Selkirk invited Tanner to accompany him, as he would be traveling by way of St. Louis and the Ohio River, where they would stand a fair chance of tracking down some of Tanner’s white relations. Tanner weighed the offer and finally rejected it. His ambivalence was akin to that experienced by many fur traders preparing to retire from the fur trade. His closest attachments, like theirs, were among the Indians, and his true home was in Indian country. Even if he promised to return, he could not leave his family so late in the fall with winter coming on.19
Frustrated, he went to Selkirk and dictated a letter instead. Or, perhaps he just gave his blessing as Selkirk composed it. The letter has not survived. Later Tanner would recall that it included some identifying particulars of his early life, and it may have been these same details that Selkirk inserted in correspondence and newspaper notices in his efforts to locate Tanner’s family. The letter Selkirk wrote for him seems to have been only the second one Tanner ever sent from British America to the United States. The first he had sent off with an American trader ten years earlier, giving it little chance of success. But this second letter had the weight of the British chieftain behind it. And this time it found its mark.20
The combination of Lord Selkirk’s fame, humanitarianism, and tenacity made him an effective messenger. Soon after Selkirk arrived in St. Louis, he placed a notice about Tanner in several newspapers in the western states. In this notice he got one crucial fact wrong: Tanner had misremembered his white family’s name as Taylor. This, it turned out, was the name of some close family friends. One Mrs. Taylor of Lexington, Kentucky, read the notice and thought she recognized some details reminiscent of the capture of a boy whom she had once known as John Tanner. She contacted Selkirk, who traveled out of his way to meet her and confirm that the man whom he had befriended was indeed named Tanner, not Taylor. Selkirk wrote another notice with the name corrected, and this time it came to the attention of Tanner’s relatives.21
Thus Tanner’s family learned at last that the boy who had been taken by Indians some twenty-seven years earlier was still alive, living among the Ottawas and Ojibwas on the northern prairie. The news confirmed what John Tanner, Sr., had been told when he went searching for his son long ago: he had been traded from tribe to tribe and taken west. Although Tanner’s father had since died, his brother Edward and sisters Agatha and Lucy still lived. Edward, in fact, had never given up hope of finding their brother. During the War of 1812, he had served as a captain in the frontier militia. On his travels from one frontier post to another on the upper Mississippi, he had often spoken of his brother’s captivity. Since then he had attended Indian treaty councils in the hope of ferreting out some bit of information that would lead to his brother’s discovery. At last, in March 1818, Edward received a letter from one Mr. Castleman, enclosing a note from Selkirk, which left no doubt in his mind that the white Indian in question was John. Being reliably informed that he lived among the Red River Indians, often hunting for Selkirk’s colony or the Hudson’s Bay Company, Edward resolved to set out the following summer to find him.22
33
Rough Justice
John Tanner passed the winter of 1817–18 hunting bison along the Assiniboine. He now planned to go in search of his white relatives in the coming year, and since it would entail a long separation from his wife and children, he wanted to leave them well provisioned in his absence. So he killed a great number of bison, drying the meat and pounding it into pemmican, and preserving the tongues and other choice parts in tallow in ten-gallon kegs. By the end of winter, he had made twenty large sacks of pemmican and filled ten kegs with tallow and meats.1
Late in the season, he and Therezia received an urgent message from Therezia’s mother: they must both come at once to see her. Their band was then somewhat scattered over the prairie, and the old woman had recently encamped a few miles away from Tanner and Therezia with another small band of three lodges. Therezia wanted to leave the very next day, and Tanner consented. But that night he had a dream in which a young man came down through the smoke hole in his lodge and warned him not to go to his mother-in-law’s camp. He knew this person, this pawaganak, or dream visitor. He was the same figure who appeared to him in dreams whenever he made preparations for a medicine hunt. “You must not go to the place you propose to visit tomorrow,” the man intoned. “Look there,” he said, pointing, and Tanner saw some of his friends running toward him. Then the man pointed skyward. Looking up, Tanner saw a hawk with a banded tail circling above. Tanner awoke from the dream feeling apprehensive. He told Therezia she must go to her mother by herself.
