The next day, the governor called the principal men of the band as well as Tanner to a council. They all sat on the floor of the council room, and Bulger took out a peace pipe and ceremoniously lit the bowl and passed it around. He called on his guards to bring presents into the room and deposit them on the floor. He told the principal men that he was honoring them with these gifts and that he was asking them, as on the previous day, to return the children to their father. He went on to explain that Tanner came before them not as an Indian but as a white man under the protection of the Great Father beyond the waters. He did not need to remind them that the Great Father recognized the right of all white fathers to reclaim their children. Furthermore, Bulger continued, Tanner made his request with the blessing of the Great Spirit, for the Great Spirit created all people, red and white, and clearly the Great Spirit had created these children to be Tanner’s. Bulger urged the Indians to accept the presents as a sign of his people’s goodwill toward them. Then he ordered his guards to open the door of the council room so they could see his armed militia parading back and forth in front of the house.11
Not to be intimidated, the Indians insisted on caucusing among themselves for a good while. At length, their chief made a counterproposal. They would allow Tanner to take his two daughters but not his son. The boy wished to remain with them, and he was old enough to choose for himself. Moreover, they would only give up the girls under one condition: Tanner must take Red Sky of the Morning as well. If Tanner wanted to provide for his daughters again, then he must provide for their mother, too. Tanner saw the justice in this arrangement and gave his consent. The Indians then added a stipulation: several of their people would follow Tanner for the first few days of the journey to ensure that he did not turn the woman out of his canoe. Tanner agreed to their stipulation as well.12
By using the power of the Hudson’s Bay Company to secure custody of his daughters, Tanner severed what little remained of his bond with the Ojibwas. Though he spoke their language, ate and dressed as they did, knew their rituals and beliefs, and had long ago mingled his blood with theirs, those things gave him no more standing than most other fur traders had. Allegiances mattered to the Ojibwas most of all, and gradually Tanner had transferred those to the white traders. His appeal to Captain Bulger represented a culmination of that process.
There was a dramatic arc to Tanner’s thirty years among the Indians, an arc that encompassed the waxing and waning of his Indianness. Almost from the start of his captivity at the age of nine, he had striven to adopt the Indians’ ways and to bring himself higher in their esteem. His efforts had begun with learning their language and customs and becoming a camp helper. After a few years, he had learned to hunt and trap. Under the nurturing care of Net-no-kwa, he had become a good Indian son and provider. Then, taking Red Sky of the Morning as his wife, he had entered further into Ojibwa life as a husband and father. And finally, through his induction as a warrior, he had made himself almost completely Indian. But there remained the matter of his race.
Until around the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Indians of the northern prairies practically ignored the fact that he came from the white race. However, that changed under the rising influence of the Shawnee Prophet, the growing pressure on Indian tribes from the advancing frontier of American settlement, and the ruinous strife between the rival fur companies north of the border. Tanner’s skin color increasingly made him a person of suspicion and undermined his Indianness. And as he himself formed new relationships with the whites who were outside the usual bounds of the fur trade—first as a hunter for the Red River colony, then as a scout for Selkirk’s mercenaries, and finally as a wage-earning employee of the American Fur Company—little by little he moved out of the Indians’ camp back into the camp of the white men. It was Tanner’s misfortune to become Indian during a time when the two peoples grew increasingly polarized and race conscious. Whites would come to think of Tanner as so completely Indian that he was hopelessly alienated from the white man’s world. What they failed to see was that Tanner had lost his Indianness as well as his whiteness. Attempting to straddle two cultures, he found himself rejected by both.13
Tanner’s heavy-handed reliance on Captain Bulger to reclaim his children finally alienated him from the Ojibwas for good. Tanner must have understood the gravity of what he had done, for he now decided on a route back to Mackinac that would entail minimal contact with other Indians. Tanner set out down the Red River with his two daughters and their mother and the mandated escort. After four days’ journey, the escort turned back and Tanner picked a seldom-used route that would avoid the Ojibwas living around Lake of the Woods. He was not exactly in flight from Indian country, but he no longer called it his home, either.
