Rainy Lake House

by Theodore Catton

  In fact, the girls and their mother did come back that night but not for the reason he imagined. Moments after the ambush, when Tanner was briefly unconscious and seemingly about to die, Red Sky of the Morning had steered the canoe to the edge of the river and thrown all of his clothes and possessions into the bushes. Later, worried that his blood-soaked frock might catch the eye of a trader or voyageur in a passing canoe, she had reconsidered and paddled back upstream to dispose of the incriminating articles better. When she and her daughters arrived back at the place, the girls began to keen for their father, imagining that he was dead. Though they were a few hundred yards below where Tanner lay, that was the commotion he heard.13

  In the morning Tanner heard male voices and spotted a party of Hudson’s Bay men on the riverbank above the rapids. They had just finished breakfast and were pushing off again. He recognized the canoe as that of Alexander Stewart, the chief factor at Fort William. This time of year, Tanner remembered, he would be traveling to York Factory, taking the voyageurs’ route to Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods. If he could ride in their canoe, they might overtake Red Sky of the Morning. Tanner waded out into the river to wave them down. As the voyageurs caught sight of him, they ceased paddling and gazed in astonishment at this naked and bloodied white man shouting to them in Ojibwa. As they made no move to turn his way, Tanner thought for a moment that they were going to pass by and leave him there. Finally, his tongue found a few words of English, and he called to Mr. Stewart by name. Instantly, the voyageurs plied their paddles and brought the canoe over to where he stood. Making a bed for him in the canoe, they took him onboard.

  Tanner insisted that before they proceeded they must examine the riverbank a little downstream, as he feared that his daughters had been murdered there. After this search turned up nothing, they were left to conclude that the girls had escaped with Red Sky of the Morning. As for Little Clear Sky, they decided to look for him in the Ojibwa encampment at Kettle Falls. Should they find him there, they would demand revenge to put this matter swiftly to rest. And since Tanner would not be able to avenge himself, they would attempt to put the man to death themselves.

  Approaching the encampment, Stewart directed Tanner to lie hidden in the canoe while he and his interpreter made inquiries. Stewart then went to the chief, Waw-wish-e-gah-bo, and asked him if he had any recent news of the man they knew as the Long Knife. Waw-wish-e-gah-bo claimed to know nothing. Stewart called every man in the encampment forward and gave them some tobacco. Then he directed Tanner to stand up in the canoe and reveal himself. They all knew, declared Stewart, that the chief’s own brother, Ome-zhuh-gwut-oons, had attempted to kill the Long Knife. Stewart wanted the men in this band to see for themselves how gravely Tanner was wounded. His point was that if Tanner should die, then this band would be held responsible. And then the traders would be back, demanding blood for blood.14

  At the next stop on their journey, Tanner asked Stewart to examine his wounds. Looking him over, Stewart confirmed that all the damage had been caused by a single ball. (Tanner was sure he had heard another ball zing past his head, so Little Clear Sky must have packed a double charge in his gun.) That single ball had passed all the way through Tanner’s breast muscle and lodged next to the breastbone, coming to rest perhaps six inches from its point of entry in his side. Realizing that the ball must be removed or he would die, Tanner pleaded with Stewart to cut him open and get it out. Stewart, however, would not do it, so Tanner asked for a razor and proceeded to operate on himself with his one good hand. Making an incision just to the right of his breastbone, then feeling with finger and thumb, he pried loose the flattened ball and was relieved to find no fragments of rib bone with it. But he could not find the deer gut he had seen Little Clear Sky pack into the musket ball. He had to presume that this long piece of sinew, which he knew must be laced with medicines, now lay coiled in his breast. That meant he would have to wait for the wound to push it out as it healed. There was nothing to do but trust to luck that Little Clear Sky’s medicines would not kill him in the meantime. Still, despite that danger, he thought he had improved his chances considerably by getting the musket ball out.15

