During Harmon’s brief encounter with Tanner on July 9, 1801, he guessed Tanner’s age correctly at twenty years, and he observed the close bond between him and Net-no-kwa. He got the gist of Tanner’s background right, though he was wrong about specifics: he recorded that Tanner had been taken captive by Ojibwas and that he came from a farm in the Illinois country. As Tanner would not speak a word of English, Harmon conversed with him through the interpreter. Tanner was reticent on the subject of his white relations and fidgeted when the traders called attention to his race. Indeed, with his long hair falling over his shoulders and the whiskers on his chin plucked clean away, Tanner looked almost completely Indian except for the color of his skin.9
As Tanner emerged from his mother’s shadow, fur traders sometimes questioned him about his race and background. The following spring, a Hudson’s Bay Company officer offered to take him to England. The identity of this trader is not known, but it would appear his motive was partly exploitative and partly philanthropic; he suggested that Tanner might tour his country and then return with him to North America. Tanner declined the offer, but he did consider it long enough to weigh his alternatives. He felt strong attachments to both the hunting way of life and his Indian mother, and he was not prepared to abandon either one. Moreover, he harbored the thought of someday seeking out his white relatives, if any still survived. With his distrust of traders, he feared the fellow might abandon him in England. He had a good enough grasp of world geography to know how calamitous that would be.10
A few months after that encounter, Tanner received another offer. This one came from Hugh McGillis, a wintering partner in the North West Company. McGillis and Tanner became acquainted in the course of several visits the hunter made to the Red Deer River trading house in the winter of 1801–2. McGillis valued Tanner’s productivity and inferred from his appearance that he was a white man who had lived among the Indians most of his life. Once, when Tanner came to the Red Deer River post without Net-no-kwa, McGillis took the opportunity to invite Tanner to live in the trading house and become an employee of the company. Knowing of Tanner’s personal attachments, he urged him to leave the Indians and reclaim his white heritage. Again, Tanner was ambivalent. Joining McGillis could be just the first step on the road to repatriation. It would afford him a chance to recover his native tongue and prepare his return to the United States. But he did not think about it for long. Reckoning that he would find the drudgery and confinement of life in the fort intolerable, he decided that he preferred being a hunter.11
As Tanner confronted the choice of living either as Indian or white, his ambivalence was compounded by his dawning sexuality. At the age of twenty-one he was tall, handsome, and sexually reserved. By conscious choice, he put aside all thoughts of sex with Indian girls whom he met. In his understanding of Ottawa-Ojibwa culture, when two young people had sex they were bound to marry. Marriage was not necessarily a lifelong commitment, but sexual partners were nonetheless expected to form a stable union. Although there was no shame in two young people coming together by their own volition, the preferred pattern was for parents to select their children’s first marriage partner. Whenever he did think about sex in these terms, he imagined that he would hold off and eventually marry a white woman.12
Net-no-kwa had other plans for him, however. One day she took him aside and said she had found him a match. Her candidate was the young daughter of an old Ottawa chief, Wa-ge-tote. They had already been living with Wa-ge-tote’s band for two months, but until then Tanner had paid little attention to the girl. Net-no-kwa advised her son that she was getting old and it was time that he took a wife to make his moccasins, dress his skins, and attend to his lodge. Wa-ge-tote, she disclosed, had consented to the marriage. Wa-ge-tote was a strong, capable, virtuous man and would make a good ally for their family. When Tanner balked at her plan she was insistent, saying that she had already obtained Wa-ge-tote’s assurance that his daughter was willing. When Tanner still declined, she announced that he really must agree to it, as she and Wa-ge-tote had already settled the matter; the girl would be brought to his lodge that evening. Tanner was obstinate: in that event, he would refuse to sleep with her. Grabbing his gun, he announced that he was going hunting. He stayed out all day and returned late in the evening with the meat of a bull elk. Taking his time to hang the meat outside his lodge, he strained to hear if the girl waited for him inside. He had already made up his mind to sleep somewhere else should he find her there. But his bed was empty.
