The third wife was variously described as a poor but respectable member of the Baptist church, and by another writer as a chambermaid in Ben Woodworth’s hotel (an obviously slurring reference; again the writers’ personal sympathies and antipathies color their writings). There seems little doubt, however, that she could not endure conditions in the Tanner menage, which must have been very Indian-like, and asked men in Sault Ste. Marie to advise her. The advice was not given, but a purse was made up to help her “escape.”
There is likewise some confusion as to his children. Quite likely Martha was the oldest, having been born about 1808, and she lived a long and useful life as a teacher. Mary may have been the second, born in 1809, and it was she who died in 1820. Lucy, the baby born in 1820, was drowned in a shipwreck on Lake Michigan. She had been given up for adoption by Tanner before she was a year old, and, Indian-like, he never more had anything to do with her.
Since there were two other children with him in 1820, James and John must have been on the scene. One report mentions two Johns; another says one brother was an Indian chief, and another says John was killed at the Battle of Bull Run. James became a minister; he was not too well spoken of, and died in a fall from a wagon about the time of the Riel Rebellion. Of the two children born after 1820, nothing appears—nor of the one born to his wife from Detroit.
The killing of James Schoolcraft requires some elaboration, for it is that crime that put Tanner under a cloud. True, he was unsocial and often violent and had been locked up in jail to recover from his fits of temper, but he had not committed a felony. He had threatened Doctor James for writing things that made people ridicule him, but no printed record appears that he ever tried to implement the threat, though Thomas W. Field flatly says Tanner tried to kill Doctor James (this seems to be on the authority of Henry Schoolcraft, who does not say that; he says Tanner “threatened” to kill the doctor). Field’s is a strong statement, especially so since in the same sentence Field says Tanner “actually murdered” James Schoolcraft. A murder, of course, is a legal conviction, and it does not seem reasonable that Tanner was ever tried in court, for he was never found. Further, the army officer, Lieutenant Tilden, is said by two writers to have confessed years later to the killing of Schoolcraft, and even the people of Sault Ste. Marie seem to have lost their strong conviction of Tanner’s guilt in this matter after a few years.
James Schoolcraft was a “gay, handsome” man, and Tanner was supposed to have killed him for having improper relations with Tanner’s daughter. This would imply a young daughter, for among Indians the value of chastity was realistically appraised; it was common practice among many tribes to put a higher value on a girl, for purposes of marriage, if she was a virgin. Bear in mind that a husband invariably paid the parents for a girl he married, and her marriage value decreased as her sexual experience increased. In this respect the Indians were quite civilized.
But none of Tanner’s children had lived with him for years; all accounts agree on that. Therefore it appears that the last two children born to his second wife must have returned with her to her people, and likely the small child of his third wife must have been taken with her; this last child, at any rate, would have been too young for any normal relationship with James Schoolcraft—and nothing else is even implied. Therefore there was only Martha who may have been in Sault Ste. Marie (Lucy and Mary both having died), and Martha was probably 38 years old, and far beyond the age where an Indian would feel impelled to kill to preserve her value, or a white parent to protect her honor. In other words, she had reached the age of discretion. For the record, however, no hint is ever given that Martha was involved, and all accounts say that she lived a good and useful life.
Who, then, did kill Schoolcraft? One account offers this answer: Schoolcraft and Lieutenant Tilden were rivals for the attention of a woman. Likewise, there were other bits of evidence that seemed to indicate Tilden, while the main thing against Tanner was his unsocial attitude. For those who consider character in the nature of evidence, it is interesting to know that Lieutenant Tilden was later court-martialed in Mexico. The two reports of Tilden’s confession must be considered, and likewise the fact that the body found years later was presumed to be Tanner’s. If it was, how did he die?
On the whole, John Tanner is representative of a class of persons not uncommon on the old frontier: repatriated captives. A great many of them had a hard life, and the reasons were several: they acquired Indian mores during their captivity, and it was never easy for them to reconcile their Indian ways with the new—to them—ways of the whites. Second, anything connected with Indians was looked on with deep suspicion by whites on the frontier; John Tanner was not only feared but also mistrusted. It would seem the public attitude toward him softened a great deal in retrospect, for in after years the citizens of Sault Ste. Marie refused to give Tilden a clean bill of health over the Schoolcraft killing.
It is, however, inescapable that Tanner’s attempt to live among the people of his blood was a tragic experience. He was not only a man without a country but a man without a race.
Here, then, is John Tanner’s Narrative, as it was first printed a hundred and twenty-six years ago. It is not a flowery and sensational tale of adventure, as were most Indian captivity stories of that time; it is rather a study of Indian life and customs, and would be much better known if it had been more readily available. But the book never appeared in more than the first edition, and is classed as quite rare. It was printed in New York in 1830 by G. & C. & H. Carvill; in London also in 1830; in Paris (French translation) in 1835 without the vocabularies; in Leipzig (German translation) in 1840 without the vocabularies. A partial mimeographed edition was produced in this country in 1940, but otherwise this work, which in all respects is deserving of the term “classic,” has been almost inaccessible to most persons. It would seem, therefore, that the present edition is a real service to students of the frontier.