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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The truth probably lies in a combination of these points of view. Keating knew Tanner in 1823, before Tanner had a chance to become disillusioned as to his place in society. Even before Tanner left the Indians he learned to drink, but rather conservatively, it would seem on the whole. The other commentators knew him later, after he had fought his personal battle with civilization and had lost; when he had found at last that he could not live in an Indian hut, under Indian conditions of sanitation, follow Indian customs in treatment of his family, and still be accepted as a white. Here then, it might seem, was a man who, battling with his own inner turmoil of ideas and evaluations, unaccountably found himself in desperate conflict with the mores of his native race. He fought back, it would seem, with considerable restraint, considering his background, and in the end, lonely, friendless, his oldest daughter separated from him by legislative edict, the people of his adopted town holding him in alternate contempt and awe, even his friends beginning to fear violence from him, he disappeared under a cloud.