41
The Ambush
That year of 1823, a new medicine man arose among the Rainy Lake Ojibwas. An elder by the name of Two Hearts, he created a stir among his people when he began raising the dead from their graves. On one occasion, he promised the relatives of a girl who had died in the autumn to make her appear in the following spring. When the traders heard reports from the Indians that Two Hearts was raising the dead, they assumed he must be digging up the recently deceased and employing some kind of ruse to hold the corpses erect so that the relatives, when they looked on through the thick forest, were deceived into thinking that the spirits had risen from the dead and were moving about by their own will. The traders noted that the medicine man always kept the viewers at a distance and that he never performed his magic when any white men were around.1
That summer, Two Hearts grew wary of the Americans. Members of the US Boundary Commission entered the Rainy Lake country to survey the international boundary, and Two Hearts stealthily followed their movements. On numerous occasions he espied the American surveyors holding their shiny metal instruments up to the sun as if to pray. He speculated as to their intentions and their relationship to the American traders who had come into the area the previous year.2
The Rainy Lake country was already a land too poor to sustain the 300 to 400 Ojibwas living there, and the advent of the American traders only made the Ojibwas’ problems worse. Competition over hunting territories between family subsistence groups stiffened, and the upstart Americans used whatever low means they could to relieve the Ojibwas of their furs. Two Hearts declined to trade with the Americans at all. He and his two grown sons hunted on the north side of the international boundary, trading their skins to the British at Rainy Lake House. Because so many Ojibwa suffered from hunger and low spirits, Two Hearts’s influence as a medicine man was felt all around the Rainy Lake country.3
Not far from where Two Hearts made his camp that summer, six or seven other family subsistence groups came together to fish by the inlet to Rainy Lake at Kettle Falls. Their chief, Waw-wish-e-gah-bo, had accumulated an inordinately large debt at the Rainy Lake House over the previous few years. His younger brother, Ome-zhuh-gwut-oons, or Little Clear Sky, took debt from both the British and the American traders and hunted on both sides of the line. Little Clear Sky was not the only Rainy Lake Ojibwa who ignored the traders’ admonitions to respect the international border, but he was among the most fiercely independent about that. When McLoughlin made a list of all the Ojibwa hunters in his district that spring, he noted the fact that Little Clear Sky hunted both north and south of the line, describing him as “a lazy fellow and a rogue.”4 Cȏté, the American Fur Company clerk, was more direct with him. Upon learning that Little Clear Sky took debt from him in the fall only to trade most of his skins to the opposition in the spring, he briefly incarcerated the young man and gave him a whipping for it.
Little Clear Sky was still smarting from the American trader’s offense when he was informed one day that Tanner—the man his people called the Long Knife—had just passed by the encampment in his canoe with his former Ojibwa wife and two daughters. On an impulse, he jumped in his own canoe and went after him.5
Tanner had seen few people on their journe
y thus far. They had bypassed Lake of the Woods altogether, and they had glided past Rainy Lake House with barely a wave to the people on shore. When Little Clear Sky caught up with them and brought his canoe abreast of theirs, Tanner instantly felt on guard. He did not recognize the young man as someone he knew, though the young man insisted they were in some way related. Little Clear Sky shadowed them as they continued paddling, and though Tanner gave him no encouragement, he seemed eager to strike up a conversation. After a while, he told Tanner about his recent ill treatment by the American trader, Cȏté.6
When Tanner and his family stopped to camp at the end of the day, Little Clear Sky stopped as well, making his camp with them. In the morning, as Tanner and his family prepared to embark, Little Clear Sky watched them so as to be ready to push off when they did. Where he was going he would not say. He only seemed interested in tagging along and talking to Tanner.