Therezia insisted that he come, and he finally agreed, thinking he must not add to his mother-in-law’s suspicions. He and Therezia had barely started down the trail, however, when he saw the same hawk, flying close by. This stopped him dead in his tracks, for he saw at that moment with perfect clarity that the bird was his guardian spirit sent to warn him of evil. He told his wife a second time that she must go without him. Therezia would not agree to it. She belittled him for being afraid of her mother. Finally, he relented, saying nothing of his dream, and they continued on. The warrior ethic rose in him, and he resolved to face whatever challenge lay ahead.2
Just as he feared, his mother-in-law had laid a trap. When he got to her lodge he left his gun at her door, went in, and sat down beside Therezia’s two older sisters. He was wearing a capote with a large hood made of moose hide, and as he did not immediately remove the hood from his head he did not see his mother-in-law’s accomplice step from the shadows and raise his tomahawk. This man went by the name Waw-be-be-nais-sa, or White Bird (no relation to the lazy hunter of the same name who he had known many years before). Lately, Waw-be-be-nais-sa had become his antagonist, telling everyone that Tanner was a stranger in their village and that he bragged too much of being a great hunter. The two had come to blows twice, and when Tanner got the better of him in those scuffles Waw-be-be-nais-sa had tried to even the score by stabbing one of Tanner’s dogs.3
Now this man’s tomahawk came crashing down on the crown of Tanner’s head, and the blade would have surely split his skull in two had it not been for the thick hood. The blow knocked Tanner out. When he came to, he found himself surrounded by several women. He recognized the frightened faces of his two sisters-in-law but not his wife’s. Neither his mother-in-law nor the man with the tomahawk were anywhere to be seen. Oddly, he felt no pain, just the warm and sticky blood oozing from his scalp. The women were holding his arms, trying to pin him to the floor. As soon as he could raise himself up, he pulled away from them and stumbled out of the lodge, thinking that he must find his assailant. But he was no longer in possession of his gun. When he realized—still in a daze—that no one was coming forward to help him, he bolted from his mother-in-law’s camp and made for his own.4
The sight of Tanner staggering into camp without his wife brought the principal hunter, Sha-gwaw-koo-sink, running. The moment Tanner reached out and took him by the hand, his scalp wound opened and blood streamed down his face. Three of Sha-gwaw-koo-sink’s young men quickly gathered around, and one of them, Oto-pun-ne-be, with whom Tanner had often hunted, vowed to take revenge on the man who had tomahawked him. Safe among his friends, Tanner crawled into his lodge to rest.5
The next day, Therezia appeared at the door of their lodge with her mother. Tanner’s heart sank when he saw them standing there together, for he knew that his mother-in-law wanted him dead and he had to conclude that his wife must now be in league with her. His mother-in-law announced that the Ojibwas were making haste to leave, as it was thought that a Sioux war party was coming. Tanner said he was too weak to travel, that they should take the children and go without him. This they did. Many other families fled that same day, abandoning their lodges, their belongings, and their sunjegwuns hung with buffalo meat. Soon the entire encampment was deserted except for Tanner, his friend Oto-pun-ne-be, and a fourteen-year-old boy who was Oto-pun-ne-be’s cousin. Tanner lay prone for ten days while his frien
ds took turns attending him or watching for signs of the enemy.
