30
A Loathsome Man

In the spring of 1808, the Nor’ West trader Alexander Henry left Pembina after an eight-year residence. Another Nor’ Wester, Daniel McKenzie, occupied the post through the winter of 1808–9. Then, in the summer of 1809, the North West Company leadership decided to abandon the place and establish a new post at the Forks. The Nor’ Wester assigned to the task was John Wills. He arrived in the year 1810 with a force of twenty men and proceeded to build a large fort where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red, the site of today’s Winnipeg. This impressive installation, named Fort Gibraltar, consisted of a square palisade about fifteen feet high made from oak logs split in two, with a pair of bastions at opposite corners, and eight buildings arranged within the fort’s walls. The interior buildings included a residence for the trader, two houses for the engagés, a blacksmith shop, a stable, a kitchen, and an ice house. A watchtower rose from the roof of the ice house. The Red River Indians watched with interest as Wills superintended construction and the new fort took shape. As Wills was a very large man, the Indians nicknamed him “The Sail” for his wide beam.¹

The North West Company had two purposes in view in establishing Fort Gibraltar at the Forks. One purpose was to support the movement of Métis into the area and thereby secure the company’s important provisioning trade in pemmican. Its second purpose was to prevent the Hudson’s Bay Company from making a southward advance up the Red River valley. Wills aimed to oppose the trader Hugh Heney, who was lately in charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Brandon House.

Wills returned from the Nor’ Westers’ rendezvous at Fort William in the fall of 1810 to find his anticipated rival absent. He assumed that the construction of Fort Gibraltar over the preceding months had convinced Heney and the Hudson’s Bay Company to abandon the area. Rashly, Wills took the opportunity to drive a hard bargain with his Indian trading partners and call in some of the Indians’ debt. While giving the Indians their customary “fall drink” when they gathered at his trading house before the winter, he used the occasion to announce a new limitation on credit: no material items would be provided to them until they brought in skins during the coming winter.²

Tanner avoided the Indians’ drinking bout according to his pattern, so he missed Wills’s announcement. At the onset of winter, he went to the newly occupied fort for his first encounter with the new trader. Ushered into the trader’s house, he asked for woolens to clothe his family. He was taken aback when the trader refused. Tanner pleaded on behalf of his children, saying that they were hungry and ill clothed and might die without the trader’s assistance. Wills rudely cut him off and told him to leave the house. Tanner then placed eight silver ornaments on the table. Having purchased these items a year before at twice the standard price of a capote (a hooded coat), he proposed to pawn them for a single capote. Wills could hold the ornaments as collateral until such time as he could return with the necessary skins to pay for the capote and get them back. Wills found Tanner’s offer to be as impudent as it was irregular. With a sweep of his arm, he scattered the ornaments on the floor.³

Tanner took great offense at this treatment. When Wills’s competitor, Heney, showed up in the valley after all, several weeks later than usual, Tanner decided to get back at Wills. He would broadcast to the Indians his ­intent to trade his skins with Heney, not Wills, at the end of the winter season. In the language of the traders, he would be going over to the ­opposition—breaking trust—even though he currently owed no debt to the North West Company. With that in mind, Tanner wintered on the Rat River, a tributary on the lower Red, where he took large numbers of beaver, otter, marten, and muskrat. Early in the spring, he went to the Forks and ostentatiously set up camp on the east bank of the river directly opposite Fort Gibraltar, expecting to intercept Heney as the Hudson’s Bay trader made his way back northward from Pembina.⁴

Wills soon learned of Tanner’s presence across the river and sent him repeated invitations to come over and trade. Twice Tanner refused, but on the third invitation a kinsman persuaded him to go. Leaving his furs behind, he took only a little tobacco as a peace offering. Wills greeted him respectfully and offered him brandy and whatever provisions he might need. Tanner had not been visiting long when some of Wills’s engagés came through the door toting his packs of furs—the very same that he had intentionally left in his lodge. Not stopping or saying a word as they passed by him, they placed the packs in a back room. Tanner knew this trick. The traders at Grand Portage had attempted to take possession of Net-no-kwa’s packs in just that way many years before. But he said nothing, pretending to be oblivious both to the seizure of his peltries and the surliness that suddenly came over his host as soon as they were stowed away. Calmly he waited until the engagés were out of the house. Then, when Wills stooped to get something out of a trunk, Tanner slipped past him into the back room. The fat, old trader was too slow to stop him. Tanner gathered his packs in his arms and, staggering under the immense load, made for the front door. Wills interposed himself. In their short struggle, one of the bundles fell from Tanner’s grasp, breaking apart when it hit the floor. As Tanner went to gather up the skins, Wills fetched his pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Tanner’s breast. Tanner momentarily froze, thinking he was about to be shot and killed, since the trader was so obviously frightened. But Wills only stood there, shaking. Tanner grabbed his wrist and turned the pistol aside with one hand while drawing his knife with the other. In an instant he was holding the trader at knifepoint.⁵