  42

  The Pardon

  While Tanner waited for rescue, Red Sky of the Morning was in flight with her daughters. She had nothing to fear from Little Clear Sky, as Tanner had first imagined; nor did she fear revenge from her former husband, for she presumed he was dead. Rather, she feared what the traders might do to her when they found his body. Surely the traders would suspect her involvement in the murder. By returning up the Maligne River to dispose of the blood-soaked clothing better, she had lost a whole night. And as most of their journey below the Maligne was on slack water through a chain of large lakes, she knew that her canoe was no match in speed against the many strong paddles of the traders’ canoes. When at last they entered the Rainy River, she and her daughters were physically and emotionally spent, and they still had the problem of how to slip past the trading house unseen. As they came into view of some Hudson’s Bay men on the riverbank, Red Sky of the Morning and her daughters broke down and practically surrendered themselves.

  The men took them to the fort, where they were placed under guard. Some of the men recognized them as Tanner’s wife and daughters, for they had seen them pass in the other direction with Tanner in his canoe only a week earlier. As the woman was now quite agitated and the girls were terrified, and as not one of them would give a satisfactory explanation for what had become of Tanner, the men suspected there had been a murder. So they insisted that the three remain at the fort until the next traders’ canoe arrived from the east, bringing news.

  A few hours later, when the Hudson’s Bay canoe carrying Tanner arrived at the landing, everyone was surprised to see the missing man himself onboard. Red Sky of the Morning was shocked to see that her husband was still alive. She panicked and tried to run into the woods with her daughters. She and the girls did not get far, however, before the men of the fort chased them down and hauled them back.1

  Once everyone was gathered inside the fort, Tanner and Red Sky of the Morning were made to face one another as though in a court of law. Tanner found he could barely bring himself to look at her. Almost numb standing there, he understood Stewart to say that the Hudson’s Bay people would leave it to him to say how the woman should be punished. He did not know how to respond to this. What came to mind was how he had called out to her after being shot and how she had left him there to expire on that rock in the middle of the rapids, to bleed and bleed under his attacker’s watchful eye. She must have helped to lay the ambush, he thought. He had no doubt she had wanted him to die.

  Besides Stewart, there was another Hudson’s Bay officer present at the proceeding, the fort trader, Simon McGillivray. Tanner did not know him; this was their first encounter. McLoughlin, the chief factor at Rainy Lake House, was away at Hudson Bay for the summer, so Stewart, as chief factor at Fort William, was the senior officer present. When Tanner did not respond to Stewart’s invitation to decide the woman’s punishment, the Hudson’s Bay officers began to discuss her fate among themselves. They said she was as guilty of the attempted murder as the young man, Little Clear Sky, for she had clearly put him up to it. Under English law, attempted murder normally drew the death penalty. As the woman was accessory to a capital crime, and they were far from a proper court of law, they suggested that everyone present agree that she was guilty of attempted murder and that they put her to death without further ado. The simplest and fastest way, which they proposed to Tanner, was that the fort’s servants take her outside and beat her to death.2

  Tanner finally spoke. No, he did not want her put to death. She was the mother of his children. What he wished was that she should be sent away from the fort, without provisions, and with the injunction never to return. She would never again see her daughters, for now they were his. Stewart stuck to his word and did as Tanner said. He told his men to escort the old woman out of the fort and run her off in
to the woods.3

  As far as the girls were concerned, no one wanted to press the issue of what they might have known about the murder plot beforehand. As they were Tanner’s dependents, the Hudson’s Bay men had no interest in punishing them. In any case, Tanner would need their help while he recovered from his wounds.

  Stewart left Tanner in the care of the chief trader, McGillivray. Mc­Gillivray gave Tanner and his daughters a room in the fort and a supply of food. The girls stayed with their father, cooked for him, and dressed his wounds. After a month went by, Major Joseph Delafield of the US Boundary Commission stopped at Rainy Lake House and left him additional supplies, including tea, sugar, clothes, and a tent. The American official found him recovering from his wounds with “no danger to apprehend but the mortification of the limb.” Tanner wanted to accompany the American commission back to the United States, but Delafield insisted that he was still too weak to travel.

