The Bastard of Fort Stikine Read online

  It was a risk McLoughlin was willing to take, for he was finally basking in the glow of his father’s approval. He had grown up, and grown into, the man his father had always wanted him to be. McLoughlin was a rising star in a multinational corporation and had done the impossible: regained the trust and, dare he say it, the respect of George Simpson. John McLoughlin Jr. had reached his moral apex, the denouement of his life’s twisted journey. Any student of epic tragedy knows what must happen next.

  Thursday, April 21, 1842 — Midnight

  fort stikine

  From the sworn testimony of Pierre Kannaquassé.

  It began with the scuffle between McLoughlin and Benoni Fleury, although scuffle was too musical a word for it. It was a fight, and not a fair one at that. Fleury was falling-down drunk, barely able to form coherent sentences. McLoughlin was merely “elevated” from a few glasses of spirits but still in command of his faculties.

  The conflict had been brewing for weeks, and the animosity was not isolated to Fleury and his master. Many of the Canadians were openly hostile to the chief trader; Kannaquassé “made no secret of his dislike of McLoughlin,” and Heroux “was heard several times to threaten his life.” Some men did more than make empty threats. George Heron spent a sleepless night “at the foot of the stairs with the intention of shooting Mr. John had he come out of his room.” Lasserte once saw Kannaquassé in the gallery with his gun trained on McLoughlin’s front door, waiting to shoot. After countless failed attempts, all agreed “McLoughlin would certainly be put to death that night.”

  Faced with a mutinous crew, McLoughlin did what he could — he drank. Given the circumstances, it’s hard to begrudge him a little liquid courage. He could even be forgiven for plying his would-be assassins with alcohol in hopes of saving his own skin. Just after nine o’clock, McPherson arrived with the first of what would be many bottles that night. Accounts differ as to who drank and how much, or even why. Antoine Kawannassé said that “Mr. John had ordered him not to drink,” but Kannaquassé claimed to have seen people being forced to imbibe, and he was handed a flagon and told to drink it by McLoughlin. Leery of McLoughlin’s motives, Kannaquassé only pretended to drink, letting the amber liquid run down onto the front of his shirt. Benoni Fleury found the waste of perfectly good liquor unconscionable. He drained the dregs from Kannaquassé’s cup (and any others left unattended) before being carried to his room by McLoughlin. The squabble ensued as McLoughlin tried to coerce his servant into bed, although it was hard to tell who was on the losing end of the tussle. Fleury hit McLoughlin, McLoughlin slapped Fleury, Lasserte protested, and McLoughlin cuffed Lasserte for insubordination. Lasserte ran to get Urbain Heroux, setting in motion the events that would forever stain the reputation of Fort Stikine.

  At Lasserte’s urging, Heroux ran into the centre court shouting that Mr. John was “maltreating” Fleury, although other men recalled Heroux screaming something about McLoughlin “killing Fleury.” For his impudence, McLoughlin “struck Urbain in the face.” As the sound of the slap echoed off the timber walls, the entire fort’s complement stilled, too frightened to draw breath. The Iroquois stood silent, his face like stone but his eyes blazing with hatred. He then hissed, “I never received a blow without revenging it.” The standoff held a moment longer, the tension heavy enough to snap bones, before Heroux warned McLoughlin to take care of himself and walked away.

  Heroux headed for the southwest bastion. As he passed Antoine Kawannassé, he muttered, “It would be well to put a ball through Mr. John.” Heroux mounted the stairs and exited onto the gallery, looking down at McLoughlin in the square below. With the eyes of the fort upon him, McLoughlin could not let the challenge to his authority go unanswered. Glaring up at the blackened silhouette, he ordered Heroux “to come down but the latter, in a tone of defiance, dared him to come up.”

  Joe Lamb heard the heated exchange as he kept watch in the gallery above the back gate. Lamb made his way toward Heroux, his finger welded to the trigger of his rifle, ready for whatever came next. Suddenly the moon was obscured by cloud, and visibility dropped to nothing. As Lamb approached the southwest corner, Kawannassé “heard someone jump down,” and Simon Aneuharazie, standing near the base of the bastion, was almost flattened by the falling Heroux. Aneuharazie raised his rifle and told Heroux to give himself up but received only an “insolent refusal…in language not fit to be repeated.” Heroux “appeared in a violent rage and reproached us with cowardice, saying ‘you are all as much afraid of Mr. McLoughlin as a parcel of old wives but I am the man for him. I will look after him tonight.’”

