Customer Reviews

The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (Nature Library, Penguin)

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"The Falcon" is the autobiography of Shaw-Shaw-Wa Be-Na-Se or John Tanner, a White Indian captured by the Shawnee along the Ohio River in 1789 and later sold to an Ojibwa family in northern Michigan. He went on to live a long and fascinating life among the Indians of the Old Northwest working as a trapper for the Hudson Bay Company and serving as the interpreter at the trading post at Sault St. Marie. He spent some time searching out his white family in Kentucky before returning to Michigan to be with his Indian children, forever spurning the white way of life. He went on to write this narrative in 1830 shortly before becoming a murder suspect and disappearing into the north woods forever.

Tanner's narrative is truly amazing for it's matter-of-fact style and the wealth of information it contains on every facet of Indian life in the late 18th and early 19th century including hunting, family life, Indian-white relations, foodways, views on war and murder, even attitudes toward sexual orientation. Tanner tells a story from the point of view of a man who has lived a hard life but is determined to live it as well as he is able. He makes no romantic notions about the Indians nor does he have sentimental longings for his white family. Unlike other famous captivity narratives like those of Mary Rowlandson, James Smith, or Oliver Spencer, this story is of the unredeemed captive who willingly chooses to embrace the neo-lithic lifestyle and the hardships that such a life entails, but makes no regrets of his life choices.

The historical and ethnographical information contained here alone makes it worthwhile reading, but the pure human content the author puts into this work makes it truly great.

The Falcon, by John Tanner, is simply one of the most incredible
books I have ever read, and must be considered a classic.
It was utterly enthralling. I found myself wondering how he
ever wrote the book, since it is very well written, but he had
little knowledge of English until later life. Found out on the
web that back in Sault Ste Marie, he narrated his life to a doctor, who wrote it all down, and later published it.

This is an unsentimental account of a hunting-gathering life. Even with guns and metal knives, the Falcon faced starvation so frequently that it seemed practically routine. One of the saddest sentences is a simple, somewhat relieved declarative about a fever sweeping the area: "Only one of my children died."

The writing is intense, and builds slowly. Tanner is anything but dramatic, but the events of his life command respect. This is a book that no author could have created artficially: its power is natural.

Nonetheless, I would have liked to learn something about where, when, and by whom the book was written. I suspect my Penguin paperback may be missing something. Page 228 refers me to a note at the end of the volume, but it is not there.

Generally, I do not care for Introductions. However, the Introduction by Louise Erdrich is worth reading carefully, before and after reading the narrative.

The Falcon is a story of Native American life in the late 18th and early 19th century, as experienced by a white man, John Tanner. Tanner was captured by the Shawnee at an early age and eventually adopted into the Ojibwa Nation of Western Ontario, Eastern Manitoba and Northern Michigan. After years of life with the Ojibway, he attempted unsuccessfully to return to his white relatives in Kentucky. Forget Natty Bumppo of Last of the Mohicans, John Dunbar of Dances With Wolves, Jack Crabb of Little Big Man, or A Man Called Horse; This is the real thing. This is a bleak grim tale of survival totally devoid of any romanticism or objectivity.

The life of Tanner and his adoptive people, the Ojibway, was one long struggle to survive in an inhospitable wilderness where death from starvation, disease, mishap or murder was constantly at hand. I have read countless stories of native life, but never one which presented the overwhelming harshness of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle as vividly as this book.

The narrative is uncompromisingly grim, yet compelling beyond any work of fiction. The Native people are not the Noble Savage or the Fiendish Redskin of stereotype. They are shown as brave and resourceful, or lazy and given to drink, by turns. In short, they are shown as real human people.

From a modern perspective, the survival capabilities of these people are nothing short of incredible. I am in awe of the sheer will to live that compelled them to carry on throughout lives so devoid of anything we of today would call comfort.

John Tanner was not famous in the history of the frontier. Neither was he a fictional hero like the characters I previously mentioned, but the story of his excruciatingly difficult life as a man of two worlds, yet fully at home in neither, is one of the most amazing stories of the early days of North America that I have ever read.

One small complaint: The introduction was written by Louise Erdrich, and she refers to the book as a much-read, cherished family touchstone, but, in citing an incident in the text, she is completely mistaken. I am referring to the incident where Tanner returns to his lodge and finds it destroyed by fire. The actual event in the book is nothing like what Erdrich describes. She claims that Tanner cast one of his children out to die in the cold as punishment for burning the lodge. However, the child was actually his adoptive sibling, and she did not die as Erdrich said, but is mentioned several more times in the narrative, up until her marriage. A small point, but she should have re-read the book before writing the introduction. I'm sure Tanner himself wouldn't have liked what Erdrich wrote one bit.