  A few days after Delafield’s visit, Tanner reached a milestone on his long road to recovery. The deer gut had begun to waggle out of the purple hole in his arm where the musket ball had entered. In one determined stroke he pulled the whole nasty thing out. It was about five inches long, as thick as his finger, and greenish-black in color. He hoped that with the removal of this object his arm would finally start to heal. McGillivray was less sanguine; he thought Tanner’s wounds already looked and smelled gangrenous.4

  One day, without any explanation or notice, McGillivray ordered Tanner to vacate the fort. As soon as Tanner and his daughters were settled in their tent outside the stockade, the trader sent for the girls to come back into the fort. His ostensible reason was that they needed to be fed and cared for. Tanner firmly rejected this. He had received enough food from Delafield to feed himself and his daughters for several weeks, and he saw right through the trader’s ploy. He knew that his daughters would be required to sleep with the men. But McGillivray persisted, threatening to confiscate Tanner’s provisions unless he ordered his daughters to submit. At one point McGillivray even sent some men to take the girls by force. But Tanner was prepared for this, and on his cue the girls fled to a nearby farm. This farm, the only one in the area, belonged to a free man by the name of Vincent Roy. Over the preceding weeks the girls had befriended Old Roy’s granddaughters. With Old Roy vouching for their safety, they were finally persuaded to return to Rainy Lake House to care for their father. Fortunately, the God-fearing old Frenchman had some influence over McGillivray, because McGillivray had recently married his daughter.5

  For four and a half weeks, Tanner lay in his tent outside the fort. For part of that time he lay alone, deprived of his daughters’ comfort while they took refuge with Old Roy. He may well have wondered if he truly had his daughters’ affections or not. Though he had saved their mother from execution, they still had much to fear by staying with him near the fort. Even when his daughters returned and sat stoically at his bedside, he must have wondered if he had any friends at all outside the little shelter of their canvas-walled tent. He was in some such bleak reverie one morning when a man suddenly appeared at the door. It was his friend Charles Brousse, humbly asking him in the Ojibwa manner for permission to enter his lodge.

  Brousse explained that he had just arrived with a party of American ­soldier-explorers. He had brought a doctor with him who was waiting outside. This doctor wanted to inspect Tanner’s wounds and ask him some questions. Then, brimming with advice for his friend, Brousse crouched by the head of the cot and spoke to him confidentially. He must talk to the leader of this party, a man by the name of Major Long. Perhaps Major Long would make a place for Tanner and his daughters in his canoes and take them all to Mackinac.6

  43

  “We Met with an American”

  Stephen Long’s expedition arrived at Rainy Lake House early in the morning on August 31, 1823. Long would later write in his journal: “At the H. Bay Co.’s Fort we met with an American by the name of Tanner.” William Keating, who eventually prepared the official report from all of the expedition’s journals, reworked this entry into the sentence, “At Rainy Lake we met with a man, whose interesting adventures deserve to be made known to the public.” Keating’s elaboration of Long’s sentence is ironic, because at first the explorer did not want to have much to do with Tanner.

  Long thought whatever time they spent with Tanner should mainly fall to other members of the expedition. Shortly after their arrival, he went to visit the wounded American in his tent, taking along the expedition surgeon, Say, and his interpreter. After a brief introduction Long departed, leaving Say to examine Tanner’s wounds and to interview him about his unusual personal history and circumstances. Say made a clinical report to Long later that day. As for his history and character, Say shared what he had learned when they dined with the trader, Simon McGillivray, that evening. On the following day, September 1, the expedition’s Keating and Seymour visited Tanner and asked him more questions about his unusual life experience. Long, meanwhile, took measurements of the Koochiching Falls and inspected the fort’s wheatfield and vegetable garden. Of course, this was consistent with the expedition members’ usual division of labor: Long was the mapmaker, not an ethnographer.

