The Bastard of Fort Stikine Page 16

  Simpson also had issues with the new appointee, for Douglas was a “half-breed” of an entirely different stripe. In 1803, he was born in Demerara (now Guyana) to a Glasgow merchant, also named James, and Martha Anne Tefler, a Creole from Barbados and a black freewoman. Their coupling produced a number of offspring, but they never married. At age nine, little James was dispatched to a prep school in Scotland to secure a proper education. Scrappy and sporting a perpetually chipped shoulder, Douglas learned to “get on by dint of whip and spur.” He began his career in the fur trade with the North West Company, and following the merger in 1821, he was made a clerk second class of the HBC.

  His rise through the Company ranks was meteoric. On January 30, 1830, he was dispatched to Fort Vancouver to serve as Dr. McLoughlin’s accountant. Douglas soon tempered Simpson’s prejudice by being “imperious, penny pinching, [and] obsessed with detail and ritual.” Douglas was dictatorial and a tight-fisted believer in false economy, provided, of course, the privations never touched him. By 1835, Simpson had learned to overlook the swarthy colour of his skin, and Douglas was commissioned as a “gentleman of the interior” and promoted to the rank of chief trader. In short order he was given charge of the district, supplanting his former mentor, Dr. McLoughlin.

  Douglas was a study in contrasts. Peter C. Newman was clearly smitten, calling Douglas a “mulatto of elegant mien whose character was a perplexing combination of endearing romanticism and glacial tenacity.” His subordinates saw only the sharper side, claiming he could be “furiously violent when aroused.” Still, he possessed an effusive charm and was capable of disarming even the hardest of men.

  He could be difficult, and his history was certainly spotty, but the Committee pretended Douglas was impartial, and he was their unanimous choice to lead the investigation into John McLoughlin’s death. The process proved arduous as the witnesses were by then scattered over a wide geographic area. The inquest dragged on for months, and further delays ensued as the depositions were copied by hand in triplicate before making the circuitous voyage from the Pacific coast to London.

  The Committee took its time reviewing Douglas’s witness accounts, but their leisurely pace should not be misconstrued as thoughtful deliberation. Pelly and his backscratchers were simply hoping for a miracle. Eventually, Secretary Barclay informed Simpson and McLoughlin the new evidence would be sent to the Russian governor in preparation for trial. Dr. McLoughlin was elated, but Simpson soon snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by informing the Committee the men involved were no longer in the Company’s employ.

  When Dr. McLoughlin first learned of his son’s tragic death in June 1842, he ordered Douglas to send those responsible to Sitka, but his command was ignored. Douglas did send Kannaquassé and Pressé to join Heroux at the prison in Sitka, but the rest of the men were quietly reassigned, by order of George Simpson. A few were sent to Fort Simpson while the rest were transferred to a new outpost, Fort Albert, where they were to be held “under watch and ward.” It was a loose form of house arrest at best, and escape was as easy as walking away.

  Meanwhile, the Russians had their hands full with Urbain Heroux. In custody, the Iroquois showed himself “to be a man of ferocious disposition, having attempted to murder his keeper, who prevented his escape.” While still at Fort Stikine, Heroux had told Kannaquassé, “I am going to the Russian Fort and will be either banished or hung,” but neither prediction came to fruition. The Russians did not want to deal with McLoughlin’s killer any more than George Simpson did, and they found a legal loophole. As Heroux raged in irons (and Kannaquassé and Pressé settled in beside him), Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel informed Governor Pelly the Russian government had no jurisdiction over the case because Stikine had been leased to the HBC. Wrangel then ordered Sitka’s governor, Adolph Etoline, to send the prisoners back to the Hudson’s Bay Company. As fate would have it, the men were to be remanded to Dr. John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver.

