second time got much attention. Building on that success, he made a ceremony of collecting and cleaning the bones of the moose and hanging them in a tree out of reach of wolves and dogs. Tanner disparaged Ais-kaw-ba-wis and his pretensions of holiness at every turn, yet his criticisms had little effect. Much to his dismay, the prophet acquired a strong following among the band.5
As soon as Ais-kaw-ba-wis thought he had sufficient influence, he made a bid to drive Tanner out of the band. In the middle of winter, he sent messengers to all the hunters to return to the village for an important announcement regarding the Swallow. Tanner duly complied with the prophet’s request, reckoning that he must face his adversary directly. Ais-kaw-ba-wis had planned an elaborate ceremony. All the wigwams were reconfigured into one large lodge. At Ais-kaw-ba-wis’s signal the whole village filed into the lodge. Forming a circle inside, the people danced four times around while Ais-kaw-ba-wis sat in the center with his eyes closed, singing and beating his drum. At the culmination of this ceremony, Ais-kaw-ba-wis somberly announced that the Swallow would soon die. The Great Spirit had told him so in a vision. Drawing in the dirt with a stick, he made a long straight line to represent the life of a good Indian, and beside it he drew a short, crooked line falling away: this was Tanner.6
Rainy Lake House Page 28
