43
“We Met with an American”

Stephen Long’s expedition arrived at Rainy Lake House early in the morning on August 31, 1823. Long would later write in his journal: “At the H. Bay Co.’s Fort we met with an American by the name of Tanner.” William Keating, who eventually prepared the official report from all of the expedition’s journals, reworked this entry into the sentence, “At Rainy Lake we met with a man, whose interesting adventures deserve to be made known to the public.” Keating’s elaboration of Long’s sentence is ironic, because at first the explorer did not want to have much to do with Tanner.

Long thought whatever time they spent with Tanner should mainly fall to other members of the expedition. Shortly after their arrival, he went to visit the wounded American in his tent, taking along the expedition surgeon, Say, and his interpreter. After a brief introduction Long departed, leaving Say to examine Tanner’s wounds and to interview him about his unusual personal history and circumstances. Say made a clinical report to Long later that day. As for his history and character, Say shared what he had learned when they dined with the trader, Simon McGillivray, that evening. On the following day, September 1, the expedition’s Keating and Seymour visited Tanner and asked him more questions about his unusual life experience. Long, meanwhile, took measurements of the Koochiching Falls and inspected the fort’s wheatfield and vegetable garden. Of course, this was consistent with the expedition members’ usual division of labor: Long was the mapmaker, not an ethnographer.

Around midday, the rain stopped and the canoemen went to work repairing the canoes. Long ordered the canoemen to break up the most badly damaged canoe and use it for material for patching the other two. As always, he was anxious to keep the expedition moving with a minimum of delay. Then he went to his tent to write in his journal.¹

Long was surprised when Tanner shuffled into his camp later that day, holding his lame arm against his chest. The wounded American was said to have lain flat on his back for most of the time since the shooting, and though Say had reported that he was now able to stand and walk, his tent was a considerable walk from their camp. Long was even more surprised by Tanner’s request. Despite his shaky condition, he wanted the expedition to give him and his daughters passage to Mackinac. Impossible, Long probably said to him at first. Having just decided to reduce the number of expedition canoes from three to two, he had to inform Tanner that they would not be able to accommodate three more people.

Tanner went back to his tent, but after a while he returned. Apparently in their first meeting the two men were unable to communicate satisfactorily, and Tanner was determined to try again. This time, Long pressed Tanner for more information. If he were to grant his request and take him onboard at the risk of overloading the expedition canoes, possibly exposing his own men to danger, then he needed to know more about him. What kind of relationship did he have with his daughters? And the girls’ mother? And what about his other Indian family, whom he had left in Mackinac?

Seeming to grow tired of all these questions, Tanner withdrew. But in a short while he appeared yet again, this time presenting Long with a leather pouch. Long found three folded letters inside it. None bore a seal; evidently they were letters of reference that had been given directly to Tanner. Carefully unfolding each one on top of his desk, he began to read. The first one was penned by the late Lord Selkirk. Dating from the time when Tanner had been in search of his white family, the letter was addressed to American newspaper publishers, and it outlined Tanner’s history as Selkirk had gotten it from him when the two were at Red River. The second letter was signed by a fur trader in Montreal. Long did not recognize the name, but he found it to be a moving testament to Tanner’s loyalty and courage. The third one impressed him most of all. It bore the signature of his very own mentor, Governor William Clark of Missouri. It was an authentic testimonial, written in the hand of the venerable old explorer himself, and dated St. Louis, 1820. After reading it over a second time, Long gave Tanner a gruff apology. You were a fool not to have shown this to me before. With that, he promised him a place in the canoes.²

After Tanner had gone, Long pondered the situation some more. Should the expedition be treating him as an American citizen? He was a former captive of the Indians, and now he had been wounded by an Indian and was trying to return to the States. Those were all circumstances which would indicate he had a claim to be rescued.³ But Tanner was hardly a U.S. citizen. Half-savage, half-civilized, was how he struck Long. Who were his people? To whom did he have allegiance? Where would he live? Long could not get a bead on it. Was he an Indian or a white man? In Long’s America, it had to be one or the other.

Then the girls went missing. Tanner stood at the door of Long’s tent, so upset he could hardly speak. Charles Brousse, the interpreter, explained that their father had given them leave to say good-bye to an Indian woman in the fort and the girls had failed to return. Long assumed they had run away to avoid going in the expedition canoes. But he could not completely discount Tanner’s suspicion that they had been taken by the Hudson’s Bay men and were under threat of being raped. So, with Dr. Say, Tanner, and Brousse, Long went to Simon McGillivray, the master of the fort, to investigate the very serious charge that Tanner had laid against the Hudson’s Bay men.

Long and his entourage met with the trader in the officer’s house. Ironically, it was the same room where McGillivray had entertained them the evening before, where the conversation—in Tanner’s absence—had turned to a discussion of Tanner’s misfortunes, the girls’ mother’s plot to get him murdered, and the single-minded way in which Tanner vowed to get revenge on his assailant. What a savage mind, everyone had agreed then. Now this same man stood face to face with the trader, accusing the trader’s men of doing savage things to his daughters.

McGillivray was indignant. He swore that none of his men could have laid a hand on the girls. The girls were nowhere in the fort. Probably they had stolen one of the canoes and fled downriver to Lake of the Woods to join their mother. Long pressed McGillivray to initiate a search. Perhaps they would find evidence of which way the girls had run, he suggested. Or, perhaps someone had seen the girls take off. McGillivray refused. The men argued. McGillivray’s defensiveness made Long push harder. Even though he guessed the trader was probably right that the girls were runaways, not captives, he had a shadow of doubt.