  When the Russians refused to solve their problem, the HBC was forced to make a decision. Privately, Barclay told Simpson all this squabbling about jurisdiction was just “more fudge alleged to get rid of the business.” The Committee secretary then stepped over the dead body of John McLoughlin Jr. and recast the Hudson’s Bay Company as the true victim of this tragedy: “If these men cannot be tried by the Russians, what is to be done with them…they might be tried in Canada but what an expense and inconvenience to get them and the witnesses transported thither — and what an exposure too! To let them loose without trial would be a most dangerous example to others.” Bribery, Barclay decided, was not out of the question. He contemplated paying Sitka to try the men, wondering aloud whether “money was the real reason the Russians were refusing to act.”

  It was idle speculation, as Barclay saw no need to grease Russian palms, nor was he interested in airing the Company’s dirty laundry. He fixed a hard price on John McLoughlin’s life, arguing that “the expense involved in bringing the case to trial was more than the Company was willing to incur. Bad publicity was virtually certain but convictions were not.” And although he never admitted it publicly, Barclay felt neither McLoughlin was “worth the trouble.”

  §

  In February 1844, Heroux, Kannaquassé, and Pressé found themselves on a steamer bound for Fort Vancouver, where they were to be delivered into the waiting clutches of their victim’s vengeful father. George Simpson recognized that handing the men over to Dr. McLoughlin was tantamount to a death sentence, and to avoid further bloodshed, he sent a directive ordering McLoughlin to free the men upon their arrival. His edict met with stony defiance. In a missive which began “I am no Lawyer But,” McLoughlin acknowledged the men were under “the Warrant of a Magistrate,” and that “until instructions come from England, how Sir George, who is himself only a Magistrate, can take on himself to order their liberation, I know not.”

  Unbeknownst to Simpson or the London Committee, Dr. McLoughlin had already settled on a course of action. The moment Heroux and his confederates arrived in Vancouver, Dr. McLoughlin sent the accused (along with a dozen witnesses and an interpreter) to York Factory, with instructions they be sent on to Canada for trial. So certain was McLoughlin Sr. of their guilt, he boldly declared that if the Canadian courts were unwilling to prosecute, he would do so himself.

  The doctor’s unilateral action brought down the full wrath of the HBC on his snow-white head. Simpson was apoplectic, sputtering, “[If] the prisoners either escape unpunished or receive at most a trifling punishment, Mr. McLoughlin will hardly find in his own feelings any compensation for the odium which he will have heaped, and the injury which he will have inflicted, on the honourable company.” McLoughlin’s eastbound chain gang made it as far as Norway House before Simpson stopped them in their tracks. The shackles were removed, and Heroux and his cohort were told they were free to go.

  Simpson’s vengeful ire came with a price tag. The Governor informed the London office he had ordered Dr. McLoughlin “to make up a statement of all the expenses of the investigation, so that your honours may be able to decide whether the burden is to fall on the Fur trade or on Mr. McLoughlin himself.” Sir George then played his communiqué time-delay advantage, refusing to wait for the Committee to decide anything. Instead, he “simply cut off McLoughlin’s five-hundred-pound salary until such time as he might apologize.” Simpson also knew how to mix insult and injury. Upon learning the identities of his son’s murderers, Dr. McLoughlin had immediately stopped their pay. In a spiteful act of retribution, the Governor ensured the killer and his confederates received their back pay, and that McLoughlin knew it. Lest the good doctor mistake Simpson’s message, Sir George gave one of the perpetrators a raise and ordered another be returned to active service.

  Simpson’s venom was inexhaustible, but others in the company had tired of the ordeal, and much of their frustration was directed at the victim’s father. The general consensus was that Dr. McLoughlin needed to move on, for his ceaseless lamentations had grown as te
dious as rain. Archibald McDonald, chief factor of Fort Colvile, marvelled that the “pile upon pile of papers the unhappy father has laboured to fill upon this harassing question to prove his son to have been what in my opinion he was not, is truly astonishing.” Chief trader John Tod echoed the sentiment, writing: “I fear the Dr. has not only compromised his dignity in this affair but has also failed to excite the Sympathy of the greater part of his friends, from his very excess.”

