Koochiching Museums

John Tanner the Falcon requested permission to go and try to kill some pigeons with a pistol, his mother Net-no-kwa said “it is time for my son to begin to learn to be a hunter” and accordingly his father Taw-ga-we-ninne loaded a pistol and gave it to him saying “go my son and if you kill anything with this you shall immediately have a gun and learn to hunt.” The Falcon’s anxiety was never greater for success, he had not gone far from the camp before he saw pigeons, and some

John Tanner was a captive, the men were often drunk and whenever that was so John learned to run and hide in the woods and dared not return before their drunken folly was over. John had been taken and two years passed during which he was constantly suffering from hunger; and though sometimes strangers or those of his family fed him he never had enough to eat. The old woman known as “the Otter woman” treated him with kindness as did her daughters and her youngest son who was a