In most of the evidence it is shown that Boucher ordered Semple in French, Semple answering in English. I have given it all in English.
A full account of Seven Oaks will be found in the novel, “Lords of the North,” with free rendering of Pierre’s song. The fate of the Deschamps will be found in “The Story of the Trapper.”
Coltman’s official report is marvelously impartial, considering he had formerly been an agent for the H. B. C. Major Fletcher did not count. Tradition and private letters of Sherbrooke relate that the major was scarcely sober during the journey of investigation.
Full account of Tanner’s life will be found in the Minnesota Hist. Society’s Collections. Tanner was the son of a clergyman on the Ohio. He was stolen by wandering Shawnees when barely eight years old, and sold to a woman chieftain of the Ottawas at the Sault. Here at an early age he married a native girl. When his brother found him at Red River, Tanner was averse to going back to civilization: He hated the white man clothes, which his brother induced him to wear, and appeared at Mackinac a grotesque figure with coat sleeves and trouser legs foreshortened. The Wisconsin Society’s Historical Collection contains an account of him at this period. At Mackinac, his squaw wife, of whom he was very fond, refused to go on with him to the white man’s land, and she remained at Mackinac. Poor Tanner’s stay in civilization was short. He came back to the Sault with a white wife. The man, of whose death he was accused, was the brother of Henry Schoolcraft at the Sault. The quarrel was over attentions to a young daughter of Tanner’s. As stated in the main story, a blackguard soldier, not Tanner, was the real murderer.
Instructions from Governor Semple to Colin Robertson.
Fort Douglas, 12 April, 1816.
Colin Robertson, Esq.,