DURING
THIRTY YEARS RESIDENCE AMONG
THE INDIANS
IN THE
INTERIOR OF NORTH AMERICA
PREPARED FOR THE PRESS
BY EDWIN JAMES, M.D.
Editor of an Account of Major Long’s Expedition from Pittsburgh
to the Rocky Mountains
Ross & Haines, Inc.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
1956
INTRODUCTION
The story of John Tanner is the tragic and age-old story of a man who had no country, no people, no one who understood him, no place to lay his head.
His Narrative, which is the story of his thirty years’ captivity among the Ojibways, was written a few years after he settled once more among the civilized whites. The material was written down and edited by Doctor Edwin James, and James’s foreword gives a hint of the almost insurmountable difficulties that surrounded Tanner’s attempt to establish himself among the whites. However, the real story of John Tanner’s long and tragic life unraveled after the book was printed in 1830, for Tanner spent sixteen more years trying to find a place for himself in white society.