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Children of the Fur Trade

In the years since his divorce from Red Sky of the Morning, Tanner had had little contact with his three older children. He and his first wife had separated into different bands, and the children had gone with their mother. His son and two daughters were about eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen years of age in 1823. Over the years Tanner had maintained some slight connection with them, but that was all. To obtain custody over these three children after his long separation from them posed an altogether different challenge from the one he had faced with Therezia and his younger set of children.

He had two alternatives. He could go straight to his estranged wife and children and the chiefs of their band and present himself as an Indian, submitting his claim to tribal law. Or he could go to the Hudson’s Bay fort and appeal to the whites, thereby elevating his case to the level of a dispute between nations. By taking the latter course, he would be identifying himself as a white man and clearly repositioning himself outside the Ojibwa nation. The break with the Indians would be irrevocable. Nevertheless, that is what he chose to do. Perhaps the choice meant nothing more than his doing whatever was necessary or expedient to reclaim his children. But that seems unlikely. He was not naïve about the consequences. Rather, it seems his choice had a harder edge to it.

As Tanner well knew, the Hudson’s Bay men were no strangers to the problem of reclaiming mixed-blood children from the Indians. Most company officers had mixed-blood children of their own. Like Tanner himself, many of them had children by more than one native wife, or had been through long periods of separation from their country-born children, or had allowed their sons and daughters to be absorbed into Indian bands. The crucial difference between his situation and that of so many Hudson’s Bay fathers was that he had lived among the Indians as an Indian, not at the posts. He no doubt knew that the Hudson’s Bay men had their own concerns about the rights and responsibilities of paternity in Indian country. What he could not have known, however, was that the ground for fur-trader fathers was shifting right beneath his feet.

By the early 1820s, fur traders’ mixed-blood offspring were numerous. So numerous, historian Jennifer S. H. Brown has written, that they “could no longer be assimilated into the scattered Indian population, absorbed within company employ, or simply shipped en masse to Britain or Canada.” Fur traders had long wrestled with the problem of “placing” their offspring. Their private struggles ranged from the basic question of who had guardianship over the children, to the largely financial matter of how to give them a formal education, to the more philosophical issue of whether these children should ultimately be directed toward the culture of their native mothers or their European fathers. As Brown revealed in her seminal work, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country, fur traders and their country-born wives formed several different family patterns to cope with these dilemmas. The patterns varied according to whether the father worked for the Hudson’s Bay or the North West, whether he was an officer or servant (or, in the case of the North West, bourgeois or engagé), whether the mother was native or mixed blood, and whether the child was male or female. Family patterns changed over time, too. The merger of the companies in 1821 formed a watershed, according to Brown, because the reorganized Hudson’s Bay Company acquired the status of a de facto colonial government and began to address these issues more fulsomely. Nowhere was this more the case than at Red River, where many interracial families went to retire.¹

There were now two distinct populations of interracial families inhabiting the Red River valley. One was the Métis, who were predominantly French-speaking, Roman Catholic, and committed to a hunting and fishing way of life. The other group was primarily composed of retired Hudson’s Bay men and their Indian wives and children. These families were predominantly English-speaking, Protestant, and oriented toward a farming way of life. The Métis lived to the south and west of the Forks; the English-­speaking families lived to the north. The progeny of the latter group were termed “country-born” to distinguish them from Métis.²

With its large number of mixed-blood children, Red River provided an attractive setting for missionary work. The Jesuits arrived in 1818 and naturally gravitated to the Métis. An Anglican mission was established under Hudson’s Bay Company auspices two years later for the benefit of the ­English speakers. The first Anglican missionary, John West, was fundamentally interested in converting Indians as well as providing Christian services to the faithful. But he soon recognized that he could not bring Christianity to the Indians without first raising them from a state of savagery. Therefore, his program centered on taking Indian children from their parents and educating them in a boarding school. It was a strategy that would soon underpin missionary work among the Indians all across North America.³

