Back at the American Fur Company post on the Rainy River, Cȏté wondered what had become of Tanner and Veiage. He figured either they had perished or they had gone to hunt buffalo. At last he sent eight men to look for them. This relief party found Tanner and Veiage shortly after they had departed from Oto-pun-ne-be’s lodge. As they were many miles from the post and low on food, Tanner proposed that they go to the buffalo grounds. The others agreed to it. There, they killed several buffalo, ate copiously of the fresh meat, and regained their strength. Being at last well-provisioned, they were able to complete their mission of searching out Indians and trading goods for furs. Winter was more than half over when they returned to the post, Tanner’s dogsled loaded high with peltries.7
Although the load weighed in at 600 pounds, Cȏté fumed over what a lousy return it was on the value of goods they had started with. For this, he blamed Tanner for refusing to include whiskey in the outfit. He also groused because the men had eaten one of the company’s dogs to get through their ordeal. Even though they had decided as a group to consume the animal, Cȏté made a point of charging ten dollars to Tanner’s personal account to cover it. And, finally, he ordered the men to make a second run en dérouine, insisting that they take a supply of whiskey this time to ensure a better return. Under Cȏté’s bullying, Tanner acquiesced and accepted whiskey in the second outfit. As much as he resisted plying the Indians with liquor, he dared not give Cȏté any grounds for cheating him out of his year’s pay. He even agreed to lead the party to Lake of the Woods to trade with the very Indians whom he had once counted as his friends. And, to everyone’s chagrin, the whiskey did smooth their way with the Indians. In short order, they returned to the post with twice as many furs as they had obtained the first time out. Tanner felt ashamed by what he had done, and he told Cȏté he would never consent to the same thing again.8
The hand-wringing and hypocrisy that marked this outfit’s trafficking of liquor to the Indians was no isolated affair. The issue played out across the whole northern frontier that season, causing consternation among governing officials in both Detroit and Washington. With the United States deploying customs agents along the northern border in the winter of 1822–23, it raised the question of whether the US government truly intended to suppress the flow of liquor into Indian country as Congress had long said it would do. Americans who were engaged in the Indian trade west of Lake Superior worried that the new customs agents might, in fact, work to the disadvantage of their own countrymen if they tried to enforce the prohibition against liquor trafficking. So the traders went on the offensive, claiming that the Hudson’s Bay Company continued to supply ardent spirits to the Indians; therefore, they must be permitted to do the same or else abandon the field to the British. Governor Cass of Michigan heard the traders’ pleas and came to their defense. In spite of his compunctions about the liquor trafficking, he had to weigh the Indians’ welfare against the national interest in securing the Indian trade along the northern frontier with Britain. In June 1823, he wrote to the US Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, “You are therefore authorized to permit the introduction of whiskey in such limited quantities as you may think circumstances will justify, into the Indian [country] on our boundary west of Lake Superior, and adjoining the trading posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”9
The liquor trade may have been the main point of friction between Tanner and Cȏté, but it was not the only one. The two men formed such a mutual dislike that Tanner spent little time at the trading post all that winter and spring. If he was not running en dérouine, then Cȏté usually sent him off to fish or hunt for several days at a time. In eight months, he spent barely a dozen nights under the same roof with his superior.10
At last the day came when Cȏté and his men loaded their many packs of furs into canoes and started for Mackinac, leaving Tanner to his own resources. Under the terms of his contract, he was now free to make his way to Red River. First, however, he needed to construct a small canoe and replenish his stock of moccasins. Cȏté had been such a hard taskmaster that Tanner had had no time for those preparations. When he was finally ready to go, the trees were leafing out and the days were turning warm.11
40
Children of the Fur Trade
In the years since his divorce from Red Sky of the Morning, Tanner had had little contact with his three older children. He and his first wife had separated into different bands, and the children had gone with their mother. His son and two daughters were about eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen years of age in 1823. Over the years Tanner had maintained some slight connection with them, but that was all. To obtain custody over these three children after his long separation from them posed an altogether different challenge from the one he had faced with Therezia and his younger set of children.
He had two alternatives. He could go straight to his estranged wife and children and the chiefs of their band and present himself as an Indian, submitting his claim to tribal law. Or he could go to the Hudson’s Bay fort and appeal to the whites, thereby elevating his case to the level of a dispute between nations. By taking the latter course, he would be identifying himself as a white man and clearly repositioning himself outside the Ojibwa nation. The break with the Indians would be irrevocable. Nevertheless, that is what he chose to do. Perhaps the choice meant nothing more than his doing whatever was necessary or expedient to reclaim his children. But that seems unlikely. He was not naïve about the consequences. Rather, it seems his choice had a harder edge to it.
As Tanner well knew, the Hudson’s Bay men were no strangers to the problem of reclaiming mixed-blood children from the Indians. Most company officers had mixed-blood children of their own. Like Tanner himself, many of them had children by more than one native wife, or had been through long periods of separation from their country-born children, or had allowed their sons and daughters to be absorbed into Indian bands. The crucial difference between his situation and that of so many Hudson’s Bay fathers was that he had lived among the Indians as an Indian, not at the posts. He no doubt knew that the Hudson’s Bay men had their own concerns about the rights and responsibilities of paternity in Indian country. What he could not have known, however, was that the ground for fur-trader fathers was shifting right beneath his feet.
