Читать книгу A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner. U.S. Interpreter at the Saut de Ste. Marie онлайн

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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.