As soon as Tanner could travel, the three set out for Lake of the Woods. Their sole purpose now was to find Tanner’s assailant, Waw-be-be-nais-sa, and punish him. In two small canoes they threaded their way through the muskeg to the shore of the lake. There, they made camp and held a council. Oto-pun-ne-be and his cousin would canoe across to Plantation Island, where they felt confident of finding the guilty party in the Ottawa-Ojibwa village. Tanner, meanwhile, would pay a visit to the local trader. It was deemed easier for Oto-pun-ne-be to accomplish his mission if Tanner did not accompany him. On an agreed upon day, the three would meet back at their present camp and then return to Red River.6
Oto-pun-ne-be was a big, strong man with a generally peaceable disposition. People knew him as one who rarely fought unless it was in another man’s behalf. As soon as he entered the village, the Indians recognized the purpose of his visit. He went to the lodge of one of the principal chiefs, sat down, and waited for the man he was looking for to come meet him there. After a while, Waw-be-be-nais-sa appeared and sat down across from him. While the chief listened, Tanner’s assailant stated that he understood Oto-pun-ne-be’s purpose. He did not deny his part in the affair, nor did he offer an explanation, excuse, or apology for it. Rather, he gave his challenger a warning and an opportunity to reconsider. He pointed out that Oto-pun-ne-be had no brothers, for they had all been killed by the Long Knives (the Americans). He said it was foolish for him to count the Swallow as his brother, for the Swallow was himself a Long Knife, who masqueraded as an Indian. In answer, Oto-pun-ne-be said it was not true that the Long Knives had killed any brothers of his. But it was true he called the Swallow his brother, and regardless of his opponent’s view of the matter, he would avenge him as he would an Indian brother.7
With that, Oto-pun-ne-be stood up and pulled his opponent outside the chief’s lodge for a fight. Waw-be-be-nais-sa had some friends standing by, and as he and Oto-pun-ne-be began to circle one another these other men moved in closer. Seeing he was outnumbered, Oto-pun-ne-be drew a knife. The chief was right behind him and with a quick movement he caught his arm and made him drop the weapon. But with another vigorous gesture by the chief Waw-be-be-nais-sa’s seconds stepped back from the two combatants. Big Oto-pun-ne-be was allowed to charge his opponent and pummel him to the ground. Soon the men jumped in and overpowered him but not before he landed a few powerful blows and cracked some ribs. Thus, with the help of the chief and Waw-be-be-nais-sa’s seconds, the punishment was kept within bounds commensurate with the injury done to Tanner. After the combat was over, Oto-pun-ne-be and his young cousin were permitted to leave the village unmolested.8
While Oto-pun-ne-be was avenging his friend, Tanner’s condition improved enough that he was able to hunt and bring down a large animal. When the three men met up at their previous camp as planned, he gave them a feast. Tanner felt satisfied that two cracked ribs squared with a cut head, so the matter was settled. He was pleased to count Oto-pun-ne-be as his friend. And yet, the cause of the fracas was not lost on him: many in the tribe had come to regard him as a Long Knife, an alien, and even looked upon his friends with a jaundiced eye. With so much prejudice against him, he doubted that those like Oto-pun-ne-be would rally to his side forever.
Tanner and his two companions got back to their original encampment shortly before all the other Ojibwas returned. During their absence, no Sioux had ransacked their camp; the lodges remained just as they had left them. Tanner joined with everyone else in loading the canoes with their dried meat and possessions for the slow trip back to the village. In a few weeks, the move was complete. Now his family was well stocked with provisions to last a year or more. At last he was ready to go in search of his white relatives.9
34
In Search of Kin
In the summer of 1818, Tanner left Plantation Island in a small birchbark canoe bound for the States. He did not go directly south, for that would have taken him through Sioux country, which he considered too dangerous. Instead, he headed east toward Lake Superior, intending to backtrack over the route he and Net-no-kwa had taken more than twenty years earlier, when they first came west from Lake Huron.
The Hudson’s Bay people told him to expect rough treatment from the Nor’ Westers as he passed by their forts, as they were “much enraged” over his involvement in retaking Fort Douglas. But when Tanner met them in person they were more forgiving. At Rainy Lake, the trader John Warren Dease hailed him from the riverbank and invited him to come inside. Once they were in the house, Dease gave him a chiding, saying by rights he should have barred the door against him. “Why do you not go to your own people of the Hudson’s Bay Company?” he asked reproachfully. Tanner replied that he was now on his way to the States; he had decided the time had come to go search for his American relatives. Dease cogitated on that for a while, and gruffly responded, “It would have been well had you gone long ago.” However, letting bygones be bygones, he offered him a seat in his canoe and took him to Fort William.
At Fort William, Tanner was reunited with Dr. McLoughlin for the first time since lying in a sickbed in his care some four years earlier. When Tanner informed him of his intentions to go to the States, the good doctor was obviously affected. Looking him up and down, as if studying Tanner’s light complexion, long reddish hair, and buckskins for the first time, he said he had something to give him for his journey. He went to the apothecary and came back with some tartar emetic to add to his medicine bag. It was in case he ate something poisonous along the way or contracted dysentery in the unfamiliar country, the doctor explained.
