ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is dedicated to the memory of my old friend Bob Bassett, whose commitment to the writer’s art was a great inspiration to me, and who played an important role in the making of this book.
My friendship with Bob began thirty-six years ago when I was in my junior year at the University of Montana and I moved into a basement apartment with a common kitchen that I shared with Bob and two other men. Bob was then a forty-year-old bachelor, already turning a bit gray in the whiskers. I remember he wore workingman’s shirts and pants and a pair of scuffed-up oxfords. He was writing a novel; I think it was his third or fourth by that point in his life. He did not have much else in his basement room besides books, a desk, a bed, a dresser, and probably a typewriter. In spite of our big age difference, we soon formed a strong friendship around good conversation and chess.
Bob was a true writer, a rare individual who wrote and wrote for the sheer satisfaction of creating fictional characters, crafting good prose, and finding new things to say about the world. He wanted to get published, but when it didn’t happen he kept right on going. Like all true writers, he was a voracious reader. We shared an interest in Russian history. About a decade after we met, he completed a degree in Russian and moved to Moscow with his young bride, another Russian language student. They went shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and were there through the rise of Putin. As time passed, we lost touch. Bob returned to Montana when he reached retirement age, and our friendship resumed. I read his last big opus, The Song of Isaac, a novel based loosely on the story of Isaac and Abraham. He kept on writing to the very end of his life.
Bob was not only a great friend and inspiration; he also did me an enormous good turn when he agreed to read and edit my first draft of this book. I was astonished by how well he got to know Tanner, Long, and McLoughlin from his careful reading of the manuscript. I benefited hugely from his editing. He had a fine, intuitive grasp of what I was trying to do, and he helped me move the writing in the direction that I wanted it to go.
There are many others in addition to Bob Bassett who I want to thank for their generous help and support. My first debt is to the National Park Service, and five individuals in the agency in particular. Way back in 1999, I was given the task to research and write a short study of fur traders and the environment in the area now encompassed by Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota. Historians Mary Graves and Don Stevens oriented me to historical materials held at the park, while ethnographer Tom Thiessen and archeologist Jeff Richner made their research files available to me at the Midwest Archeological Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. Thiessen’s painstaking transcriptions of dozens of handwritten Hudson’s Bay Company post journals were a gold mine of source material. The following year I took part in a small fur trade history conference held at Grand Portage National Monument, Minnesota, put on by Don Stevens and the monument superintendent, Tim Cochrane. The Voyageur project and the Grand Portage conference gave me the inspiration for Rainy Lake House, and I have benefited from subsequent professional contact with Stevens, Graves, Thiessen, Richner, and Cochrane over the years since then.
Four academic historians who took part in the conference at Grand Portage offered guidance and a cordial welcome as I waded deeper into fur trade history. They were: Ted Karamanski, Laura Peers, Jennifer S. H. Brown, and Bruce M. White.
More than a decade on from the Voyageurs project, in 2011, the National Endowment for the Humanities provided me with the critical financial support I needed to write the book. I am indebted to Richard White and Dan Flores for writing such effective letters in support of my grant application, as well as three anonymous reviewers who evaluated my proposal, and the NEH staff for favoring me with a grant. This book would not have been possible without the NEH.
Ann Emmons and Christopher Preston read portions of the first draft and gave valuable feedback. My son Ben read the whole first draft, and parts of the second draft as well, and gave me some very perceptive and useful pointers.
Bobby Ferenstein, who I met through her daughter Jennifer, did me the kindness to edit the manuscript with her professional hand before the manuscript had yet found a publisher.
Patrick Thomas, another pro who I met through our mutual friend Caleb Kasper, generously gave the manuscript a critical read and offered valuable advice.
My mother and late father, Nancy and Bill Catton, read the whole manuscript in 2013. In characteristic form, they did not shy from applying their pen and giving their son critical comments. Their strong intellectual and emotional support has been a boon to me all of my life. Mom, as a bibliophile and volunteer at the public library, scouted for used books about the fur trade and steadily added them to my bookshelves over the past decade and a half.
Sally Thompson, whose fascination with Jesuit missionaries in the Pacific Northwest parallels my interest, read the near final draft and helped me improve it. Fur trade scholar and friend Bill Swagerty also gave me helpful support.
My literary agent Roger Williams saw the potential for this book where untold numbers of others declined to take a chance with it. He has been a fabulous advocate and guide. Elizabeth Demers, senior acquisitions editor at Johns Hopkins University Press, got behind it and brought it to fruition. Her perceptive reading of it provided me the pointers I needed to tighten parts of it and elaborate a few others, and she gave me the time to accomplish it.
My wonderful sons, Wally, Ben, and Eli, have been an inspiration to me throughout the project. They were my companions in this study for innumerable conversations and outings over the years.
Diane Krahe, my wife and partner in history, has been more indulgent and nurturing of my project than anyone. She was instrumental at an early stage, helping me frame and write my proposal to the NEH. She listened and responded as I read chapters out loud to her. She gave the manuscript the last thorough editing and suggested the addition of one crucial paragraph near the end. To her I owe my biggest thanks.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1. THE EXPLORER
1. John Livingston, Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living: With Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Their Lives and Actions 4 (New York: 107 Broadway, 1854), 488–89.