  What happened next suggests premeditation. Heroux turned back into the stairwell and grabbed a “gun standing against the lower door of the bastion.” Heroux had loaded the gun and hidden it earlier that evening. Kawannassé ran toward the bastion and “saw Urbain taking aim at something.” Heroux pulled the trigger, “but the gun appeared to be very slightly loaded and it made no report.” Heroux’s rifle was pointed straight at John McLoughlin.

  McLoughlin ordered him to drop his weapon, but Heroux just laughed. At that moment, both men bolted toward the Kanaka barracks, where a number of Sandwich Islanders lay sleeping. The sound of McLoughlin running to his door woke Kakepé, who glanced outside to see what was happening. Through the filthy windowpane, Kakepé saw Heroux “seize Mr. McLoughlin around the body but the latter succeeded in throwing him off.” As Heroux regained his footing, McLoughlin called out for the Kanakas to arm themselves and to fire on Heroux. McLoughlin then ran to McPherson’s room in search of a weapon. As he passed, he ordered Kawannassé to fetch his sword, but when Kawannassé went to the chief trader’s room, “his wife refused to give it up.”

  In McPherson’s cramped quarters, a war counsel was quickly convened, made up of McLoughlin, McPherson, a sword-less Kawannassé, and McLoughlin’s wife, who had followed Kawannassé in search of her husband. She was horrified to see “his shirt was torn to rags.” McLoughlin, frantically clutching his arm, said, “Heroux had fired at me,” brandishing his shirt sleeve as proof. The near miss shook McLoughlin, who “continued walking about the room, grasping with one hand the tick of the other arm, above the elbow, where he [said] he was wounded.” There was no sign of blood.

  McLoughlin told the room that “Urbain wants to kill me,” but this was not news to those assembled. McPherson had often heard Heroux declare “I will shoot him,” and Heroux once told Kawannassé “he would never be happy until he had put [McLoughlin] to death.”

  McLoughlin knew of Heroux’s vile intent, thanks to his drunken valet. It was common knowledge in the fort that Fleury “was aware of everything” and told it all to his master. McLoughlin began playing “a demented sort of cat-and-mouse game with the fort’s complement,” throwing his knowledge of their treachery back in their faces and goading them into action. He dared the men to “kill me if you can; if you kill me, you will not kill a woman, you will kill a man.”

  Now, surrounded by his most trusted advisers in the relative safety of McPherson’s room, his boasts rang hollow. Heroux and his confederates meant to rid Stikine of its leader, and McLoughlin’s salvation lay in the unlikely form of George Simpson. The Governor had made vague promises to return with McLoughlin’s new assistant, and every morning the chief trader anxiously scanned the horizon for any sign of the cavalry. As his counsellors looked on, McLoughlin took his wife by the hand and told her if Simpson “does not come soon, you will not see me again.” The certainty brought McLoughlin and his wife to tears, and the onlookers shifted awkwardly at the sight of such bald emotion. Pulling himself together, McLoughlin rallied and put on a brave face, saying, “Never mind, if I die, I will take it like a man.”

  McLoughlin was drying his wife’s tears when Phillip Smith and Simon Aneuharazie burst into the room. They, too, had heard Heroux’s threats and offered to hunt down the villainous Iroquois, telling McLoughlin “that if he wished to punish Heroux, they would seize him.” Their support again moved McLoughlin t
o tears. The crying proved contagious, and “Smith & Simon, the latter with tears in his eyes, entreated Mr. John to remain at home and not go out,” but McLoughlin was resolved, exclaiming time and again, “I must bring the matter to a point.” The men continued their pleas, but McLoughlin was “losing all patience,” and he prepared for war.

  He told the men to arm themselves, ordering Kawannassé to load his handguns and McPherson to ready his rifle. They did as bidden, and McLoughlin snatched his long gun “as soon as it was loaded and either Antoine or Simon belted on his Pistols.” McLoughlin then grabbed hold of “a stout bludgeon” as McPherson, taking up a lantern, led McLoughlin and the men out of his room.

  They ran headfirst into Francois Pressé, who was hiding behind the door, waving his weapon and “looking suspicious.” Gripped by fear, McLoughlin disarmed the man and hauled him off to the storage room that served as a makeshift jail cell. McLoughlin ensured Pressé’s feet “were in irons” and the door was bolted before resuming the hunt for Heroux.

