John Tanner

“ An old Ojibbeway, called Crooked Finger, had been living in my lodge about a year; in all that time, having never killed any thing. When I started to hunt buffalo, he followed me, and we came at the same time in view of a large herd, when the old man endeavoured to raise a quarrel about my right to use those hunting grounds. “You Ottawwaws,” said he, “have no right in this part of the country, and though I cannot control all of you, I have you, at last, now in my power, and I am determined that if you do not go back to your own country from this very spot, I will kill you.” ”

“ Four men are coming this way, all well armed; their visit, I am sure, is for no good or friendly purpose.” Hearing this, I placed my packs in the middle of the floor, and taking a beaver trap in my hand, sat down on them. When the clerk came in, accompanied by three young men, he asked me for my packs. “What right have you,” said I, “to demand them?” “You are indebted to me,” said he. “When did I owe the North West any thing, that was not paid at the time agreed on?” “Ten years ago,” said he, “your brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew, had a credit from me, which he paid all but ten skins. ”

“ It is in the hands of the Great Spirit, and when he sees fit to place it in danger, or bring it to an end, I shall have no cause to complain, but I cannot believe that he has revealed any part of his intentions to so worthless a man as Ais-kaw-ba-wis.” But this intimation alarmed all the Indians who were with me, and they made the best of their way to the place where Ais-kaw-ba-wis was encamped with the women. I took a circuitous route by myself to visit some of my traps, and having caught an otter, I took him on my back, and arrived at home some time after them. ”

“ When he had spoken, Pe-zhew-o-ste-gwon, (the wild cat’s head,) the orator of A-gus-ko-gaut, replied to him. “Now,” said he, “we see plainly why our brothers, the Ojibbeways and Crees were not willing to come with us from Red River. You are near your own country, and it is of little importance to you whether you see the Sioux now, or in the fall. But we have come a very great distance. We bear with us, as we have long borne, those that were our friends and children, but we cannot lay them down, except we come into the camp of our enemies. ”

“ Early in the morning, Net-no-kwa called us up, saying, there was a large herd close by the lodge. Pe-shau-ba and Waus-so, with Wa-me-gon-a-biew, Sa-ning-wub, and Sag-git-to crept out, and took stations so as nearly to surround the herd. Me they would not suffer to go out, and they laughed at me when they saw me putting my gun in readiness; but old Net-no-kwa, who was ever ready to befriend me, after they were gone, led me to a stand not far from the lodge, near which, her sagacity taught her, the herd would probably run. The Indians fired, but all failed to kill ”

“ After I saw myself firmly seized by both wrists by the two Indians, I was not conscious of any thing that passed for a considerable time. I must have fainted, as I did not cry out, and I can remember nothing that happened to me, until they threw me over a large log, which must have been at a considerable distance from the house. The old man I did not now see; I was dragged along between Kish-kau-ko and a very short thick man. I had probably made some resistance, or done something to irritate this last, for he took me a little to one side, and drawing his tomahawk, motioned to me to look up. ”

“ Ke-zhi-ko-we-ninne and Manito-o-geezhik, though of our own tribe, were not with us. They were also men. But here we have one too poor, and indolent, and spiritless, to feed his own family, yet he is made the instrument, in the hand of the Great Spirit, as he would have us believe, to renovate the whole earth.” I had always entertained an unfavourable opinion of this man, as I knew him to be one of the most worthless among the Indians, and I now felt indignant at his attempt to pass himself upon us as a chosen and favoured messenger of the Supreme Spirit. ”

“ For my own part, I felt much irritated against Ta-bush-shish, inasmuch as I doubted whether he had not taken the present opportunity to wreak an old grudge upon Wa-me-gon-a-biew. I went into my brother’s lodge, and sat by him. His face and all his clothes were covered with blood. For some time he said nothing, and when he spoke, I found that he was perfectly sober. “To-morrow,” said he, “I will cry with my children, and the next day I will go and see Ta-bush-shish. We must die together, as I am not willing to live when I must always expect to be ridiculed.” ”

“ Ta-bush-shish had two fine horses, and he said to one of his friends, “Be-na, I believe you are a man. Will you take one of my horses and go with me to see what Ais-ainse has been doing all day? Shall we not be ashamed to let him fight so long, within hearing, and never attempt to give him assistance? Here are more than one hundred of us, who have stood trembling within this camp while our brother has been fighting like a man with only four or five young men to assist him.” ”

“ I have a horse of my own, I will keep my packs, nor will I forget that he pointed his pistol at my breast when he had not the courage to shoot me.”
On the following morning, one of the clerks of the North West Company arrived from the trading-house at Mouse River, and he, it appeared, told Mr. Wells when he heard what had passed that he would take my packs from me, and though Mr. Wells cautioned him against it, he determined [176] on making the attempt. It was near noon when the old Frenchman, after looking out of his house, said to me, “My friend, I believe you will lose your packs now. ”

“ A man rarely, if ever, mentions the [135] name of his father-in-law, and it is considered highly indecorous and disrespectful for him to do so. This custom does not exist in any shape among the Ojibbeways, and they look upon it as a very foolish and troublesome one.
The people of this lodge treated me with much kindness. Notwithstanding the great scarcity of corn in the country, they had a little reserved, which they cooked and gave me. The young man told them how much he had been frightened by me in the prairie, at which they all laughed heartily. ”