2. Stephen H. Long, The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long: The Journals of 1817 and 1823 and Related Documents, Lucile M. Kane, June D. Holmquist, and Carolyn Gilman, eds. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1978), 213; William H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter’s, Lake Winnepeek, Lake of the Woods, etc., 2 vols. (London: Geo. B. Whittaker, Ave-Marie Lane, 1825), 2:113.
3. Keating, Narrative, 2:114, 124; John Tanner, A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (U.S. Interpreter at the Saut De Ste. Marie) during Thirty Years Residence among the Indians in the Interior of North America, Edwin James, ed. (1830; reprint, Minneapolis: Ross & Haines, Inc., 1956), 276, 279.
4. John J. Bigsby, The Shoe and the Canoe, or Pictures of Travel in the Canadas (1850; reprint, New York, Paladin Press, 1969), 2: 272; George Simpson, “Character Book,” in Hudson’s Bay Miscellany 1670–1870, Glyndwer Williams, ed. (Winnipeg: Hudson’s Bay Records Society, 1975), 190; Joseph Delafield, The Unfortified Boundary: A Diary of the first survey of the Canadian Boundary Line from St. Regis to the Lake of the Woods, Robert McElroy and Thomas Riggs, eds. (New York: privately printed, 1943), 423.
5. Delafield, The Unfortified Boundary, 423; Long, The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long, 214–16; John Phillip Reid, Patterns of Vengeance: Crosscultural Homicide in the North American Fur Trade (San Francisco: Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, 1999), 45, 82–83.
6. Say quoted in Keating, Narrative, 2:125. Long referred to Say’s piece in his own journal entry of September 2.
7. Long, The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long, 214.
8. James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 303–4.
9. Keating, Narrative,
2:114; Long, The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long, 214; “A Captive Found,” The Weekly Recorder 5, no. 5 (September 11, 1818), 39; “Indian Captive Reclaimed,” The Weekly Recorder 5, no. 27 (February 12, 1819), 215.
10. Phillips D. Carleton, “The Indian Captivity,” American Literature 15 (May 1943), 169; Roy Harvey Pearce, “The Significance of the Captivity Narrative,” American Literature 19 (March 1947), 13; Annette Kolodny, “Review Essay of Narratives of North American Indian Captivities and The North American Indian Captivity, in Early American Literature 14 (1979), 232.
11. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and James Arthur Levernier, The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993), 2. The authors give a “conservative” estimate of “tens of thousands,” but this includes the whole nineteenth century.
12. C. C. Lord, Life and Times in Hopkinton, N. H. (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1890), 30–32.
13. Ibid., 30–32, 414, 428.
14. Ibid., 396–97.
15. Richard G. Wood, Stephen Harriman Long, 1784–1864: Army Engineer, Explorer, Inventor (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1966), 22–24.
16. Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in the Formative Years, 1783–1815 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), 21–24; Wood, Stephen Harriman Long, 28–29.
17. Lord, Life and Times in Hopkinton, N. H., 92, 96.
18. Ibid., 80–90.
19. John R. Bell, The Journal of Captain John R. Bell, Official Journalist for the Stephen H. Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1820, Harlin M. Fuller and LeRoy R. Hafen, eds. (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1957), 134.
20. Wood, Stephen Harriman Long, 28.
21. Livingston, Portraits of Eminent Americans, 477; Wood, Stephen Harriman Long, 30–34; Long, The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long, 210.
22. Ne-Do-Ba, “The Abenaki of Moor’s Charity School & Dartmouth College, Chronological List of Students—With Notes” (August 2000), at www.nedoba.org/ne-do-ba/odn_ed02.html
23. Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900, 160–61.
24. Wisconsin Historical Society, “Mohawk Indian or French Prince?” (March 2009), at www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001202.asp
25. Roger L. Nichols and Patrick L. Halley, Stephen Long and American Frontier Exploration (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980), 21–26.
CHAPTER 2. THE HUNTER
1. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 413–53; Colin G. Calloway, The Shawnees and the War for America (New York: Penguin Group, 2007), 89; Colin G. Calloway, The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 26–33.
2. John A. M’Clung, Sketches of Western Adventure (1832; reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969), 222.
3. Tanner, Narrative, 2.
4. Ibid., 2–3.
5. Ibid., 3; “The Northwestern Indians, Communicated to Congress on the 9th of December, 1790,” American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 1:89.
6. James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen, Family Life in Native America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 216–17; Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 134–37; Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 109–12.
7. Tanner, Narrative, 3–4. Tanner states that his knowledge of this event was abetted by information he later extracted from Kish-kau-ko when he found him in Detroit in 1818, as well as his brother’s recollections. Some of the details are also found in two articles in The Weekly Recorder 5, no. 5 (September 11, 1818) and 5, no. 27 (February 12, 1819), which are based on interviews with Tanner when he was in Detroit. It is worth noting that Tanner retained a strong memory of the event through his many years among the Indians, as evidenced by details in the first article—details that could not have come either from Kish-kau-ko or from his brother Edward, with whom he had not yet reconnected in the month this article was written.