The next day Wa-ge-tote’s band prepared to depart for another hunting ground, as previously planned. Before they set out, Wa-ge-tote came to Tanner’s lodge. Cheerfully making a little conversation, he made no mention of his daughter. For the record, it appeared, the old chief took no offense at Tanner’s refusal of his daughter. Net-no-kwa, however, was disappointed and embarrassed for her son, and she stayed at a distance during the men’s exchange.13
Wa-ge-tote’s discretion in the matter was probably more apparent than real, for word soon got around among the western Ojibwas of Tanner’s reluctance to take a wife. In the middle of winter, a solitary man walked into Tanner’s camp. His name was Ozaw-wen-dib, and he was one the Ojibwas called an agokwa, a person with two spirits. He had the body and dress of a man, yet the posture, movement, and speech of a woman. The Ojibwas revered such people, perceiving them as conjoined male and female personalities sharing one body. Regarded as neither man nor woman, agokwas had the perspective of both genders and could see things men and women could not. They had more powerful dreams than ordinary people. They were noted, too, as hard workers, with skill-sets spanning both gender roles. Ozaw-wen-dib exemplified the agokwa’s exalted status and versatility. The son of a celebrated war chief, he was himself a renowned warrior as well as a valued homemaker. He had shown rare courage in fighting the Sioux and was known as the fastest runner among the western Ojibwas. Yet whenever he took a husband (and he had had many) he proved to be as proficient and industrious in the female arts as any wife. Soon after his arrival in Tanner’s camp, Ozaw-wen-dib announced his purpose: he had traveled many days to find the young white chief in the hopes of joining his lodge.14
Tanner accepted Ozaw-wen-dib into his lodge; however, he stubbornly refused the agokwa’s frequent sexual advances. Among the Ojibwas, as among many Indian tribes, sex between a man and an agokwa was accepted on the basis that the agokwa was deemed to be of a different gender, whereas sex between two men or between two agokwas was taboo. Nevertheless, whenever Ozaw-wen-dib offered himself, Tanner declined. In time he became so uncomfortable that he could barely speak to the agokwa. Net-no-kwa laughed at her son’s squeamishness; she encouraged Ozaw-wen-dib to stay and persist in his sexual overtures. But Ozaw-wen-dib soon grew weary of this awkwardness and left. A few weeks later, Tanner and his group visited the camp of Wa-ge-tote, where they found Ozaw-wen-dib living with the old chief and his two wives. Tanner heard sniggering around the camp concerning Wa-ge-tote’s new marital arrangements, but as was customary in Indian culture the gibes were directed at the man, not the agokwa. Tanner felt relieved that Ozaw-wen-dib had entered into a new marriage.15
A year later, an old medicine man came to Tanner with his fifteen-year-old granddaughter and the girl’s parents. Tanner thought the girl was pretty, but before he had time to give their proposal much thought Net-no-kwa advised him against it. Divining that the girl had something fatally wrong with her, she urged her son to leave on a hunt and be gone for several days until the family wearied of waiting for him or accepted his absence as a sign of disinterest. This time, Tanner followed Net-no-kwa’s advice. When the girl did indeed sicken and die later that year, he praised his mother’s intuition.16
But Tanner had long since decided that in matters of the heart he would not necessarily conform to his mother’s wishes.
One summer evening, standing by his lodge, he allowed his eyes to fall on a beautiful young woman who was idly wandering about smoking a pipe. To gaze so intently on a young pe
rson of the opposite sex was not customary, Tanner knew. Presently she sidled up to him and asked if he would like to share her smoke. He took her pipe and puffed a little, ruminating on his first taste of tobacco. They stood there talking for a long time. Tanner found he enjoyed everything about her—her cheekiness, her sensuality, the soft sound of her voice. Indeed, after they parted he could hardly get her out of his mind.