Wills called out to his wife and interpreter. Very soon they entered the room, together with his French Canadian engagés. Tanner held the trader hostage in the middle of the floor while Wills’s allies stood back against the wall. With their numbers, the French Canadians could have overpowered him. Yet when Wills growled at the men to disarm Tanner and get him out of the house, no one made a move. At length, Wills started bargaining. He offered Tanner an even split: half the skins for the Hudson’s Bay trader, half to the North West. Released from knifepoint, he began separating them into two piles.

Never in his life did Tanner find a trader more loathsome than this man. Answering him through the interpreter, Tanner reminded Wills of his refusal to provision his family at the start of winter. He informed him that he had obtained all of his ammunition on credit from Heney; therefore, all the skins would go to him. Then he excoriated Wills for being such a coward.

You have not so much courage as a child. If you had 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. You might have thrown my body into the river, as you would a dog, and no one would have asked you what you had done, but you wanted the spirit to do even this.⁶

As the interpreter finished translating, Wills retreated to the company of his wife and took a seat. He looked so pale and shaken, Tanner thought he might collapse. When the fat, old man at last regained his composure, he went outside. Tanner retied his skins, loaded them on his back and took them to his canoe, saying no more to Wills as they passed in the yard.

The next day, Wills sent his interpreter over to Tanner with a peace offering: he would give him his horse if the unfortunate matter could then be forgotten. Tanner refused. Tell the man he is a child, Tanner responded, since he expects to quarrel with me one day and pretend that it never happened the next. Tell him I will keep my skins, and I will not forget how he pointed his pistol at my heart and lacked the courage to shoot me.

Wills persisted. A few days later he sent four armed men to claim Tanner’s skins. The clerk in charge of this gang stated that the skins rightfully belonged to the North West Company because ten years ago Tanner’s brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew, had failed to repay a debt, and that this old debt still attached to Tanner as his close kin. To this, Tanner replied that he would pay his brother’s debt if in turn the North West Company would pay him for the four packs of beaver his family had shipped to Mackinac around the same time. He referred to the promissory note that had burned up in their wigwam. The clerk ignored this and moved to take the skins by force, but as Tanner remained sitting on them he changed his mind and led the men back to the fort.

When more days went by with no sign of Heney, Tanner packed up and went down to the mouth of the Red River to do some more trapping. When Heney finally did come down the river a few days later, passing by Fort Gibraltar, Wills went after him with a canoe of armed men. Heney saw he was being pursued and landed his canoe. Telling his men to stay with the canoe and its cargo, he walked alone to a spot above the river where he could confront Wills face to face. Seeing him there, Wills landed his canoe and approached with an escort. Heney made him stop at a distance of ten paces, and the two men argued over their respective rights to the territory. Finally, Wills agreed to let Heney continue on unmolested. Farther downriver, Heney found Tanner and related to him what had happened. Tanner traded him all of his skins as he had intended. Heney gave him a gun as a token of their new alliance.

Up until that time, Tanner had traded almost exclusively with the North West Company. There were one or two exceptions. He traded at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Brandon House until its former proprietor, John McKay, promised to sell him a horse and sold it to a Nor’ Wester instead. Miffed, Tanner ceased going to Brandon House. He probably traded at Swan River House, another Hudson’s Bay Company post, as well. All of his trading at Grand Portage, Rainy Lake, Pembina, Prairie Portage, Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, and Red Deer River was with the North West. He accepted the traders’ notion of company loyalty to a certain extent, but he based his own loyalty on personal relationships with individual traders. When Wills betrayed his trust, Tanner punished him for it by “crossing over” to the opposition. He then allied with Heney and the Hudson’s Bay Company for as long as the thieving North West trader still lived.⁷