The Reverend West opened a boarding school for Indian children at the same time that he started a day school for the settlers’ children. As winter set in, he persuaded Be-gwais, the chief of the Red River Ojibwas, to enroll his nephew in the boarding school, with the expectation that the boy would remain there until the family returned for him in the spring. After just a week, however, the boy’s mother missed her son and came back. West allowed the boy to go to his mother each night and return to school each day. But after a week of this arrangement, his star pupil ran away for good. West made the mother give back the suit of clothes he had provided to the boy, lest other Indians get the idea that they could enroll their children temporarily merely to have them clothed. A rather small incident by itself, it pointed to the conflict between school and home that would plague thousands of Indian families over the coming century.⁴

There were other harbingers of change in the Red River valley. From uncertain beginnings, the colony was taking root as a permanent agricultural settlement. The Nor’ Westers and their allies had opposed the colony mainly on the grounds that agricultural settlement would displace the Indians and Métis, wipe out the game, and destroy the fur trade. After the merger, the Hudson’s Bay Company had the paradoxical task of governing the Red River valley so as to support both the fur trade and the colonization program that would eventually lead to its undoing. To protect the former, it revoked the Selkirk land grant and reinstated the company’s monopoly on trade, making it illegal for settlers to hunt, trap, and barter furs. At the same time, it kept faith with Selkirk’s vision of establishing a community where Hudson’s Bay men could retire with their families. Each new family would receive twenty to twenty-five acres of land, plus an allotment of seed, tools, and ammunition upon arrival. Besides being afforded religious instruction and education for their children, the settlers would have police protection, a magistrate, and a new governor. The company directors also envisioned founding a children’s home at Red River to accommodate the many “orphans” at the posts who had been abandoned by their fathers.⁵

Tanner returned to Red River knowing nothing about these budding institutions. As he paddled up the river he could see there were many more settlers’ homes built since the time he had left, but Fort Douglas, now Fort Garry, still rose on the grassy bluff below the Forks and several buffalo-hide tepees stood nearby as before. Making his way to the fort, he introduced himself to the chief factor, explaining his errand and presenting his letters of reference from Governor Clark and the late Lord Selkirk. But the factor, after perusing these documents, stated flatly that he was not interested in helping him. He did not offer a reason, but Tanner surmised that he simply could not be bothered, as he would soon be departing for Hudson Bay. After their meeting Tanner was standing outside the fort, somewhat at a loss over where to turn next, when a man hailed him from the Métis encampment. The man turned out to be Charles Brousse, the Métis interpreter who had befriended him several years before. Brousse invited him into his lodge, where Tanner learned that the colony had a new governor. Governor and factor hated each other, Brousse shrewdly observed. If the factor refused to help him, the governor likely would.⁶

Tanner went the next day to the governor’s house, which, like the factor’s, stood inside the walls of the fort. The governor, whose name was Andrew Bulger, gave him a friendly reception, particularly upon hearing how the factor had turned him out of the fort the previous night. Despite his cordial manner, he had a stiff, military bearing. Some ten years younger than Tanner, he introduced himself using his former army rank of captain rather than his present title of governor. He invited Tanner to come into his house and dine with him, and he offered him a room for the duration of his visit. As Tanner explained his business, he got a feeling that this man already knew much about him and had learned of his arrival at Red River and his purpose there even before he came to his door. Tanner explained that he intended to go by himself to find his children, but he hoped that Captain Bulger would support his effort to reclaim them if it became necessary. The governor indicated that he would.