  Dr. McLoughlin had become an object of pity. The matter had dragged on too long and, thanks to Simpson’s petty machinations, “even McLoughlin ran out of energy, and funds.” Eloisa recalled, “About that time my father was in very low spirits.” McLoughlin’s relationship with Simpson, never good, was now unsalvageable. The doctor had also fallen out with James Douglas, a loss he felt more keenly. Eloisa described how the men first met: “Douglas was 17 when he came to Fort Williams — he was a boy when my father was a man. My father always liked him.” Whatever affection McLoughlin once had for him was trampled under Douglas’s square toes during McLoughlin’s demotion and the final failed round of depositions.

  §

  There would be no formal resolution in the murder of John McLoughlin Jr. Simpson’s hope that Russia would clean up the Company’s mess was an idea that withered on the vine. Equally fruitless was the notion Canada or England might step in and prosecute the case. Despite Dr. McLoughlin’s repeated threats, he lacked the personal funds to bring a civil suit, a venture he estimated might cost in excess of £10,000. Even if McLoughlin could muster such resources, Simpson had already acquitted and freed the men responsible. The matter seemed closed, yet there remained one last loose end: Douglas’s depositions. Having commissioned the statements, the London office felt duty-bound to do something. The Committee, in an act of unmistakable favouritism, elected to forward the latest inquest findings to their overseas governor, George Simpson, for comment. After years of legal wrangling and endless strife, the case of John McLoughlin Jr. ended precisely where it began.

  The Governor’s musings were recorded for posterity in the precise hand of his personal secretary Edward Martin Hopkins, who was under strict instructions to mark his every word and forward the compendium to the Committee. Simpson opened by taking strong exception to the statements, although his rancour was no doubt fuelled by past criticisms of his own flawed depositions. In a classic case of psychological projection, Simpson found fault with the exact same missteps he had committed in his earlier inquest. He challenged the credibility of witnesses with vested interests in saving their own skins, and he criticized the leading questions posed during the depositions. He struggled to find a suitable example to prove his point, finally surrendering in exasperation and stating, “We shall not quote the answer, for any answer — be it what it might — to such a question, must be worse than useless.”

  His contempt for the process was palpable, yet Simpson still managed to reach a verdict in the case: “From the forgained deposition we arrive at the following conclusions: 1st That John McLoughlin, with a loaded gun and accompanied by a body of armed Kanakas, hunted up Urbain Heroux, avowing at the same time his intention to destroy him; 2nd That under these circumstance, a shot was fired, proving fatal to John McLoughlin — that shot having been fired by Urbain Heroux.” Gone was any mention of liquor and abuse, and he steadfastly refused to dignify the mutiny theory by giving it any serious consideration. You have to admire Simpson for sticking to his guns. His verdict had not wavered since his first proclamation, although he carefully sidestepped his previous finding of “Justifiable Homicide.”

  Although Simpson’s verdict was slathered in bastardized legalese, such jargon was judicially meaningless or, as he was so fond of saying, “worse than useless.” His conclusions, however, were good enough for John Henry Pelly and the London Committee, who declared Simpson’s findings to be the final word on the subject. They used his conclusions to close the matter of John McLoughlin Jr. forever.

  eleven

  Putting Flesh to Bone

  Although the tale of John McLoughlin Jr. is “a fascinating, if somewhat pathetic, narrative,” his tragic demise has not received the attention it deserves. Two-time McLoughlin biographer Dorothy Nafus Morrison dedicated only a handful of pages to his death, as did Burt Brown Barker in his chronicle of the family dynasty. James Raffan’s discussion of the murder runs little more than a page, while similarly scant accounts appear in Williams’s Highlights of the First Two Hundred Years of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Galbraith’s much-lauded biography of George Simpson, The Little Emperor. The murder warrants only a single sentence in Newman’s Empire of the Bay: “The dispute between the two climaxed as a result of Simpson’s mishandling of the investigation of the murder of McLoughlin’s son in the territory.” Just two chapter-length academic considerations of the crime have ever been published: Hamar Foster’s “Killing Mr. John,” which examined whether England, Upper Canada, or Russia had jurisdiction to prosecute the shooter; and an essay by Walter Kaye Lamb focusing entirely on the deteriorating relationship between McLoughlin’s father and Governor Simpson after the murder.