Then the door burst open and McLoughlin stood there, his hulking frame filling the doorway. Ten weeks he had been away, and this fracas in the officer’s house was his welcome home. But the doctor held his temper. He immediately took charge of the meeting, providing assurances all around. No, he affirmed, it was not possible the girls had come to any harm inside the fort. Yes, he agreed, they must be found and returned to this place posthaste, so that Tanner could leave with the American expedition. No, the search would not be undertaken till morning—it was pitch dark and pissing rain outside. Long found that he trusted McLoughlin more than he trusted McGillivray. “The deportment of this gentleman,” Long later wrote in his journal, “was calculated to leave on our minds the most favourable impressions as to his humanity and hospitality.”⁴

In the morning, the men searched all around for the girls’ tracks in the wet earth. However, no evidence was found of their departure either by canoe or foot. McLoughlin offered a reward to anyone who could find their trail, catch them, and bring them back safely. Two Indians volunteered. While Tanner waited anxiously, the rain lifted and Long’s canoemen went to work repairing the canoes. The search for the girls notwithstanding, Long was eager to get underway. Toward dusk, the two Indian searchers returned, empty-handed. With the repairs on the canoes completed, Long announced that the expedition would wait until 10:00 a.m. the next morning to make its departure in the hope that the girls would come back by their own volition before then.⁵

That night and the next morning there was still no sign of them. As the hour advanced, everyone tried to console Tanner and persuade him to leave with the expedition anyway, without his daughters. The Americans urged him to put his own safety first and not forfeit this chance to get back to Mackinac and proper medical care before winter. McLoughlin promised to make every effort to learn where the girls had gone. As soon as he discovered who they were with, he said, he would rescue them and keep them with him at Rainy Lake House until Tanner was healthy enough to return for them in the spring. McGillivray went on arguing—brutally, it seemed to Keating—that the girls had surely decided to forsake their father and join their mother at Lake of the Woods. Tanner would not even admit that possibility, for he believed the girls felt a stronger attachment to him and were sincere when they told him they would accompany him to Mackinac. He still feared they were captive. What if the girls’ captors were in collusion with some of the mixed-blood dependents living around the fort? Maybe the girls were hidden in one of their wigwams? If that should be the case, McLoughlin responded, then he would find them soon enough and keep them safe in his custody.⁶

At last Long’s men persuaded the anguished father to leave without his daughters. The canoes were loaded with fresh provisions purchased from the Hudson’s Bay Company. McLoughlin presented Long two pounds of tea as a parting gift. Tanner sat in Long’s canoe wedged among the packs with his right arm immobilized. The canoes pushed off. The strong and stout voyageurs sitting fore and aft of Long and Tanner dug their paddles into the water with their customary gusto. From the bank above the canoe landing, McLoughlin waved farewell.

It was to be a short parting between the doctor and the wounded American, however. At the first portage, Tanner debarked and walked onshore with the expedition without complaint, but on the next stretch of water his arm began to swell and ache unbearably. Just before they reached a small rapid at the outlet of Rainy Lake, Tanner suddenly announced that he could proceed no farther. The pain was too much. Pointing to the guardhouse at the outlet of the lake where employees of the trading post stood watch for Indians, he requested to be put ashore there. From that point, he could easily return to Rainy Lake House. Long directed the voyageurs to land the canoes.⁷

Tanner’s relief was clearly visible as he parted from the expedition—so much so that Long, Say, and Keating each remarked upon it and described the moment in their journals. Long focused on Tanner’s medical condition: the “considerable inflammation” of his arm, the sweat beading all over his face and hands, revealing a breaking fever. Say saw the sheen on Tanner’s cheeks and thought he was crying. It startled him, since until that moment Tanner had shown relatively little emotion through all his pain and torment. In fact, others had told Say that no one had ever seen the man shed a tear. “But it was evident that the conflict of emotions in his mind, at the time that he was compelled to land from our canoes, overpowered him, and his eyes glistened with a tear which he attempted in vain to shake off.” Keating, for his part, thought the flash in Tanner’s eyes was something else, a gleam of hope as his thoughts turned to renewing the search for his daughters. Although Keating believed along with the others that the girls had run off to find their mother, he also recognized that Tanner was utterly convinced of their loyalty to him. That could mean but one thing: that they were being held captive until he left the area. When Keating considered the girls—about sixteen and fourteen years of age, physically attractive, socially ­engaging—he well understood Tanner’s apprehension about their chances at the trading post.⁸

As there was a fair wind, Long’s pilot ordered the voyageurs to hoist sail for the all-day journey across the big waters of Rainy Lake. With the wind filling their square sails, the two canoes raced out into the sparkling cold waters. When the members of the expedition looked back, they saw Tanner’s solitary figure slowly diminish to a dark speck on the shoreline and finally disappear into the featureless forest-covered horizon that rimmed the whole, vast lake.

“At the H. Bay Co.’s Fort we met with an American by the name of ­Tanner,” Long had tersely written in his journal on the previous day. The words fail to satisfy. Unfortunately, he did not elaborate on them much, though it is clear from the official narrative of the expedition that he ruminated over Tanner’s unusual history and character afterwards and tried to put the man in some kind of context. Was he a lost American citizen? A tragic outcast? Or a useless vagabond and misanthrope? Was he, in a sense, still a captive of the Indians? Or had he turned quite Indian himself?

Long was a man of many strong loyalties—to God and country, to the army, to his men, to his Christian marriage. Personally, he did not care for this man who had broken so many bonds of his own. Tanner had forsaken the white man’s world for what end? That he might live among a race of savages? For Long, that was Tanner’s own errant choice, as it was the shame of all white Indians.