  Just then, a bell began to peal in the centre court. It was the fort’s main alarm, a signal normally reserved for aboriginal attacks. Kannaquassé rang the bell to flush McLoughlin out of hiding, but not everyone knew it was a false alarm. Chaos ensued as more than a dozen loaded men with loaded weapons scrambled to repel a non-existent enemy.

  There was a long silence, then two quick pops, followed by “the reports of more than fifteen shots.” Smith ran to his room in search of his gun, “but not finding it in the place where I used to keep it, I went out without it.” The melee grew as Pressé, Martineau, Lasserte, and Heroux fired “each a shot, apparently without any particular object as they fired in the air and toward the outside of the fort.”

  As McLoughlin crept through a passageway, he stumbled and his rifle accidently discharged. Kawannassé reloaded it for him while McLoughlin ordered the Kanakas in the gallery to shoot the Canadians, “especially Lesserte [sic] and Urbain.” On his command, a dozen shots immediately erupted from the gallery. The senseless gunplay continued even after Kawannassé cried “stop, stop, stop.”

  With his long gun in hand, McLoughlin moved along the platform of the men’s barracks, “walking cautiously” as he passed the door, hugging the wall for safety. McPherson, one floor up, scanned the fort with his lantern, letting the light fall on the chief trader. McPherson heard McLoughlin “weeping loudly” as he searched in vain for Heroux. For reasons that would die with him, McLoughlin never unholstered his pistols.

  Kawannassé made his way up to the gallery, dodging the incessant gunfire. As he stood looking down from the southwest bastion, he “saw Urbain just before me, lurking by the corner of the house.” Heroux’s long gun was empty, its ammunition wasted in the false alarm. What happened next passed in the blink of an eye: “Urbain stepped back to where he had another gun standing and again, advancing to the corner of the house, fired.” The shot was deafening, “a very loud report” that shook the fort like a hard wind. The bullet pierced its target and sailed across the courtyard before “lodging in the Carpenters shop Door.” John McLoughlin “immediately fell forward upon his face,” and the wooden walkway echoed with the “noise of a heavy body falling on the platform.”

  Captain Cole watched it all unfold from the doorway of the men’s barracks. He was “quite naked, having just got out of bed” when he heard the alarm and the volley of shots that followed. He ran to the window as McLoughlin slunk past and saw “Urbain a few paces off, near the adjoining windows.” After the fatal shot was fired, and the chief trader fell, Cole saw McLoughlin “lying wounded on the platform and respiring with freedom, audibly,” as “the murderer walked anxiously round for a moment,” then “retreated a step or two behind the corner of the house, as if to hide himself.” George Heron, leaving the safety of the water closet, “saw a man laying on his hands and knees between the platform and the wood. He had a gun laying beside him. By his dress I should think it was Urbain but I am not certain.”

  McLoughlin was bleeding into his lungs, and the sound of his laboured breaths haunted all who heard it. As the death rattle deepened, at least one man could stand it no longer. Captain Cole watched Urbain Heroux “come on from the corner of the house,” put his back to the wall, “and place his foot on the neck of Mr. McLoughlin,” acting “as if to finish the tragedy.”

  Even with Heroux’s boot on his throat, McLoughlin was “still breathing.” Heroux lifted his foot and, looking down, spied McLoughlin’s gun. Heroux grabbed the rifle but it was unloaded. In rage and desperation, he took hold of the barrel and “struck him a severe blow to the forehead, and in doing so, broke the rifle.” As the gun splintered, Lasserte heard Heroux scream, “Get up now, see if you can strike the men with your stick.” Heroux cast aside the broken long gun, and McLoughlin’s agonies ceased.

  Other men soon arrived at the platform. They found McLoughlin “lying on the left side with the right arm stretched forward at full height, quite dead.” With a smirk on his lips, Heroux whispered, “Mr. John is asleep.” Up in the gallery, Kawannassé raised his rifle, as if to claim credit for the fatal shot, shouting “hurra for my gun.” Tearing the keys from the dead man’s vest, Heroux ordered Lasserte to free Francois Pressé from his chains.

  Heroux then turned to deal with potential witnesses. As he pushed past Captain Cole at the door of the men’s house, he asked the Islander if he knew who had killed Mr. John. Fearful, Cole replied: “I do not know; bye and bye, I will tell who did it.” As the Kanakas made their way down from the gallery, they too demanded to know who fired the fatal shot. This time, Heroux said, “I suppose it was the Indians [from Tako].” Up in the gallery, Kawannassé knew “it could not have been the Indians, as I had secured all their arms early in the evening and they were all lying dead drunk in my house.”

