11
Red Sky of the Morning

Because Tanner was dutiful and brave, he was Net-no-kwa’s favorite son. She was a proud old woman, and Tanner learned how to prop her up when she most needed it. Having lost the large following she had had in the old homeland, Net-no-kwa hankered for recognition. She had pretensions of being a medicine woman. Wa-me-gon-a-biew belittled her whenever she put on such airs, but Tanner showed the old woman respect, even when he only half-believed in her spiritual powers himself. Sometimes he saw right through her artifices, as when she discovered a bear in its hiding place and the following day directed hunters to the spot as if she had seen it in a vision.¹ But he kept these observations to himself. He and his mother seldom quarreled. For the most part he adopted her values and formed opinions of people much as she did.

As Tanner rose in his mother’s favor, his older brother grew more shiftless and detached from the group. When Tanner was nineteen years old, Wa-me-gon-a-biew went off and married an Ojibwa woman. Thus Tanner became the group’s sole hunter. Net-no-kwa considered her older son irresponsible for having left the group to its own resources just as winter was coming on. When Wa-me-gon-a-biew and his in-laws came to them in distress at the end of the season, she was spiteful. Handing them ten beaver pelts to take to the trading house for provisions, she chided them for their want, declaring that those ten beavers were just a fraction of what her younger son, the Swallow, had killed over the winter.²

Net-no-kwa increasingly allowed Tanner to guide the group’s movements, and it was probably at his urging that they purchased six horses in order to travel more than 200 miles to the Red Deer River, in what is now Saskatchewan, to hunt beaver during the coming winter. There is a good chance old Net-no-kwa and the others had never ridden a horse before. The western Ojibwas and Ottawas seldom used horses before migrating to the Canadian prairie, and it was only in the early 1800s that they began to acquire them.³ As for Tanner, the last time he had been on a horse was when he was captured by the Ottawa-Shawnee war party eleven years earlier. Although he had grown up with horses on his father’s farm in Kentucky, that experience was now a distant memory. Moreover, the horses they purchased were not draft animals like his father’s, nor were they equipped with saddles and stirrups. They were probably a good bit wilder and fleeter than the horses in Kentucky. In all likelihood they were acquired from Assiniboines, who got them from Mandans, who obtained them in trade with Shoshonis on the upper Missouri.⁴ While relearning how to ride, Tanner was thrown off his mount and, with one hand still tangled in the bridle rein, got trampled as well. He broke a rib in the accident, which failed to heal properly and pained him from time to time for the rest of his life.⁵ Despite the mishap, Tanner had no regrets; he remained as enthusiastic as any of his tribesmen about the value of a good horse.⁶

With the six horses they traveled swiftly, west up the Assiniboine River past Riding Mountain, then northwest following the river through flat, verdant grasslands. Near the headwaters, about midway to the Red Deer River, they came to Fort Alexandria, a North West Company trading house. As it was summer, the post was occupied by just one clerk, two interpreters, and a handful of laborers, together with their six wives and thirteen children. The laborers were erecting two blockhouses on either side of the gate and making repairs on the fort’s existing bastions. The Nor’ Westers were bolstering their defenses in anticipation of an attack by the Gros Ventres, who were rumored to be upset with them for selling firearms to their enemies, the Assiniboines and Crees. Six lodges of Crees were presently encamped near the stockade in case of attack, the women and children being desirous of the fort’s security while their men were off making war on the Gros Ventres.⁷

When Tanner’s group arrived there, Net-no-kwa hung back and her adopted son stepped forward as the group’s leader. This was Tanner’s first time in that role. He spoke to the traders in Ojibwa, since that was the language used by one of the two interpreters. With his wealth of horses, his youth, and his white skin, he made a striking impression on the traders. The clerk in charge, one Daniel Harmon of Vermont, noted in his diary that a white Indian visited that day who was “regarded as a chief among his people.”⁸

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 person 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.