The Bastard of Fort Stikine Read online

  The doctor’s initial meeting with Kannaquassé was an odd one. When McLoughlin asked who had killed his son, Kannaquassé cryptically replied that he knew but would tell no one except Governor Simpson for fear of causing another murder. Outraged, McLoughlin stormed from the room. Determined to have his questions answered, he ordered a formal inquest be convened at Fort Nisqually. McLoughlin knew his enemy, and he feared that if he interrogated Kannaquassé himself, Simpson would dismiss the results as biased. He appointed a panel of impartial officers to head the investigation, including chief trader Donald Manson, Captain William McNeill, and the Reverend Jason Lee.

  Kannaquassé was brought before the panel on July 15, 1842. His testimony was a revelation, for his recollections of the night of April 21 bore little resemblance to the story Simpson was peddling.

  six

  An Underhanded Complement

  Like the outpost that housed them, Stikine’s traders were the dregs of the Honourable Company’s holdings. Even the region’s chief factor acknowledged that “these men had been sent to Stikine because no one else wanted them, there were no replacements and they could not desert from there.” David McLoughlin said simply, “Our people here are such beasts.”

  Beasts they were, and of all stripes. Fort Stikine had “a somewhat volatile ethnic mix.” Viewed today, the outpost’s roster is an ethnographer’s nightmare, for the ancestry of the fort’s inhabitants defies labels or classification. How a man chose to self-identify bore little relation to how others perceived him, and it became a quagmire of cultural relativism. To full-blooded aboriginals, the fort’s senior members were “white men,” “Frenchmen,” or “Canadians.” Such epithets irked the HBC heads in Montreal and London, men to whom such labels rightfully applied. To the Company’s elite, including George Simpson, John McLoughlin Jr. and his band of miscreants were “half-breeds,” irrespective of what “breed” made up the non-white half. They painted McLoughlin (who was part Cree) with the same brush as his Iroquois traders, dismissing them all as bois brûlé, a derogatory reference to the burnt wood colour of their skin. This one-slander-fits-all approach was reflected in company documents, which slapped all indigenous peoples with the label “Indian,” a word now mercifully retired to our nation’s closet of politically incorrect terminology. This institutionalized cultural insensitivity led scholar Hamar Foster to argue that the fur traders “confused tribes with clans; it is therefore often difficult to reconcile their records with the writings of anthropologists.”

  For the sake of simplicity, and to best reflect the historical record, it is prudent to divide the men of Stikine into three groups: the “Canadians” or “white men” (including McLoughlin and McPherson); the “Sandwich Islanders” or “Kanakas” (low-level HBC employees of Hawaiian heritage); and the “Indians,” “natives,” or “savages” who surrounded the outpost and alternately traded with or attacked it.

  Fraternization among the three groups was unthinkable, and all efforts by the Company to integrate the men were futile. The quirks of the fur trade forced them to live in close proximity, but nothing could make them interact: “They had lived apart before entering the service and separated ‘by mutual consent’ when encamped: ‘the Iroquois had a fire; the French Canadians had a fire’ and the officers had a fire.” No one thought it racist at the time; it was merely the way of the world, and, as long-time HBC employee George Roberts so deftly put it, “a general comingling would not do.”

  In this regard, the fish stank from the head down, for George Simpson had no qualms about basing his hiring decisions solely on the ancestry of the applicant. He denied Simon McGillivray a promotion simply because he possessed “a good deal of the Indian, in disposition as well as in blood and appearance.” Simpson was equally intolerant of his own kind, and he believed the Scots and the Irish were especially “inclined to form leagues and cabals which might be dangerous to the peace of the Country.” Simpson was so convinced that he intentionally recruited few of his fellow countrymen and ordered they be stationed separately to keep them from organizing.

  To make matters worse, this highly combustible ethnic mix was plunked down in the midst of what Dr. McLoughlin called “the most numerous and worst disposed Indians on the Coast.” The fort’s first commander, William Rae, understated the conflict when he informed headquarters that the locals were “by no means in good humour with us,” although that may have been the liquor talking. James Douglas generously described one local band as “cheerful,” even though he spent very little time at Stikine and was “probably not the best judge of how cheerful everyone was.”