Next, Tanner inquired with some Indians at the fort about his children’s whereabouts. They told him that his children were with a band of Ojibwas encamped at Prairie Portage. But they also warned him that the Ojibwas were aware of his arrival and his purpose. They said that some of the men in the band had threatened to kill him if he tried to take away the children. Undeterred, he left for Prairie Portage without further delay.⁷

As he came into the encampment he tried to show the men that he was not afraid of them and that he meant no harm. He only wanted to see his children. He experienced no hostility at first; the chief of this band invited him into his lodge and told him where he could find his former wife and daughters.⁸

Tanner’s Narrative gives only a vague impression of how it went when he was reunited with his children. The two teenage girls appeared pleased. Most likely they were reserved. At least two years had passed since their last encounter with their father, maybe more. The girls were now of an age to be changing fast, both physically and emotionally. No doubt they were aware, as others in the band were aware, that their white father had returned from afar to see them, and probably they were privy to the rumor that he wanted to take them away. So their feelings at seeing their father must have been mixed.

The son, his firstborn child, was almost a man now. As Tanner considered the three children’s future, he saw that this one was so grown up and accustomed to an Indian’s life it would be folly to take him to Mackinac. The boy was too old to register in school, and he would surely detest the white man’s system of working for wages. So the father had to admit that the son must take his own path, and it seems that they now kept aloof from each other.

And how did it go between him and Red Sky of the Morning? On their reunion the Narrative is brief to the point of obfuscation. The mother of these children was now an old woman. When Tanner related these more recent events in his life, he would not even utter his ex-wife’s name, much less describe any feelings he had for her, or she for him. One imagines Red Sky of the Morning as being very much on guard, knowing that her ex-husband had come for the children. Tanner was as coy with her as he was with the rest of the band, determined not to reveal his intentions until the opportune time. And yet, as he took up his former place in his children’s lodge, he must have made some sort of effort to reengage with his former wife. There must have been at least a tentative beating in his heart, for he had come all this way to get his children by her, and he longed so desperately for the bonds of family.

After a few days, Tanner learned who it was in this band who was threatening to kill him. He discovered his old rival, Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo, lived in the village. Though Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo and Red Sky of the Morning had long since parted company, the fellow still had it in for him. At length when the two came face to face, Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo warned him he must leave the village or he would be killed. Tanner was defiant, recalling their past confrontation and taunting him. “If you had been a man, you would have killed me long ago, instead of now threatening me. I have no fear of you.” Tanner’s warrior pose kept his old rival at bay. Gi-ah-ge-wa-go-mo tried to provoke him into declaring what he wanted to do with his children, but Tanner refused to answer him, for he could see that until he verbalized his intentions the chief would make no move against him.⁹

Tanner waited until the band moved camp from Prairie Portage to Fort Garry. Only then, in the protection of the fort, did he announce that he wanted to have his children back. As he had suspected might happen, the chief and all the principal hunters rejected his demand. So Tanner went to Captain Bulger, who, true to his word, came to his aid. Bulger sent his interpreter, Brousse, with a message that the Indians bring the children into the fort.

The children entered the fort accompanied by a dozen other members of the band, and everyone stood in a group outside the governor’s house, three or four adults surrounding each child. Bulger asked Tanner to identify his son and two daughters; then he sent one of his guards into the house to get the children a bite to eat. The guard returned with a half-eaten loaf of bread from Bulger’s own table, which he attempted to hand directly to one of Tanner’s children. As Tanner could plainly see, Bulger’s gesture was a breach of protocol and an insult to the Indians, for it suggested that the Hudson’s Bay men thought of the adult Indians as no better than children. A man angrily snatched the bread away, tore it into pieces, and pointedly distributed the morsels to all of the other adults, leaving none for Tanner’s children. Bulger then had the storehouse unlocked, telling Tanner to go inside and get something else for them. Tanner went in and found some bags of pemmican, opened one, and brought out several pounds of it. Following native protocol this time, he invited all the Ojibwa to sit down and offered a piece of pemmican to each person. When everyone had eaten, Bulger appealed to them to hand the children to their father, but the Indians still refused.¹⁰