In the following days, he sought her out around the village. At first he kept their encounters brief to avoid arousing the village gossips. And he did not say a word to Net-no-kwa. But as the two became intimate, he could no longer contain himself. Wearing his ornaments and playing his flute as he sauntered about, he was as obvious as a dancing woodcock. If Net-no-kwa needed proof of what was happening, it came one night when her son crept into the lodge just before dawn. He had barely settled down to sleep when she woke him with a stern rapping on his feet. “Up, young man, you who are about to take yourself a wife,” she exclaimed. Since he was about to marry, she announced, he must impress his bride by bringing home a large kill of fresh meat. Without answering, Tanner got dressed, took his gun, and shambled out. In spite of his ardor, he was still not inclined to marry. But his spirits rose after he found and killed a large moose. While he was away, Net-no-kwa met with the girl’s parents. When he returned, he found his young lover sitting demurely inside his lodge, gazing at the floor. He stopped at the door, hesitating to enter, until Net-no-kwa barked at him to go on in.17
Her name was Mis-kwa-bun-o-kwa, or Red Sky of the Morning. It was an apt name for the young woman who finally overcame Tanner’s shyness about sex. Unfortunately, little else is known about her. For when Tanner gave an account of his life some twenty-five years later he practically cut her out of his story, so hurtful was her memory. In their five years of marriage, she bore him one son and two daughters.
12
Warrior
In the summer of 1804, Tanner chose to join a war party against the Sioux. The Ojibwas and their Ottawa allies had been at war with the Sioux for upwards of three generations. After the British claimed sovereignty over the area from the French, British fur traders tried to get the Ojibwas and the Sioux to make peace, for the fur traders saw intertribal wars as a distraction from the business of hunting furs. Viewing Indian warfare from an economic perspective, the traders assumed that the Ojibwas and the Sioux fought over hunting territory and access to European trading posts. It was easy for the traders to conclude that the two Indian nations competed over land and resources much the way France and Britain did. The whole disputed area ran along the margin between eastern woodland and western prairie, where the unique blend of habitats produced an exceptional abundance and diversity of animals, including beaver, bison, and deer. If only the tribes would cease fighting, the traders believed, Indian hunters would be free to enter those rich beaver grounds that lay in the no-man’s-land between their warring nations.1
The traders had little success in ending the conflict. The fact that the Ojibwas and the Sioux faced off where woodland met prairie may have had less to do with fur-trade interests than it did with the balance of forces between the two tribes. The Ojibwas were better supplied with guns from the north and east, the Sioux with horses from the south and west. In the woodland environment the Ojibwas prevailed with superior numbers and firepower, but wherever they pushed too far out on the prairie the superior mobility of the Sioux gave that nation the edge.2
Year after year, the Ojibwas and the Sioux formed war parties to harass and kill each other. The war parties might number a dozen, a few score, or more than a hundred men. On occasion they might be satisfied to shed the blood of just one or two of the enemy; or, conversely, they might fall upon a village and massacre men, women, and children. What the fur traders failed to understand about Indian warfare was that it answered cultural needs as well as economic objectives. It strengthened group identity, raised the status of chiefs, and gave men an opportunity to prove their mettle. For Tanner, war was a profoundly socializing experience. Perhaps as much as hunting or marriage, war formed a crucial part of his induction into tribal society.3
As this was Tanner’s first war party, he went through various rites of initiation for a young warrior. Each morning, he had to paint his face black. At night, he was required to sleep at one end of the camp with the other black-faced young warriors. He had to lie on one side with his face to the east to show the Great Spirit that he hoped to return home safely, and he had to remain stock-still like that all night long. As they traveled, it was necessary to walk his horse in the footsteps of a veteran. On the march he was not allowed to eat or drink or stop for a rest; if compelled to stop for any reason, he must face east and pray to the Great Spirit. He could not share his knife or drinking bowl with anyone, nor could anyone even touch those items. He could not scratch himself with bare fingers but must use a twig and then toss it away.4