  Baron von Wrangel’s calamitous prophecy proved astute, and the fort’s twenty-man complement was woefully outnumbered. The outpost’s defences were “very humble indeed,” a fact the locals knew all too well, as one incident in the spring of 1842 illustrates. On a quiet afternoon, five aboriginals “came to the gate and began to abuse the establishment.” They had no skins to trade but demanded rum be “given to them for nothing.” When no liquor was forthcoming, the visitors “threatened to kill someone,” but John McLoughlin knew the game and was certain the locals were only “doing so to see if I would give them any” rum. The chief trader remained out of sight, mindful that anything he said “would have made them worse.” Ignored and denied, they left, only to return a week later to wage further mischief.

  The exchange casts an unflattering light on two sources of tension between the HBC and its aboriginal neighbours: language and liquor. “No one at Stikine could speak or understand ‘a syllable’ of the local language.” Initially they relied on a female translator with little English before making a lateral move to their interpreter Hanega Joe. On the scale of poor business decisions, the Company’s failure to communicate was second only to its policy of plying aboriginals with alcohol. “At Stikine the Indians got all the Rum they could purchase,” and purchase they did.

  When the HBC first raised its flag at Stikine, the trade currency was their iconic multi-stripe point blankets. Although the Company believed such blankets were prized because the wool retained heat even when wet, it was not long before the residents of Stikine complained of “the bad quality of our B.B. Blankets,” griping “you may push your finger through them with the greatest ease.” Not only were the blankets thin, they stank. Natives and employees alike described a camphoric fug emanating from the wool, the result of prolonged storage in damp cargo holds. The criticisms didn’t stop with the blankets; “the natives also complain of the bad quality of our beaver traps,” wrote one chief trader, who had little recourse but to offer liquor instead.

  The pitfalls of frontier capitalism soon gave way to the need for security. Rae and McLoughlin had inherited a fort in name only. The perimeter was far from impenetrable, and the threatening hordes could simply walk in at their leisure. McLoughlin told his commanders, “I think it my duty to inform you that I shall have a great many alterations to make,” and he decided his first order of business was to surround the fort with new pickets.

  Completing the walls would have been simple, were it not for the men inside them. The HBC had drained the dregs of the employment pool to assemble the fort’s roster, leaving McLoughlin very little to work with. In every letter sent up the HBC chain, McLoughlin made his needs clear: “We require men that can do their duty but the most part of the men here are not able to make themselves useful in any way.” His missives are equal parts dismal augury and naked pleading: “I am here left alone with two assistants who cannot speak the language or make themselves understood. I endeavour to battle the watch as well as I can until someone is sent.” As the months ticked by, McLoughlin’s requests grew more and more desperate.

  There is, of course, a certain irony in watching McLoughlin, a man long dismissed as indolent and useless, bemoan the sloth of his charges: “The more I see of the men, the more I have to complain of them. I am obliged to mark everything that is to be done.” In fairness, the men gave him plenty to complain about. Still, McLough
lin made the best of a bad situation, and you have to admire his courage, if not his judgement. He had a weakness for lost causes, having been labelled one his entire life.

  There were minor triumphs. Even without making any changes in personnel, he succeeded in adding “new pickets to one side of the Fort.” The men also built a mill to process local grain and the consignment of wheat delivered by the annual trading ships, which dropped off provisions and collected the harvested skins. Under McLoughlin’s leadership, the nascent fort was turning a tidy profit, and despite persistent conflict with the locals, the fur trade remained brisk.

  §

  According to a census in the fort’s daily journal, the roster was evenly divided: there were eleven Kanakas and twelve Canadians, including Metis (“half-breeds”) and Iroquois. Nearly all the Kanakas could “neither work, understand or be understood.” Their names were considered too complicated for English tongues and two — Captain Cole and Joe Lamb — had adopted anglicized names to ingratiate themselves with their superiors.

