Quetico’s John Tanner Story

• Posted on February 29, 2008 at 11:31 AM
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Planning the route on the Maligne River.

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Rarely am I up and out of the tent before Andy. However, what awaited us on day four of our extended canoe trip through Quetico last season had me out brewing morning coffee a half-hour before sunrise. The plan that day was to paddle down the Maligne River to Tanner Lake, and then camp near Tanner rapids. The Maligne River is one of the most scenic portions of the route. But it was Tanner Rapids that I was anticipating; to visit the very spot John Tanner was shot and left for dead, creating one of the most unique stories of the north ever published.

At the age of nine John Tanner was kidnapped by a group of Shawnee and then later sold to an Ojibwa woman near Lac La Croix for a keg of rum. For the next thirty years Tanner lived as a native, married a native woman, and raised a family amongst a native community. Later in his life, however, he made the decision to integrate his children into white society. It was this decision that nearly cost him his life at Tanner Rapids.

In 1823 Tanner and his family traveled up the Maligne River on their way to Sault Ste. Marie where the children would attend a “white” school. His wife was opposed to Tanner’s intentions and secretly planned to have her brother shoot him en route.

“I had taken off my coat, and I was with great effort pushing up my canoe against the current [Tanner rapids] which compelled me to keep very near the shore, when the discharge of a gun at my side arrested my progress. I heard a bullet whistle pasty my head, and felt my side touched, at the same instant that the paddle fell from my right hand, and the hand itself dropped powerless to my side.” [Tanner, John. The Falcon. Penguin Books, 1830, 1994]

Of course, this is where the story gets interesting. Poor John Tanner knew nothing of his wife’s wicked intentions and that after the encounter she and her brother escaped back toward Lac la Croix with the children, leaving her husband for dead. In fact, he was more concerned over what was to happen to his wife and children after being shot then of his mortal wound. The bullet had shattered his right arm and reached near the lung, lodging itself under the breast bone. Making it worse, however, was a strand of poisoned deer sinew attached to the ball.

For two nights Tanner suffered from is wound but was eventually rescued by a group of Frenchmen from the Hudson’s Bay Company who happened to be paddling downstream, on their way to the Red River. The voyageurs brought Tanner to the fort at Rainy Lake where he was cared for, that is until one of the agents who didn’t necessarily like Tanner, believing him to be…”one of those worthless white men who remain in the Indian country from indolence, and for the sake of marrying squaws,…” [Tanner, John. The Falcon. Penguin Books, 1830, 1994] kicked him out of the fort and forced him to take care of his own wounds.

It took him well over a year to gain back his strength and it wasn’t for another few years that Tanner made it to Sault Ste. Marie. Here he worked as an interpreter for Henry Schoolcraft – and was eventually accused of murdering Schoolcraft’s youngest brother, James. Again, poor John Tanner found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn’t the murderer. It was an officer, Bryand Tilden Jr., who ironically was put in charge of the soldiers ordered to hunt John Tanner down for the murder of Schoolcraft. Tanner escaped after that, disappearing into obscurity. Never to be seen again. The only recorded evidence of John Tanner’s actually fatality was that of a skeleton discovered in a swamp near Sault Ste. Marie, that of an unidentified man who had possibly succumbed to suicide.

What a unique twist of fate. After living as a native for over thirty years and then being harshly dismissed by his captors, Tanner returned to his white society only to be banished once again. He was labeled the “White Indian,” an outcast, a man who was not savage or civilized, and after being accused of murder and escaping into the woods, the name “John Tanner” was frequently used by parents as a type bogeyman to keep their children from wandering off. At the same time, however, his life story was legendary. Literary greats, including Anna Jameson, became intrigued with Tanner. His troubled life became one of the great fascinations of the nineteenth century, especially after Edwin James recorded it in a book A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, published in 1827. It became a classic, used by educators as a way to characterize realistic native life. It was republished as a children’s book, Grey Hawk: Life and Adventures and later as a Canadian school reader John Tanner: Captive Boy Wanderer of the Border Lands. It was basically read by everyone, except for poor John Tanner. He couldn’t read.

Andy and I arrived at Tanner Rapids by mid-day and took the privilege of camping on Tanner Lake, on an island near the rapids themselves. To me, visiting a place such as Tanner Rapids perfectly exemplifies a canoe trip in Quetico Park. It’s the rich history that first draws you there; to be in the very spot where something unique had once happened. But the real thing that indulges your sense is to be at a place that’s just as wild now then it was when John Tanner past through.

True, witnessing areas are rare in our day and age, but camped out beside Quetico’s Tanner Rapids brought me back to a time when wild areas were the norm, and to me that’s what a canoe trip is all about.