The Falcon essays

The Falcon essays John Tanner was only seven years old when the Shawneese Indians kidnapped him. Having not been able to go through many of the growing pains of being a young adult, he was thrown into a situation where he was mistreated, beaten, and worked almost to the point of almost death. After he had spent nearly two years of his life in a terrible situation where he was treated like an animal, he was sold to a family of Ojibwas. They immediately treated him like an equal, something Tanner never faced before. Throughout his life, John Tanner has been faced with many personal experiences that influenced the way he presents the Ojibwa to the readers of his book, The Falcon. Specifically, the two years of his life that he spent with the Shawneese and the way he treated because of his true cultural identity, white, may have skewed his perception of the Indian population as a whole. When Tanner was a child, at this point still with his original family, he frequently moved around a lot. Never having much responsibility, except watching his little brother, he lived like a child should. However, when the Shawneese Indians took him he was faced with a different type of life all together. When Tanner first arrived in the Shawneese village he was forced to go through specific ceremonies to fulfill the requirement for replacing the grieving mothers child. After, he was left exhausted, and soon fell asleep. When he awoke, he had a huge gash on his head and had been thrown in the bushes because one of the other Indians did not approve of him. For the remainder of the time he was with the Shawneese, he was forced to do hard manual labor such as carrying full deer back to camp after the hunt, gathering corn, and steering the canoe. Tanner recalls how the hunters would frequently get drunk and threaten to kill him, forcing the young boy to hide in the woods. When the Ojibwa finally purchased the boy from the Shawneese he didnt expect any...