Voyageur's Highway: Minnesota's Border Lake Land

An Indian Captive

A n Indian Caplive JUST as the United States was adopting a constitution, a blueeyed lad of some ten years, John Tanner, was stolen by Indians from his father’s stockaded cabin in Kentucky, near the mouth of the Miami River. H e was fairly well treated by his kidnapers, since it was for adoption by a bereaved Indian mother, the Otter Woman, that he had been abducted. “Shawshaw -wabe-nase” (the Falcon) he now became. By that name he was to be known for thirty years among the Indians. After a few years, he was adopted a second time and taken by his new foster mother, Net-no-kwa, to her husband, Taw-ga-weninne (the Hunter), a Chippewa of the Red River country. After thirty years among the Indians of Minnesota’s border waters, Tanner returned to civilization at Sault Ste. Marie, where a well-known army doctor, Edwin James, took down the story of the captive from his own lips. It is probably the most authentic picture of Indian life through Indian eyes that has come to us. For Tanner became an Indian in all respects save blood. The Indian’s language, craft, and point of view became his. He married an Indian woman and had Indian children , one of whom, James Tanner, became a well-known missionary to his own people in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Fortunate it is for us that his story was printed. Reading it we are back on the border lakes, under great pines, skimming the waters in canoes of our own construction. Our com68 An Indian Captive JUST as the United States was adopting a constitution, a blueeyed lad of some ten years, John Tanner, was stolen by Indians from his father's stockaded cabin in Kentucky, near the mouth of the Miami River. He was fairly well treated by his kidnapers, since it was for adoption by a bereaved Indian mother, the Otter Woman, that he had been abducted. "Shawshaw -wabe-nase" (the Falcon) he now became. By that name he was to be known for thirty years among the Indians. After a few years, he was adopted a second time and taken by his new foster mother, Net-no-kwa, to her husband, Taw-ga-weninne (the Hunter), a Chippewa of the Red River country. After thirty years among the Indians of Minnesota's border waters, Tanner returned to civilization at Sault Ste. Marie, where a well-known army doctor, Edwin James, took down the story of the captive from his own lips. It is probably the most authentic picture of Indian life through Indian eyes that has come to us. For Tanner became an Indian in all respects save blood. The Indian's language, craft, and point of view became his. He married an Indian woman and had Indian children , one of whom, James Tanner, became a well-known missionary to his own people in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Fortunate it is for us that his story was printed. Reading it we are back on the border lakes, under great pines, skimming the waters in canoes of our own construction. Our com68 A n Indian CaptivL panions are our Indian father, mother, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. We stalk the moose, one of the wariest beasts of the forest, for which we have the greatest respect. Again, we go on the war path deep into Minnesota’s southern territory. W e endure famine and face starvation frequently. W e hunt the ‘buffalo, break up beaver houses, make maple sugar, gather wild rice, go on drunken frolics, and get cheated by the numerous English and American traders. And always and ever we are on the move. Again and again we pass rapidly over the surfaces of Rainy, La Croix, and Basswood lakes, frequently in rain. Often we are held wind-bound on their islands and shores. This pseudo-Indian noted the animals, birds, and fishes of his hunting grounds. Of one early period he tells: “Afterwards , I directed my attention more to the hunting of beaver. I knew of more than twenty gangs of beaver in the country about my camp, and I now went and began to break up the lodges, but I was much surprised to find nearly all of them empty. At last I found that some kind of distemper was prevailing among these animals, which destroyed them in vast numbers. . . . Many of them, which I opened, were red and bloody about the heart. Those...