“ On the bank of this lake was the small log hut of Pe-shau-ba, where he had lived, with the three men I have mentioned, for some years. He had left his wife at Lake Huron; and the other men, if they had ever been married, had no women with them. Immediately on his arrival, he opened his sun-je-gwun, and took out large quantities of beaver skins, dried meat, dressed skins, etc. etc. all of which he delivered to the women, saying, “We have long been our own squaws, but we must be so no longer. It must now be your business to dress our skins, dry our meat, make our moccasins, etc.” ”

“ At this time I was suffered to go entirely at large, being subjected to no manner of restraint, and might, at almost any time, have made my escape from the Indians; but I believed my father and all my friends had been murdered, and I remembered the laborious and confined manner in which I must live if I returned among the whites; where, having no friends, and being destitute of money or property, I must, of necessity, be exposed to all the ills of extreme poverty. ”

“ By this firing the cows were so frightened that I perceived I should not be able to kill any in this quarter, so regaining my horse, I rode to a distant part of the herd, where the Indians had succeeded in killing a fat cow. But from this cow, as is usual in similar cases, the herd had all moved off, except one bull, who, when I came up, still kept the Indians at bay. “You are warriors,” said I, as I rode up, “going far from your own country, to seek an enemy, but you cannot take his wife from that old bull who has nothing in his hands.” ”

“ Other families beside my own being in distress for the want of food, the Indians called on me to make a medicine hunt. I accordingly told Me-zhick-ko-naum to go for my drum, and as preparatory to the commencement of my prayers and songs, I directed all my family to take such positions as they could keep for at least half the night, as, after I began, no one must move until I had finished. I have always been conscious of my entire dependence on a superior and invisible Power, but I have felt this conviction most powerfully in times of distress and danger. ”

“ It happened that Ba-po-wash had dried the choice parts of a fat bear, intending in the spring to make a feast to his medicine, and a few days previous to this time, while we were absent at our hunting camp, Ais-kaw-ba-wis had said to the old woman, the mother of Ba-po-wash’s wife, “The Great Spirit has signified to me that all things are not as they should be. Send out and see, therefore, if the fat bear which your son has hung up for a feast to his medicine is all where it was left.” ”

“ Hanie, and the skins belong to him but if this was not the case, you should not have one of them. You are a coward. You have not so much courage as a child. If you had the heart of a squaw, you would not have pointed your pistol at my breast, and have failed to shoot me. My life was in your power, and there was nothing to prevent your taking it, not even the fear of my friends, for you know that I am a stranger here, and not one among the Indians would raise his hand to avenge my death. ”

“ Their horses were feeding about, and among them we distinguished the fine black one they had brought from the Mandans in place of mine.
Wa-me-gon-a-biew had been to the trading house, but returned thence to the village before I arrived, and was now waiting for me at the lodge of some of the sons of a brother of Taw-ga-we-ninne, who were of course his cousins, and were very friendly to him. He had sent messengers to Ba-gis-kun-nung, offering him a good gun, a chief’s coat, and all the property he had about him, for a horse to ride home on. ”

“ Ono-wut-to-kwut-to, at the bidding of his companion, looked down through this hole, and saw far beneath him the great lakes, and the villages, not of the Ojibbeways only, but of all the red skins. In one place he saw a war party, stealing silently along toward the hunting camp of their enemies, and his companion told him what would be the result of the attack they were about to make. In another place he saw people feasting and dancing: young men were engaged at their sports, and here and there women were labouring at their accustomed avocations. ”

“ She did not return that night; but the next day, towards evening, as we were all lying down inside the lodge, she came in, and shaking Wa-me-gon-a-biew by the shoulder, said to him, “get up, my son, you are a great runner, and now let us see with what speed you will go and bring the meat which the Great Spirit gave me last night. Nearly all night I prayed and sung, and when I fell asleep near morning, the Spirit came to me, and gave me a bear to feed my hungry children. You will find him in that little copse of bushes in the prairie. ”

“ Having ascertained who it was that had wounded me, these two traders agreed to take me immediately to the village of Ome-zhuh-gwut-oons, and they were determined, in case of discovering and taking him, to aid me in taking my revenge by putting him immediately to death. They therefore concealed me in the canoe, and on landing near the lodges, an old man came down to the shore, and asked them, “what was the news in the country they came from?” “All is well there,” answered Mr. Stewart; “we have no other news.” “This is the manner,” said the old man, “in which white people always treat us. ”

“ When at last we arrived within two days’ march of the village it was our intention to attack, four hundred men were all that remained, and the next day very few of these were found willing to follow Match-a-go-ge-wub. He started at the usual time, and walked on by himself, but when at the distance of about a mile he saw that none followed him, he sat down in the prairie. From time to time, one or two men would start forward to join him, but for one who went forward, twenty or more would commonly start to go back. ”

“ He was also author of a life of John Tanner, a strange character who was stolen when a child from his home on the Ohio river by Indians, among whom he was brought up, developing in his future eventful history a strange mixture of the different traits pertaining to his early life and savage education. ”

“ We have taken care to remove from you those evil minded white men who sought, for the sake of their own profit, to make you forget your duty to your great father; they will no more return to trouble you. We have also called to us the Sioux, who, though their skins are red, like your own, have long been your enemies. They are henceforth to remain in their own country. ”

“ Before our arrival here we had been joined by Wa-ge-tote with sixty men. After we had rested and eaten at our encampment near Ta-bush-shish’s lodge, and were about to start, we saw him come out naked, but painted and ornamented as for a war, and having his arms in his hands. He came stalking up to us with a very angry face, but none of us fully [157] comprehended his design, until we saw him go up and present the muzzle of his gun to Wa-me-gon-a-biew’s back. “My friend,” said he, “we have lived long enough, and have given trouble and distress enough to each other. ”