By the early 1820s, fur traders’ mixed-blood offspring were numerous. So numerous, historian Jennifer S. H. Brown has written, that they “could no longer be assimilated into the scattered Indian population, absorbed within company employ, or simply shipped en masse to Britain or Canada.” Fur traders had long wrestled with the problem of “placing” their offspring. Their private struggles ranged from the basic question of who had guardianship over the children, to the largely financial matter of how to give them a formal education, to the more philosophical issue of whether these children should ultimately be directed toward the culture of their native mothers or their European fathers. As Brown revealed in her seminal work, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country, fur traders and their country-born wives formed several different family patterns to cope with these dilemmas. The patterns varied according to whether the father worked for the Hudson’s Bay or the North West, whether he was an officer or servant (or, in the case of the North West, bourgeois or engagé), whether the mother was native or mixed blood, and whether the child was male or female. Family patterns changed over time, too. The merger of the companies in 1821 formed a watershed, according to Brown, because the reorganized Hudson’s Bay Company acquired the status of a de facto colonial government and began to address these issues more fulsomely. Nowhere was this more the case than at Red River, where many interracial families went to retire.1
There were now two distinct populations of interracial families inhabiting the Red River valley. One was the Métis, who were predominantly French-speaking, Roman Catholic, and committed to a hunting and fishing way of life. The other group was primarily composed of retired Hudson’s Bay men and their Indian wives and children. These families were p
redominantly English-speaking, Protestant, and oriented toward a farming way of life. The Métis lived to the south and west of the Forks; the English-speaking families lived to the north. The progeny of the latter group were termed “country-born” to distinguish them from Métis.2
With its large number of mixed-blood children, Red River provided an attractive setting for missionary work. The Jesuits arrived in 1818 and naturally gravitated to the Métis. An Anglican mission was established under Hudson’s Bay Company auspices two years later for the benefit of the English speakers. The first Anglican missionary, John West, was fundamentally interested in converting Indians as well as providing Christian services to the faithful. But he soon recognized that he could not bring Christianity to the Indians without first raising them from a state of savagery. Therefore, his program centered on taking Indian children from their parents and educating them in a boarding school. It was a strategy that would soon underpin missionary work among the Indians all across North America.3
The Reverend West opened a boarding school for Indian children at the same time that he started a day school for the settlers’ children. As winter set in, he persuaded Be-gwais, the chief of the Red River Ojibwas, to enroll his nephew in the boarding school, with the expectation that the boy would remain there until the family returned for him in the spring. After just a week, however, the boy’s mother missed her son and came back. West allowed the boy to go to his mother each night and return to school each day. But after a week of this arrangement, his star pupil ran away for good. West made the mother give back the suit of clothes he had provided to the boy, lest other Indians get the idea that they could enroll their children temporarily merely to have them clothed. A rather small incident by itself, it pointed to the conflict between school and home that would plague thousands of Indian families over the coming century.4
There were other harbingers of change in the Red River valley. From uncertain beginnings, the colony was taking root as a permanent agricultural settlement. The Nor’ Westers and their allies had opposed the colony mainly on the grounds that agricultural settlement would displace the Indians and Métis, wipe out the game, and destroy the fur trade. After the merger, the Hudson’s Bay Company had the paradoxical task of governing the Red River valley so as to support both the fur trade and the colonization program that would eventually lead to its undoing. To protect the former, it revoked the Selkirk land grant and reinstated the company’s monopoly on trade, making it illegal for settlers to hunt, trap, and barter furs. At the same time, it kept faith with Selkirk’s vision of establishing a community where Hudson’s Bay men could retire with their families. Each new family would receive twenty to twenty-five acres of land, plus an allotment of seed, tools, and ammunition upon arrival. Besides being afforded religious instruction and education for their children, the settlers would have police protection, a magistrate, and a new governor. The company directors also envisioned founding a children’s home at Red River to accommodate the many “orphans” at the posts who had been abandoned by their fathers.5
Tanner returned to Red River knowing nothing about these budding institutions. As he paddled up the river he could see there were many more settlers’ homes built since the time he had left, but Fort Douglas, now Fort Garry, still rose on the grassy bluff below the Forks and several buffalo-hide tepees stood nearby as before. Making his way to the fort, he introduced himself to the chief factor, explaining his errand and presenting his letters of reference from Governor Clark and the late Lord Selkirk. But the factor, after perusing these documents, stated flatly that he was not interested in helping him. He did not offer a reason, but Tanner surmised that he simply could not be bothered, as he would soon be departing for Hudson Bay. After their meeting Tanner was standing outside the fort, somewhat at a loss over where to turn next, when a man hailed him from the Métis encampment. The man turned out to be Charles Brousse, the Métis interpreter who had befriended him several years before. Brousse invited him into his lodge, where Tanner learned that the colony had a new governor. Governor and factor hated each other, Brousse shrewdly observed. If the factor refused to help him, the governor likely would.6
Tanner went the next day to the governor’s house, which, like the factor’s, stood inside the walls of the fort. The governor, whose name was Andrew Bulger, gave him a friendly reception, particularly upon hearing how the factor had turned him out of the fort the previous night. Despite his cordial manner, he had a stiff, military bearing. Some ten years younger than Tanner, he introduced himself using his former army rank of captain rather than his present title of governor. He invited Tanner to come into his house and dine with him, and he offered him a room for the duration of his visit. As Tanner explained his business, he got a feeling that this man already knew much about him and had learned of his arrival at Red River and his purpose there even before he came to his door. Tanner explained that he intended to go by himself to find his children, but he hoped that Captain Bulger would support his effort to reclaim them if it became necessary. The governor indicated that he would.