  Indeed, the friction between the two men seems to be the only aspect of the crime scholars care about, and much of the rhetoric hinges on a single question — whose version of events was correct: Simpson’s or McLoughlin’s? While the Company’s ruling class threw its lot in with the Governor, historians have sided with the victim’s father. Willard Ireland spoke for many when he wrote: “In all fairness, it must be added that McLoughlin was in the right.”

  But was he right? Was his mutiny theory any more plausible than the self-defence narrative championed by Simpson? Answering that question requires delving into the crime at a level never before attempted, and reconstructing the scene using the latest investigative methods.

  Cases like McLoughlin’s are the bane of modern forensic investigations. Murders masquerading as suicides, accidents, natural deaths, or even justifiable homicides are often mishandled. The scenes are not properly examined, autopsies are deemed unnecessary, and the collection of physical evidence is cursory at best. It is only after the true nature of the crime is revealed that investigators must piece together the event with whatever remains.

  In this case, what remains is a series of witness statements in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, as well as a few hand-drawn maps and some personal and business correspondence relating to the shooting. There was no police service in 1842, and no autopsy was performed on John McLoughlin. Ironically, although his medical career never amounted to much, he was the closest thing the fort had to a doctor, and as chief trader he was also its resident law enforcement. Had the bullet struck another, it would have fallen to McLoughlin to examine the body and investigate the circumstances. His untimely demise left a void no one else could fill, and, as a consequence, the specifics of his murder were recorded solely in the depositions of lay eyewitnesses.

  Relying on such statements to reconstruct the crime is a perilous but necessary proposition. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable in the best of circumstances, and evidence derived from individuals with strong motives to deceive makes it all the more questionable. Such potentially biased investigations raise the spectre of a deductive ouroboros, a circular argument endlessly feeding on itself.

  The lack of objective, professional scrutiny is an obstacle, but it is far from an insurmountable one. Even in the age of DNA and chemical analysis, murder investigations still rely heavily on eyewitness testimony. The former is meant to augment the latter, not replace it, as the analysis of physical evidence serves to confirm or refute the narrative of witnesses by alerting investigators to incongruities in the story being told.

  Today, a number of hallmarks are used to evaluate the credibility of witness testimony. The first is consistency: does the story change with each telling? In this case, witnesses were interviewed at least three times over the course of two years by different interrogators: Governor George Simpson, chief trader
Donald Manson, and chief factor James Douglas. In reconstructing the events at Fort Stikine, testimony that shifted over time was discounted, while preference was given to the narrative threads that remained constant. Second, convention holds that multiple witnesses offering identical descriptions are more credible than a single witness straying from the pack. That is not to say that the lone voice is inherently incorrect or lying, but simply that there is legal safety in numbers. Finally, testimony must match the physical evidence and obey the laws of gravity, physics, and the space-time continuum to be deemed credible. Then, as now, a person cannot be in two places at the same time, a bullet in flight behaves in predictable ways, and it is safe to assume the laws governing force and energy were not temporarily suspended in 1842.

  §

  The first step in any crime scene reconstruction is to understand the spatial relationships, which in this case include the fort’s layout and the position of each witness when the fatal shot was fired. Not everyone present in Fort Stikine on the night of the murder is relevant to the discussion. Certain individuals — such as McLoughlin’s wife, Francois Pressé, or Benoni Fleury — were excluded as suspects because they were asleep, incapacitated (drunk or in irons), indoors, or unarmed.

  Maps drawn during the depositions were augmented with details from the interrogations, and the resulting diagram reveals the setting as well as the physical relationships of players central to the action.

  Dashed line indicates the wound track through McLoughlin’s torso.

  The next step is to collect the physical evidence retroactively, beginning with the body of the victim. Although no autopsy was performed, McLoughlin’s injuries were well documented by his men, who described the nature of his wounds consistently, even if they disagreed as to their source.