  On paper and in practice, the Kanakas were treated as a single entity — an easily dismissed, innocuous, eleven-headed creature. Even so, a few Kanakas earned special notice in company records. Nahua was the fort’s delicate cook, prone to effusive displays of emotion. Graced with a thoughtful face that bordered on pretty, Nahua became the target for the complement’s taunts and pent-up aggression. Kakepé, “who has been taught to read and write, and instructed in the Scriptures and who knoweth the nature of an oath,” was one of McLoughlin’s favourites, prized for his quiet strength and loyalty. Kanakanui was simply “a Sandwich Islander who has never been baptised,” a meaningful distinction at the time. There were others — Okaia, Powkow, Kakulukulu, and Anahi, to name a few — who would play minor roles in the events to come, but to the Company they were simply the Sandwich Islanders: interchangeable, forgettable, and for the most part useless.

  Whatever their shortcomings, the Kanakas were godsends compared to their Canadian counterparts. All the “white men” were young — in their twenties and early thirties — strongly built, and just big and dumb enough to cause real havoc. One such Canadian, Benoni Fleury, was considered by all to be “a half fool, or in other words very stupid.” He was also an unrepentant drunkard, often too intoxicated or hungover to be of real use. What little obedience he may have had dissolved instantly in the booze, and he was not above taking a swing at anyone, including his boss. For all his sins, Fleury was a lovable rogue, a blistering, boisterous reprobate who won the hearts of his Stikine fellows, including McLoughlin, who forgave him every trespass and embraced the Metis as a long-lost brother.

  Drunk or sober, Fleury often kept company with a fellow lout, Francois Pressé. In one of the fort’s earliest journal entries, William Rae described Pressé as “a half-breed and passable.” Of course, Rae had no way of knowing that “Pressé had been dismissed from Moose [Factory] for Shooting at a man.”

  Rae’s first impressions of the other Canadians were equally tepid. Some, such as Charles Belanger and Simon Aneuharazie, were charmless but harmless, while others warranted a brief disclaimer. William Lasserte seemed to be “a smart lad,” while Louis Leclaire struck the chief as “a good man.” Kinder words were harder to come by for the churlish George Heron, who was dismissed as “a half fool” and a “Blackguard…who does not know his prayers.” Heron got off easy compared to Oliver Martineau, who exasperated his chief trader to such a degree that official company records state Oliver “appears to be a half idiot and understands neither French or English.” The mouth-breathing Martineau, in turn, paled next to the boorish Phillip Smith, widely regarded as “the most Criminal man among these men.” Although the exact nature of his crimes remains unknown, his character was immortalized by John McLoughlin Sr., who proclaimed Smith to be of “Ill Nature and Bad temper,” a scoundrel who was always “getting into difficulties with the other men.”

  As defective as the Canadians were, a small subset garnered the harshest criticism and caused the greatest concern: the Iroquois. They were feared by their Canadian fort-mates because of “the ferocity that characterized their pagan ancestors” and a widespread belief that “they do not pay great deference to the laws of God.” Physically, they were “the most uncouth, savage looking beings…mouth from ear to ear, cheek-bones remarkably high, low projecting forehead, hair like a horse’s mane, and eyes red and swollen by continual intoxication.” At Stikine, the Iroquois contingent numbered only three — Antoine Kawannassé, Pierre Kannaquassé, and Urbain Heroux — but what it lacked in size, it gained in terror.

  Antoine Kawannassé, the least thug-like, was considered by many to be too mentally challenged to be truly troublesome. The impairment was relatively recent, as Rae noted in the fort’s journal: Kawannassé was “a good man before he had the fever but has been sickly ever since.” The fever had dulled his intelligence, but the HBC still handed him a gun.

  Everyone knew Kawannassé was slow, but Pierre Kannaquassé prided himself on his cat-like reflexes and mental acuity. Others disagreed. Most thought Kannaquassé was more smartass than smart, and he put his lightning-fast agility to ill use. “Pierre Kanaquassi [sic] is accused of having murdered and Robbed before he came” to Stikine — a checkered past kept hidden from McLoughlin. Kannaquassé was universally described as “a blackguard” and “one of the Greatest villains in the country…whom necessity alone has obliged us to Employ.” George Simpson noted that Kannaquassé “appears to have been a character so vicious that nothing but the strictest discipline could have ever hoped to govern an establishment of which such a man was a member.” To this most vicious and villainous creature, the HBC handed two guns and a pistol.