Around midday they landed the canoes to take a shore break. Tanner was reclining on the riverbank in the summer sunshine, his guard temporarily lowered, when he turned on his elbow and saw that the young man and his older daughter had both disappeared from view. In the next moment his daughter emerged from the underbrush, looking agitated. Little Clear Sky came sauntering out of the bushes a little way behind her. As the girl went to her mother, Tanner let the incident pass. When they took another shore break later in the day, he saw this daughter whisper something to Red Sky of the Morning and begin to cry.7
Little Clear Sky camped with them again that night. His constant presence had become oppressive, and yet when he stood up and wandered off into the woods by himself, Tanner was at once on edge over letting him out of his sight. After everything else that had occurred that day, he felt vaguely menaced and went to see what the young man was doing. He found him sitting on the ground with his medicine bag open, carefully inserting a long piece of deer gut into a musket ball. Supposing that he might be short of powder or balls or flint, Tanner offered to give him whatever he needed from his own supply. A little too quickly, Little Clear Sky responded that he had plenty.
Tanner found him very odd. The young man had chirped like a little bird when they first met; he had continued to be friendly through the last day and a half; and now he was surly. Growing more and more suspicious of him, Tanner returned to camp, watching for the young man to follow behind. When Little Clear Sky finally appeared, he was wearing all his ornaments as if dressed for war. He strode into their camp, grandly settled himself by the fire, and sat there silent and erect, observing Tanner. But in time he spoke up, and soon he was talking in his friendly way again. By and by, he asked Tanner for his knife so he could cut a piece of tobacco.
Asked for his knife. That raised the hair on Tanner’s neck. Yet, determined to conceal his rising suspicions, he decided to give it to him. Slowly easing the knife out of his belt, he set it on the ground between them. He was curious to see what the young man would do next. Little Clear Sky took his time using it and then, feigning absentmindedness, slipped it into his own belt. Now Tanner felt certain that this man was his enemy, though what his motive or plan might be was still a blank. Rather than challenge him right then, he decided to give his adversary more time. Perhaps he will return it to me in the morning, he thought.
As night fell, the woman and girls retired to their shelter, but Little Clear Sky made no move to prepare his own camp bed. Tanner finally lay down by the fire with a blanket, making his bed where he could keep an eye on his enemy. In the glow of the fire, he could tell that the young man remained wide awake, his eyes watchful. As the mosquitoes were bothersome, Little Clear Sky continued to stoke their smudge fire, using its smoke to get relief from the mosquitoes. Occasionally he took a pine bough and waved it over the embers like a fan, pushing the smoke in Tanner’s direction, an incongruous act of kindness for an enemy, it seemed to Tanner, as if Little Clear Sky were doing him an honor before moving to attack him. After a while it began to rain. Tanner suggested that Little Clear Sky might lie down next to him and share his blanket. Little Clear Sky declined, even as thunder sounded in the distance and the drub of raindrops began to quicken. Gathering more wood, Little Clear Sky kept feeding the fire as the thunderstorm broke. Once, after an especially loud thunderclap made him jump, he threw a pinch of tobacco into the fire for an offering. All through the downpour Little Clear Sky kept his vigil, while Tanner lay with the blanket pulled over his head save for a little fold through which he watched his adversary’s every move. Neither one slept all night.
In the morning, Little Clear Sky ate with the family and then abruptly pushed off in his canoe while the others were still packing up. Tanner did not get his knife back. When Tanner’s family was ready to go, the older daughter refused to get in the canoe. She seemed afraid but would not say why. Red Sky of the Morning soothed her and, as Tanner later thought, tried to keep him from paying much attention to her. At last she got into the canoe, and they set out.