Tanner tells with no embelishment to himself or others what life in the mid-north was really like in the turn of the 18th century. He gives one of the few narratives without pulling punches that at times makes him look foolish, meanhearted, and scared yet meeting those opposite traits with courage. Tanner tells of the good times and the bad, the problems of living in a dual culture and accepted by neither. Tanner explains what it was to sustain a indigenous family he had adopted and the suffering from nature and white cultures

In 1789 when he was a nine year-old boy, his mother already dead, John Tanner's family settled upon a Kentucky farm where the Big Miami and Ohio rivers meet. Shortly thereafter, this piece of "Dark and Bloody Ground" was visited by a Shawnee war party. Two Indians seized young Tanner and forcibly marched him north toward modern day Toledo, then up to Detroit. The child was taken further north to live with his captive family, made to work and bear burdens, purposely starved, frequently beaten, and at one point tomahawked for having fallen asleep in exhaustion. Two years of this cruel treatment was relieved when the boy was purchased in Mackinac by an old Ottawa woman, Net-no-kwa. This formidable human being was the leader of her band and with her John Tanner, now called Shaw-shaw-wa ne-ba-se (the Falcon), would roam throughout what would become northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Western Ontario and Manitoba, living primarily among Net-no-kwa's Ojibwa friends and relations. For the next thirty years he would hunt, trap, trade, marry and live entirely as an Indian, forgetting the English language and white man ways - though Tanner continued to face resentment and violence long into adulthood because of his white origin. These resentments and other intrigues eventually led Tanner to attempt a return to the States and a reunion with surviving family members, soon finding himself ill-suited to the white man's life and returning to the northern wilderness. He apparently related his life's story to a learned man among the Sault Sainte Marie traders shortly before disappearing again in 1846 amidst charges of murder (afterward disproved). The date and whereabouts of his death are unknown.

There are times when the narrative seems a relentless tale of brutality, privation and wrenching heartbreak, as Tanner and his band struggle for daily sustenance, suffer against wretched cold and hunger, fall to previously unknown illnesses and grievous injuries, and murder each other in drunken brawls and blood feuds. And then suddenly appear passages as stunning for the elegant and graceful simplicity in which they're related as for the events depicted. An extended passage (if I may) illustrates the point: "Pe-shau-ba, upon whom the death of his friend Waw-so had made some impression, was soon taken violently ill. He was conscious that his end was approaching, and very frequently told us he should not live long. One day he said to me, "I remember before I came to live in this world, I was with the Great Spirit above. And I often looked down, and saw men upon the earth. I saw many good and desirable things, and among others, a beautiful woman, and as I looked day after day at the woman he said to me, `Pe-shau-ba, do you love the woman you are so often looking at?' I told him I did. Then he said to me, `Go down and spend a few winters on earth. You cannot stay long, and you must remember to be always kind and good to my children whom you see below.' So I came down, but I have never forgotten what was said to me. I have always stood in the smoke between the two bands when my people fought with their enemies. I have not struck my friends in their lodges. I have disregarded the foolishness of young men who would have offended me, but have always been ready and willing to lead our brave men against the Sioux. I have always gone into battle painted black, as I now am, and I now hear the same voice that talked to me before I came to this world: it tells me I can remain no longer. To you, my brother, I have been a protector, and you will be sorry when I leave you; but be not like a woman, you will soon follow in my path." He then put on the new clothes I had given him to wear below, walked out of the lodge, looked at the sun, the sky, the lake, and the distant hills; then come in, and lay down composedly in his place in the lodge, and in a few minutes ceased to breathe."

Other rewarding passages include Tanner's encounter with the ghosts of two dead brothers at a riverside encampment; an illness so debilitating that a despairing Tanner attempts to end his life; and intrigue and violence during a river-borne effort to bring two of his children out of Indian country. Many of the troubles visited upon Tanner and his band are caused by his adoptive brother Wa-me-gon-a-biew, a cowardly but quarrelsome man, vindictive, unpredictable and capable of great violence. His nearly every appearance in the narrative is villainous.

Published many times, most recently by Penguin Classics, "The Falcon" transcends because it is not merely an "Indian captivity narrative", but a remarkable portrait of 1790s - 1830s Indian life and culture. We are very fortunate that it has survived.

I bought this book because John Tanner is my ancestor. Stories had been told in my family here in Kentucky about our relative being captured by Indians, but I enjoyed absorbing this sad written tale of his life. It is not a happy tale, but a great historical read for any history buffs (he's there when Lewis and Clark go through on their Voyage of Discovery ).

I have read the Tanner book also.

It was an eye opener as to the kindness and depravity of peoples.

I wish history had been this interesting in school. I think I learned more from this book and Andrew Durnford , another Daudert book,than I did in any history or sociology class.

Both books gave me history lessons that I didn't get in school.

The transparency that they provide into life of a different time is exemplary!

These reading let me see that my views of human nature are not too obscure!

This appears to be a reprint of the original text published by Ross & Haines in 1956. There were only two thousand copies originally printed.

I read this book twice. It is history and the plight of pioneers. Here is a man who was taken from his heritage against his will and traded to a Indian band. He was mistreated. He never had the opportunity to grow up with parents that would send him to school, never had the love of his birth mother or the strong hand of his father. He never knew his siblings. But he had an inner strength that would see him grow up to be a fine hunter, unafraid in a wild land, no cry baby here. I never knew him but wished I had. I see his profile and his strength in his great-grand daughter my grandmother.