Next, Tanner inquired with some Indians at the fort about his children’s whereabouts. They told him that his children were with a band of Ojibwas encamped at Prairie Portage. But they also warned him that the Ojibwas were aware of his arrival and his purpose. They said that some of the men in the band had threatened to kill him if he tried to take away the children. Undeterred, he left for Prairie Portage without further delay.7
As he came into the encampment he tried to show the men that he was not afraid of them and that he meant no harm. He only wanted to see his children. He experienced no hostility at first; the chief of this band invited him into his lodge and told him where he could find his former wife and daughters.8
Tanner’s Narrative gives only a vague impression of how it went when he was reunited with his children. The two teenage girls appeared pleased. Most likely they were reserved. At least two years had passed since their last encounter with their father, maybe more. The girls were now of an age to be changing fast, both physically and emotionally. No doubt they were aware, as others in the band were aware, that their white father had returned from afar to see them, and probably they were privy to the rumor that he wanted to take them away. So their feelings at seeing their father must have been mixed.
The son, his firstborn child, was almost a man now. As Tanner considered the three children’s future, he saw that this one was so grown up and accustomed to an Indian’s life it would be folly to take him to Mackinac. The boy was too old to register in school, and he would surely detest the white man’s system of working for wages. So the father had to admit that the son must take his own path, and it seems that they now kept aloof from each other.
And how did it go between him and Red Sky of the Morning? On their reunion the Narrative is brief to the point of obfuscation. The mother of these children was now an old woman. When Tanner related these more recent events in his life, he would not even utter his ex-wife’s name, much less describe any feelings he had for her, or she for him. One imagines Red Sky of the Morning as being very much on guard, knowing that her ex-husband had come for the children. Tanner was as coy with her as he was with the rest of the band, determined not to reveal his intentions until the opportune time. And yet, as he took up his former place in his children’s lodge, he must have made some sort of effort to reengage with his former wife. There must have been at least a tentative beating in his heart, for he had come all this way to get his children by her, and he longed so desperately for the bonds of family.
After a few days, Tanner learned who it was in this band who was threatening to kill him. He discovered his old rival, Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo, lived in the village. Though Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo and Red Sky of the Morning had long since parted company, the fellow still had it in for him. At length when the two came face to face, Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo warned him he must leave the village or he would be killed. Tanner was defiant, recalling their past confrontation and taunting him
. “If you had been a man, you would have killed me long ago, instead of now threatening me. I have no fear of you.” Tanner’s warrior pose kept his old rival at bay. Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo tried to provoke him into declaring what he wanted to do with his children, but Tanner refused to answer him, for he could see that until he verbalized his intentions the chief would make no move against him.9
Tanner waited until the band moved camp from Prairie Portage to Fort Garry. Only then, in the protection of the fort, did he announce that he wanted to have his children back. As he had suspected might happen, the chief and all the principal hunters rejected his demand. So Tanner went to Captain Bulger, who, true to his word, came to his aid. Bulger sent his interpreter, Brousse, with a message that the Indians bring the children into the fort.
The children entered the fort accompanied by a dozen other members of the band, and everyone stood in a group outside the governor’s house, three or four adults surrounding each child. Bulger asked Tanner to identify his son and two daughters; then he sent one of his guards into the house to get the children a bite to eat. The guard returned with a half-eaten loaf of bread from Bulger’s own table, which he attempted to hand directly to one of Tanner’s children. As Tanner could plainly see, Bulger’s gesture was a breach of protocol and an insult to the Indians, for it suggested that the Hudson’s Bay men thought of the adult Indians as no better than children. A man angrily snatched the bread away, tore it into pieces, and pointedly distributed the morsels to all of the other adults, leaving none for Tanner’s children. Bulger then had the storehouse unlocked, telling Tanner to go inside and get something else for them. Tanner went in and found some bags of pemmican, opened one, and brought out several pounds of it. Following native protocol this time, he invited all the Ojibwa to sit down and offered a piece of pemmican to each person. When everyone had eaten, Bulger appealed to them to hand the children to their father, but the Indians still refused.10
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