  Around midday, the rain stopped and the canoemen went to work repairing the canoes. Long ordered the canoemen to break up the most badly damaged canoe and use it for material for patching the other two. As always, he was anxious to keep the expedition moving with a minimum of delay. Then he went to his tent to write in his journal.1

  Long was surprised when Tanner shuffled into his camp later that day, holding his lame arm against his chest. The wounded American was said to have lain flat on his back for most of the time since the shooting, and though Say had reported that he was now able to stand and walk, his tent was a considerable walk from their camp. Long was even more surprised by Tanner’s request. Despite his shaky condition, he wanted the expedition to give him and his daughters passage to Mackinac. Impossible, Long probably said to him at first. Having just decided to reduce the number of expedition canoes from three to two, he had to inform Tanner that they would not be able to accommodate three more people.

  Tanner went back to his tent, but after a while he returned. Apparently in their first meeting the two men were unable to communicate satisfactorily, and Tanner was determined to try again. This time, Long pressed Tanner for more information. If he were to grant his request and take him onboard at the risk of overloading the expedition canoes, possibly exposing his own men to danger, then he needed to know more about him. What kind of relationship did he have with his daughters? And the girls’ mother? And what about his other Indian family, whom he had left in Mackinac?

  Seeming to grow tired of all these questions, Tanner withdrew. But in a short while he appeared yet again, this time presenting Long with a leather pouch. Long found three folded letters inside it. None bore a seal; evidently they were letters of reference that had been given directly to Tanner. Carefully unfolding each one on top of his desk, he began to read. The first one was penned by the late Lord Selkirk. Dating from the time when Tanner had been in search of his white family, the letter was addressed to American newspaper publishers, and it outlined Tanner’s history as Selkirk had gotten it from him when the two were at Red River. The second letter was signed by a fur trader in Montreal. Long did not recognize the name, but he found it to be a moving testament to Tanner’s loyalty and courage. The third one impressed him most of all. It bore the signature of his very own mentor, Governor William Clark of Missouri. It was an authentic testimonial, written in the hand of the venerable old explorer himself, and dated St. Louis, 1820. After reading it over a second time, Long gave Tanner a gruff apology. You were a fool not to have shown this to me before. With that, he promised him a place in the canoes.2

  After Tanner had gone, Long pondered the situation some more. Should the expedition be treating him as an American citizen? He was a former captive of the Indians, and now he had been wounded by an Indian and was trying t
o return to the States. Those were all circumstances which would indicate he had a claim to be rescued.3 But Tanner was hardly a U.S. citizen. Half-savage, half-civilized, was how he struck Long. Who were his people? To whom did he have allegiance? Where would he live? Long could not get a bead on it. Was he an Indian or a white man? In Long’s America, it had to be one or the other.

  Then the girls went missing. Tanner stood at the door of Long’s tent, so upset he could hardly speak. Charles Brousse, the interpreter, explained that their father had given them leave to say good-bye to an Indian woman in the fort and the girls had failed to return. Long assumed they had run away to avoid going in the expedition canoes. But he could not completely discount Tanner’s suspicion that they had been taken by the Hudson’s Bay men and were under threat of being raped. So, with Dr. Say, Tanner, and Brousse, Long went to Simon McGillivray, the master of the fort, to investigate the very serious charge that Tanner had laid against the Hudson’s Bay men.

  Long and his entourage met with the trader in the officer’s house. Ironically, it was the same room where McGillivray had entertained them the evening before, where the conversation—in Tanner’s absence—had turned to a discussion of Tanner’s misfortunes, the girls’ mother’s plot to get him murdered, and the single-minded way in which Tanner vowed to get revenge on his assailant. What a savage mind, everyone had agreed then. Now this same man stood face to face with the trader, accusing the trader’s men of doing savage things to his daughters.

  McGillivray was indignant. He swore that none of his men could have laid a hand on the girls. The girls were nowhere in the fort. Probably they had stolen one of the canoes and fled downriver to Lake of the Woods to join their mother. Long pressed McGillivray to initiate a search. Perhaps they would find evidence of which way the girls had run, he suggested. Or, perhaps someone had seen the girls take off. McGillivray refused. The men argued. McGillivray’s defensiveness made Long push harder. Even though he guessed the trader was probably right that the girls were runaways, not captives, he had a shadow of doubt.