Little Clear Sky was not far ahead of them on the river. They saw him at a distance each time they rounded a bend. But about midmorning they came upon a set of rapids where Tanner was surprised not to see him anywhere in view, for he would have had to paddle very hard to get through the rapids and around the next bend so quickly. The river being about eighty yards wide at that point, the only way through the rapids was to steer to one side within about ten yards of the riverbank. Before starting up this channel, Tanner took off his leather frock and put it between his knees.8
Halfway through the rapids, he heard the discharge of a gun and the whistle of a ball passing his head. He felt a ping on his right shoulder, and in the next instant realized that the paddle had slipped from his hand. His right arm hung limp at his side. A cloud of smoke rose, and there at the river’s edge was Little Clear Sky scurrying through the brush. Glancing down, Tanner saw blood splattered all over the frock balled between his knees. His daughters were screaming as they and their mother clambered out of the canoe. The canoe turned sideways in the rapids and was thrown against a rock outcrop in the middle of the stream. Alone in the canoe now, Tanner clung to the gunwale with his good left hand then tumbled out into the rushing water. He tried to pull the canoe with him onto the slanting rock, but the current was too strong. Grabbing his gun instead, he let the canoe slip from his grasp and crawled onto the slab of rock. Lying on his back next to the rushing current, he attempted to load his gun one-handed but quickly fainted from the effort. When he came to a minute or two later, his daughters and Red Sky of the Morning were back in the canoe, only now a considerable distance downstream from where he lay. He cried out to them, but his cry was drowned in the din of the rapids. They drifted with the current around the bend and were gone from view.9
Tanner took stock of his situation. His enemy was probably hiding in the dense brush somewhere along the riverbank, watching him, waiting to see if he would die. Probing his wounds, Tanner found that the ball had smashed clear through his arm and entered his breast just below the armpit, lodging somewhere very near his lung. Believing the wound to be mortal, he called out to Little Clear Sky to spare him further agony and finish what he had begun. “Come, if you are a man, and shoot me again!” he cried. As there was no answer, and as he was too weak to move from his rock in the middle of the river, he could only lie on his back in the hot sun and await death. Soon the blood-sucking flies swarmed around him, buzzing and biting.10
Late in the afternoon his strength began to return. He slipped into the river and swam across the channel, paddling with his gun and one good arm. Reaching the shore, he stood and let out a war whoop in defiance of his enemy, then he found a spot in the woods where he could see across the river and watch for him. After a while he saw his foe dragging his canoe down to the riverbank. Evidently, Little Clear Sky had lost sight of him and did not know he was now himself being watched. It was surprising, considering the care he had taken to prepare the ambush. Tanner watched Little Clear Sky put his canoe in the water and begin descending the river, aiming to p
ass right by Tanner’s hiding place. At this point, Tanner sorely regretted having allowed his enemy to keep his knife the night before. He could not shoot him, because in crossing the river he had failed to keep his powder dry. And though he longed to leap out and club him with his gun, he knew he was too weak. So Little Clear Sky got away.11
As evening came on, Tanner resolved to treat his wounds. He tore what clothing he had into strips. Then, using his teeth and left hand, he wrapped this makeshift bandaging loosely around his right arm. He then set the broken bones in his arm as best he could and cinched up the bandage to hold them in place. Next, he broke off small tree branches with which to fashion a splint and used a bit of cord to make a sling for his arm. Finally, he peeled bark from a chokecherry bush, chewed it into a wad, and used that to plug the hole in his side. His exertions had opened the wounds again and now, as he lay down to rest, he could see his blood all over the bushes and ground. I must lie still, he thought.12
He had begun to think he might survive his wounds after all. In the fading light, he prayed to the Great Spirit to pity him and ease his pain. As if in answer to his prayers, the swarming mosquitoes lifted and disappeared. Comforted by the thought that he was not alone, that the Great Spirit watched over him on his bed of moss, he drifted in and out of consciousness. But each time he fell asleep, he was awakened by the same dream: a trader’s canoe was approaching and he must call it to shore. Then, several hours into the night, he was roused not by this dream but by actual human voices. It seemed that his two daughters were crying in distress, though their calls were barely audible over the sound of the rapids. He imagined that they had escaped from their mother and returned to him in the night and that Little Clear Sky had pursued them and was just now discovering their hiding place. In his delirium he thought they were crying for help, as Little Clear Sky was about to butcher them. Yet he was too weak to call out or move. Their cries soon faded away.
Rainy Lake House Page 37