  Kannaquassé’s pre-employment crime spree did not hold a candle to that of Urbain Heroux. The man was “addicted to liquor” and a convicted felon who had been prosecuted in Canada by his own relatives for burglary and robbery. The Honourable Company claimed they knew nothing of Heroux’s criminal history when they hired him, despite the fact “Heroux was tried and condemned for Robbery at three Rivers and subsequently taken up for Larceny when his father Bought off the Evidence.” That same father eventually had his son imprisoned on account of his violent conduct, but the charges were dropped on the condition Heroux join the HBC and leave Upper Canada for good.

  Heroux spoke in a patois all his own, a staccato blend of his native tongue, French, and blue-streak profanity. “He would fly into a violent rage at the slightest opposition and shower threats and curses on every one near him in the most brutal manner.” William Lasserte thought Heroux’s “savage looks and furious deportment made him an object of terror,” and Heroux cultivated this fearsome image right down to his clothes: “Heroux’s dress was remarkable, he normally wore a red worsted cap…and the belt of his powder horn which he also wore at the time was of red cloth more than two inches wide.” Indeed, his head and hat were one, inseparable save for the rare bath. In dress and in manner, Heroux commanded attention and a certain degree of grudging respect for sheer audacity and menace. At first glance, Heroux fooled William Rae, who thought the Iroquois was a “good man.”

  Fort Stikine was a dumping ground for wrecked and criminal minds, and a last resort for the HBC’s most problematic employees. Dr. McLoughlin told George Simpson that, “As a Body the Canadians and Iroquois were the Greatest Blackguards in the department and were sent to Stikine to prevent their giving trouble in other places.” Simpson could not have cared less. In its infinite wisdom, the Hudson’s Bay Company had hired criminals, issued them guns and a generous monthly allotment of liquor, and shipped them off to a cesspool. What could possibly go wrong?

  §

  It escaped no one’s attention that Stikine’s new chief trader and the region’s chief factor shared the same name, and the spectre of nepotism hovered unspoken over the fort. To avoid the appearance of favouritism, John McLoughlin Jr. was ordered to report directly to an intermediary, a fellow chief trader named John Work. Irish born, Wo
rk was one of Governor Simpson’s pets because he did not have a speck of aboriginal blood in him. By 1841, Work had served nearly three decades with the HBC and had earned partial credit in the Governor’s book as “a very steady pains taking man…[who] bears a fair private character.” Simpson thought less of Work’s mien, declaring him to be “a queer looking fellow, of Clownish Manners and address, indeed there is a good deal of simplicity approaching to idiocy in his appearance.” Still, Simpson reasoned, Work was superior to the mixed-race McLoughlin, and so Work became McLoughlin’s boss.

  McLoughlin’s regular duties included sending monthly written reports to Work. He often used these dispatches to vent his dissatisfaction with the men, but he never mentioned any overt threats to his life. McLoughlin kept his fears to himself, convinced that “Work might draw negative conclusions about his capacity as a leader” if he spoke too freely. He had come too far to be branded as feckless or unstable again.

  To the untrained eye, McLoughlin seemed poised and in control, but a thunderstorm raged between his ears. He was paranoid, consumed with worry, and plagued by insomnia. Between the proposed poisoning and the random bullets, there had been four serious attempts made on his life, all perpetrated by his own men. He overheard the grumbling in the barracks and knew that some of the men wanted him dead. He was terrified, but he was also proud, and his hubris would prove his undoing.

  McLoughlin’s pride kept him from sharing his troubles with his father, for he could not bear the thought of disappointing him yet again by losing control of his men. Discipline continued to be his stumbling block at Stikine, a threat far greater than the one posed by hostile natives. Given the criminal element under his command, McLoughlin soon learned the only way to stop violence was with violence, as it was the sole language such men understood. His efforts at governing without the liberal use of corporal punishment were not working. In an ominous letter sent to John Work in the weeks before his death, McLoughlin lamented that if things did not soon improve, “I shall be obliged to use measures which I am afraid will not be approved by the Gentleman in Charge of Columbia District.”