With McLoughlin’s assistance, Tanner rode in a company boat from Fort William around the north shore of Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie, where he presented himself with a letter of introduction to the independent trader Charles Ermatinger. A former clerk in the North West Company, Ermatinger had become a successful farmer and middleman, selling grain and other supplies to his former employers. He provided Tanner with lodging in the big house that he occupied with his Ojibwa wife and eight children, and on his next trip to Mackinac he took Tanner along.
At Mackinac, Tanner met with yet more kindness. The US Indian agent, William Puthuff, gave him provisions and a letter addressed to the governor of Michigan Territory, then put him on a schooner bound for Detroit. The agent also furnished him with a canoe for the journey from Detroit to the Ohio. The canoe was lashed to the side of the schooner. After a five-day voyage down Lake Huron, Tanner was in Detroit.1
With just over a thousand residents in 1818, Detroit was the biggest white settlement he had ever seen. Coming down off the boat, he stood for a long time just gazing about him at horse-drawn wagons and carriages moving up and down the muddy streets and crowds of pedestrians clomping over the boardwalks. At length he began asking passersby for directions to the governor’s house, but no one would respond to his labored attempts at speaking English. So he started walking and soon came to a mansion that looked like the place. It was fifty feet long, two stories high, and had a grand porch facing the street. A rotund man whom Tanner took to be the governor was sitting on the porch. Walking up to him, Tanner held up his letter from the Indian agent. Sure enough, this man was Governor Lewis Cass. After reading the letter, the governor held out his hand in welcome and immediately sent a man to get an interpreter.2
By a remarkable coincidence, the interpreter who was summoned turned out to be none other than Kish-kau-ko, the son of Manitoo-geezhik, Tanner’s long ago captor. Tanner could barely recognize this interpreter as the young man whom he had once called his brother. Kish-kau-ko was naturally reticent about their past relationship. Indeed, he probably avoided communicating to the governor the fact of his own involvement in Tanner’s capture, for Governor Cass remained ignorant of the two men’s past connection; he made no mention of it in the description of Tanner that he gave to the newspapers. Tanner, for his part, had no way of knowing what got translated and had to assume that Kish-ka
u-ko corroborated his testimony when he told the governor about his capture and two-year stint with the Ottawa at Saginaw. Nonetheless, the governor learned enough to write a lengthy account of Tanner’s background and capture in 1790. This went into the newspapers under the headline “A Captive Found.” It was dated August 2, 1818, and was signed “Lewis Cass.”3
Cass was one of two territorial governors who played important roles in Tanner’s transition back into the white man’s world. The other was Governor William Clark of Missouri. Both governors were deeply involved in Indian affairs, gathering information about tribes, negotiating land-cession treaties, and enforcing the Indian Trade and Intercourse laws. Both men had led troops in the War of 1812 and remained profoundly suspicious of British intentions after the Treaty of Ghent. Both advocated strong US involvement in the fur trade, partly to spur economic growth in their respective territories and partly to take the trade out of British hands and quash British influence over Indian tribes in US territory.
The governors differed in how they sought to reorganize the fur trade, however. Cass was a great friend of John Jacob Astor and the American Fur Company. After the company moved its field headquarters to Mackinac in 1816, the Michigan governor decided Astor’s organization was the one best suited to compete with the British. He used his authority in issuing traders’ licenses to further the American Fur Company’s monopoly throughout the Michigan Territory. Governor Clark, meanwhile, wanted to Americanize the fur trade through the creation of a government-owned company based in St. Louis. Government ownership was important, he believed, to ensure that the enterprise was sufficiently capitalized to achieve a monopoly position. The St. Louis location seemed necessary to Clark if the Americans were to compete effectively with the British in the upper Missouri. In 1818, the Missouri Territory took in all of the Louisiana Purchase minus the state of Louisiana, while the Michigan Territory included the future states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. These were the two big western territories in the United States at that time. As a result, the governors’ ideas carried enormous weight in federal Indian policy.4
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