8. Tanner, Narrative, 5.
9. Ibid., 5–6.
10. Ibid., 7–8; Helen Hornbeck Tanner, “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community,” in Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World, Susan Sleeper-Smith, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 362–63.
11. Tanner, Narrative, 8.
12. Ibid., 8–9.
13. Ibid., 9; Volo and Denneen, Family Life in Native America, 216.
14. Tanner, Narrative, 10–12; Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 102–5.
15. Tanner, Narrative, 13–14.
16. Ibid., 15.
17. Ibid., 15–16; J. Maurice Hodgson, “Captors and Their Captives,” The Beaver 301 (Spring 1970), 29–30.
18. Tanner, Narrative, 16, 18–20, 22, 34, 36.
19. Priscilla K. Buffalohead, “Farmers Warriors Traders: A Fresh Look at Ojibway Women,” Minnesota History 48, no. 6 (Summer 1983), 238, 244.
20. Tanner, Narrative, 16; Laura Peers, The Ojibwa of Western Canada, 1780 to 1870 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1994), 22.
21. Tanner, Narrative, 19; Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 258.
22. Tanner, Narrative, 17–18.
CHAPTER 3. THE TRADER
1. T. C. Elliott, “John McLoughlin, M.D.,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 36, no. 2 (June 1935), 182–86; Jean Morrison, Superior Rendezvous-Places: Fort William in the Canadian Fur Trade (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2001), 53; Tanner, Narrative, 204–5.
2. Jane Lewis Chapin, ed., “Letters of John McLoughlin, 1805–26,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 36, no. 4 (December 1935), 320–37; Burt Brown Barker, The McLoughlin Empire and its Rulers: Doctor John McLoughlin, Doctor David McLoughlin, Marie Louise (Sister St. Henry) (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1959), 166.
3. Dorothy Nafus Morrison, Outpost: John McLoughlin and the Far Northwest (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1999), 8–14.
4. George A. Wrong, A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761–1861 (Toronto: Bryant Press Limited, 1908), 132; Morrison, Outpost, 3–12.
5. Barker, The McLoughlin Empire and its Rulers, 61; W. Stewart Wallace, ed., Documents Relating to the North-West Co. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1934), 19; W. Stewart Wallace, “Notes on the Family of Malcolm Fraser,” Bulletin des recherches historique 39 (May 1933): 269.
6. Morrison, Outpost, 15. Additional details on Simon Fraser were gleaned from the following online sources: Philippe Dubé, Charlevoix: Two Centuries at Murray Bay (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990), 27; “L’Histoire Complète de la Seigneurie des Mille-Îles en 10 Points,” at www.shgim.ca/html/histshmi9.html
7. Morrison, Outpost, 16.
8. Dorothy Morrison and Jean Morrison, “John McLoughlin, Reluctant Fur Trader,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 81 (Winter 1980), 377–86.
9. Ibid. The petition for medical license and endorsements are reproduced in Elliott, “John McLoughlin, M.D.,” 182–83. The reference to the West Indies is found in Chapin, ed., “Letters of John McLoughlin, 1805–26,” 323.
10. The contract with the North West Company
is reproduced in Morrison and Morrison, “John McLoughlin, Reluctant Fur Trader,” 387–89.
11. Ibid.
12. Chapin, ed., “Letters of John McLoughlin, 1805–26,” 323, 327.
13. Ibid., 327.
14. Jane Lewis Chapin, ed., “Letters of Dr. John McLoughlin,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 37, no. 4 (December 1936), 294–95. Emphasis in the original.
15. McLoughlin’s relations with his employers are well analyzed by W. Kaye Lamb in the introduction to his edited volume, McLoughlin’s Fort Vancouver Letters, First Series, 1825–1838 (Toronto: Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1941), xxxi–xxxvi.
CHAPTER 4. “THE ENGLISH MAKE THEM MORE PRESENTS”
1. William Crawford to S. H. Long, June 18, 1816, and July 2, 1816, National Archives (hereafter cited as NA), Record Group 107—Records of the Office of Secretary of War (hereafter cited as RG 107), Letters Sent, M6, Roll 9.
2. Livingston, Portraits of Eminent Americans, 478–79.
3. Stephen H. Long to John Harris, June 10, 1811, Harris Papers, Dartmouth College Archives. See also Simon Baatz, “Philadelphia Patronage: Institutional Structure of Natural History in the New Republic, 1800–1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 8 (Summer 1988), 111–38.
4. S. H. Long to Isaac Roberdeau, August 27, 1822, NA, Record Group 77—Records of the U.S. Corps of Engineers (hereafter cited as RG 77), Entry 306, Box 1.
5. General Joseph Swift quoted in Wood, Stephen Harriman Long, 38.
6. The Port-Folio 2, no. 6 (December 1822), 496.
7. Livingston, Portraits of Eminent Americans, 477; National Register 3, no. 13 (March 29, 1817), 196.
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