After gathering in the Red River valley, the war party journeyed westward for several days through present-day North Dakota. On the hot, dry prairie, a major concern was finding water. As Tanner had a horse, he was selected to be among the scouts. One day they spotted a single Indian, who fled as soon as he was seen, confirming in everyone’s minds that he was an enemy scout. But if there was an enemy war party in the neighborhood, they failed to find it. After a few more days’ march, the party became parched with thirst. Wracked with dissension, it finally broke up. Tanner, with his brother Wa-me-gon-a-biew and three other men, split off and found their own way home.5
The following summer, a war party of about 300 Sioux fell upon a small band of Ojibwas encamped within a few miles of Alexander Henry’s trading post on the Red River. The first Ojibwa to fall in the attack was the chief, who also happened to be Henry’s father-in-law. Unaware that the Sioux had sneaked up on the camp during the night, this man climbed a tree to look for buffalo first thing in the morning and was struck by two arrows from below. He shouted an alarm as he fell, and in the next moment his companions heard a thunder of hooves as the main body of the Sioux war party charged the camp on their horses. The Ojibwas sprang from their tents, the men shooting their guns as the women and children attempted to flee on foot to the nearby woods. But the mounted Sioux quickly overran the camp and caught up with all but a few of them. About a dozen men, women, and children were slaughtered. One man and two women escaped into the thick woods, where the horses could not pursue, while four children were taken captive. One twelve-year-old boy survived by hiding in a patch of willows.6
The next day this young survivor made his way to Henry’s trading house. Henry was not there, but the clerk in charge formed a burial detail. Accompanying the boy back to the site, they found a horrible scene. The corpses were pierced with arrows and hacked to pieces. The chief’s head was severed from his body, the scalp lifted off, and the top of the skull removed. His arms and legs were cut off and his torso disemboweled. His severed penis was stuffed in his dead wife’s mouth. The wife’s body was also cut to pieces and her genitals mutilated. The bodies of her small children were dismembered and the limbs thrown in all directions. The other victims’ bodies were found wherever they had fallen, and those, too, were horribly desecrated.7
Runners took the news of the massacre to several hundred Indians encamped at the Forks and up the Assiniboine River. Tanner and his group were drying a large quantity of buffalo meat on a sunjegwun, or scaffold, when a messenger arrived in their camp. Dropping their work, they hastened to Pembina, where they found many Ojibwa already gathered, mourning the deaths of their kinfolk and preparing for war. Such a mass display of grief was among the tribe’s most effective ways of raising a war party. By tribal custom, relatives of the victims were required to mourn the dead for one year; however, the period of mourning might also be concluded by taking a relic of the deceased to war and smearing it with the blood of the enemy.8
Alexander Henry arrived with his outfit a month after the massacre, on August 2. On his arrival, the Indians broke into fresh la
mentations. Henry gave them a nine-gallon keg of gun powder and 100 pounds of balls and encouraged them to revenge the death of his father-in-law and family. The chiefs approved of Henry’s gift, telling him he showed almost as much sense as an Indian. If only he would open a few kegs of rum, they added, then he would be fully as wise as they were. Henry remained at Pembina for a week, then headed back to Lake Winnipeg. Meanwhile, the gathering of Indians continued to grow until finally, toward the end of summer, a war party of 400 started out on the trail of the enemy.9
It was a multinational force that went against the Sioux. Besides about 200 Ojibwas, there were perhaps 100 Assiniboines and a smaller number of Ottawas and Crees. The war party included many chiefs. The chief of the Ottawas was none other than Pe-shau-ba—the same man who had taken Tanner’s family under his wing when they first came west. To keep such a large, composite force together was impossible. On the second day out, about half the Ojibwas deserted. The next night, most of the Assiniboines stole away with a large part of the horses. Four of those horses belonged to Tanner. Tanner appealed to Pe-shau-ba, asking permission to take some of his Ottawa friends and go in pursuit. But the old chief would not allow it, foreseeing that it would lead to more dissension and could break up the expedition. Desertions were rampant anyway. Bad omens abounded. The party came upon a dead man laid on a scaffold in a tree; the retreating Sioux had made a hasty burial. Some of the men pulled down the corpse and started to desecrate it, while others insisted it should be left alone; a scuffle broke out that left everyone feeling uneasy. By the time they reached Lake Traverse, they were reduced to 120 men.10
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