  Pressé arrived at the scene, relishing his freedom. Although he had heard the commotion, Pressé was unsure what had transpired during his captivity. At Heroux’s urging, Pressé “wrested” the gun from Kanakanui’s hands. Pressé then turned to Heroux and asked who had killed Mr. John. Heroux’s reply came in the form of a riddle: “He who killed him placed himself near enough not to miss.” Pressé could not crack the code and pleaded for an honest answer, but Heroux offered only a thinly veiled warning: “He who killed him will not hesitate to take a false oath.”

  Captain Cole had heard enough. Thrusting an accusing finger at Heroux, Cole declared, “You have killed the master.” Heroux wheeled and faced his accuser head-on, his eyes sharp with menace. He put his lips to Cole’s ear and whispered, “No, it was not I.”

  Just then, Nahua crawled free from his hiding place and knelt beside his master, his face bathed in tears. He had seen it all and fixed his eyes on Heroux, asking why he had shot the chief trader. Heroux lunged at Nahua “in a furious manner and said it was not him who had killed Mr. McLoughlin.” Heroux cuffed the insolent cook with the back of his hand and warned him he “had better take care how [he] spoke.” Heroux then stared down every man on the platform, forcing each to cast his eyes to the ground lest they too incur his wrath. Having cowed those on the platform, Heroux lifted his gaze toward the gallery where Kawannassé stood triumphant. The two Iroquois locked eyes as Kawannassé lowered his gun and made his way down to where the body lay.

  Pierre Kannaquassé soon joined Antoine Kawannassé, and the three Iroquois stood over their kill, the new masters of Fort Stikine. The Kanakas and Canadians stood back, fearful of this strange new world order. Kannaquassé looked down at McLoughlin’s lifeless form on the ground and, without a word, “kicked the body in the face.” The sound was sickening. To prevent further indignities, George Heron asked some of the men to help carry McLoughlin’s corpse into the house and prepare it for burial. Heroux spit at him and sneered, saying “he would not carry a dead dog, that when he killed a dog he left the carcass there.” Heron retreated, and McLoughlin remained where he fell.

  According to Iroquois tradition, all kills demand a ritual, even th
at of a dog. Kawannassé dropped his gun, bent down, and thrust his hand into McLoughlin’s gaping wound, drenching his hand in warm blood. Raising himself to full height, Kawannassé then “painted himself with the Blood of the Deceased,” streaking red across his cheeks like war paint. He turned to his fellow Iroquois and with a hollow laugh said, “It was the blood of a Deer.” The kill was now complete and the spirits at rest. The Iroquois retreated to the men’s house to speak in private.

  The blood ritual unnerved the remainder of the fort’s men, who lingered around the body as though it still retained command. Many continued to question who had killed McLoughlin, and “some of the men even suspected Pierre Kannaquassé or Antoine of having committed the murder.” It would take several hours for those who had seen it with their own eyes to convince the others, but by morning all agreed that “the fatal shot had been fired by one Urbain Heroux.”

  seven

  Tight Reins and Loose Women

  Peter C. Newman once quipped that the initials HBC stand for “Horny Boys’ Club,” a cuttingly accurate poke at a company that was often more frat house than country club. Isolating hundreds of red-blooded men in their prime and denying them all contact with women was a recipe for disaster, putting the HBC on equal footing with the military and prisons as breeding grounds of sexual misconduct. Women had no place in the Honourable Company, and by the same token an HBC outpost was no place for a lady, “for residence here among the savages was not compatible at all with the life of a highly civilized white woman.”

  That is not to say there were no women at Fort Stikine. They were ably represented in the form of country wives, the aboriginal paramours of the HBC clerks and traders. Although the unions were not legally recognized, some of them were long-standing, and a few might even be described as committed and loving. Most, however, were truly marriages of convenience. In exchange for the comforts they were expected to provide, the wives received trade goods, food, and shelter, but it was not necessarily a good deal for the women. They were prisoners within the outpost’s walls; wives “took their meals alone, saw few visitors, and had few outings.” The aboriginal consorts also had to contend with the ever-present threat of being ousted by a more suitable companion. Some local brides even resorted to infanticide while their men were away, fearing their husbands might return with a white wife. It was a difficult and precarious arrangement, fraught with far greater peril for the women than their male partners.