The next day, the governor called the principal men of the band as well as Tanner to a council. They all sat on the floor of the council room, and Bulger took out a peace pipe and ceremoniously lit the bowl and passed it around. He called on his guards to bring presents into the room and deposit them on the floor. He told the principal men that he was honoring them with these gifts and that he was asking them, as on the previous day, to return the children to their father. He went on to explain that Tanner came before them not as an Indian but as a white man under the protection of the Great Father beyond the waters. He did not need to remind them that the Great Father recognized the right of all white fathers to reclaim their children. Furthermore, Bulger continued, Tanner made his request with the blessing of the Great Spirit, for the Great Spirit created all people, red and white, and clearly the Great Spirit had created these children to be Tanner’s. Bulger urged the Indians to accept the presents as a sign of his people’s goodwill toward them. Then he ordered his guards to open the door of the council room so they could see his armed militia parading back and forth in front of the house.¹¹

Not to be intimidated, the Indians insisted on caucusing among themselves for a good while. At length, their chief made a counterproposal. They would allow Tanner to take his two daughters but not his son. The boy wished to remain with them, and he was old enough to choose for himself. Moreover, they would only give up the girls under one condition: Tanner must take Red Sky of the Morning as well. If Tanner wanted to provide for his daughters again, then he must provide for their mother, too. Tanner saw the justice in this arrangement and gave his consent. The Indians then added a stipulation: several of their people would follow Tanner for the first few days of the journey to ensure that he did not turn the woman out of his canoe. Tanner agreed to their stipulation as well.¹²

By using the power of the Hudson’s Bay Company to secure custody of his daughters, Tanner severed what little remained of his bond with the Ojibwas. Though he spoke their language, ate and dressed as they did, knew their rituals and beliefs, and had long ago mingled his blood with theirs, those things gave him no more standing than most other fur traders had. Allegiances mattered to the Ojibwas most of all, and gradually Tanner had transferred those to the white traders. His appeal to Captain Bulger represented a culmination of that process.

There was a dramatic arc to Tanner’s thirty years among the Indians, an arc that encompassed the waxing and waning of his Indianness. Almost from the start of his captivity at the age of nine, he had striven to adopt the Indians’ ways and to bring himself higher in their esteem. His efforts had begun with learning their language and customs and becoming a camp helper. After a few years, he had learned to hunt and trap. Under the nurturing care of Net-no-kwa, he had become a good Indian son and provider. Then, taking Red Sky of the Morning as his wife, he had entered further into Ojibwa life as a husband and father. And finally, through his induction as a warrior, he had made himself almost completely Indian. But there remained the matter of his race.

Until around the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Indians of the northern prairies practically ignored the fact that he came from the white race. However, that changed under the rising influence of the Shawnee Prophet, the growing pressure on Indian tribes from the advancing frontier of American settlement, and the ruinous strife between the rival fur companies north of the border. Tanner’s skin color increasingly made him a person of suspicion and undermined his Indianness. And as he himself formed new relationships with the whites who were outside the usual bounds of the fur trade—first as a hunter for the Red River colony, then as a scout for Selkirk’s mercenaries, and finally as a wage-earning employee of the American Fur Company—little by little he moved out of the Indians’ camp back into the camp of the white men. It was Tanner’s misfortune to become Indian during a time when the two peoples grew increasingly polarized and race conscious. Whites would come to think of Tanner as so completely Indian that he was hopelessly alienated from the white man’s world. What they failed to see was that Tanner had lost his Indianness as well as his whiteness. Attempting to straddle two cultures, he found himself rejected by both.¹³

Tanner’s heavy-handed reliance on Captain Bulger to reclaim his children finally alienated him from the Ojibwas for good. Tanner must have understood the gravity of what he had done, for he now decided on a route back to Mackinac that would entail minimal contact with other Indians. Tanner set out down the Red River with his two daughters and their mother and the mandated escort. After four days’ journey, the escort turned back and Tanner picked a seldom-used route that would avoid the Ojibwas living around Lake of the Woods. He was not exactly in flight from Indian country, but he no longer called it his home, either.