The Bastard of Fort Stikine Read online

  To break Dickson’s lingering hold on his troops, Governor Simpson devised a plan that was as devious as it was simple: he offered several key Liberating Army officers jobs with the Hudson’s Bay Company. “By detaching them you will have less difficulty in managing the others,” Simpson told the higher-ups in London. McLoughlin could scarcely contain his shock when he “got a letter from Gov. Simpson informing me that he had a place for me if I wanted to accept of it.” The timing of the offer was serendipitous, for Dickson’s army was bivouacked at death’s door, and McLoughlin had finally come to his senses.

  The prospect of life in the HBC no longer felt so repugnant, and having mortgaged his future to a madman like Dickson, the thought of pledging allegiance to George Simpson seemed the lesser of two evils. To his family’s surprise, John Jr. accepted Simpson’s duplicitous offer and became an HBC junior clerk and surgeon. He was engaged for three years at the modest rate of £100 per annum; the salary was an insult, but at least the HBC was good for the money. McLoughlin had not seen one penny from Dickson during his year-long ordeal, despite the general’s repeated promises.

  Simpson initially assigned John Jr. to Fort McLoughlin, but his father “chose to keep him closer at hand, at Fort Vancouver.” When McLoughlin arrived on the west coast, he was reunited with his parents and his younger brother, David, whom he knew only through the occasional exchange of letters. Though brief, it was the best of times for the McLoughlin clan.

  As for the general and his quest to liberate the aboriginals from their Occidental oppressors, the dream died in the spring of 1837. Thanks to Simpson’s machinations, Dickson’s officers began deserting at an alarming rate. The general and his last holdouts finally headed south for Santa Fe, but the men were exhausted, ill, and unpaid. Just south of the border, the troops refused to go on. Unable to marshal his forces, “Dickson’s disordered mind” finally came undone and, in keeping with his oeuvre, “the invasion ended in the fashion of an opera bouffe.” The general, dressed in his full regimental finest, ordered his army to stand at attention. As a handful of bedraggled tin soldiers looked on, Dickson “made a laudatory speech, removed his epaulets, fastened them on Grant’s shoulders, handed him his sword, mounted, and disappeared in the wilderness.” He was never heard from again.

  It had taken a lunatic’s quixotic war to accomplish what many thought impossible: Governor Simpson had reversed his own dictate and invited John McLoughlin Jr. to join the Hudson’s Bay Company. Let the record show that in June 1837, hell froze over.

  Monday, April 25, 1842 — Full Dark

  fort stikine

  Simpson sat poker-faced, digesting Thomas McPherson’s account of McLoughlin’s untimely demise, for that was how the Governor thought of it: as a death, an unfortunate accident perhaps, but certainly not a murder. McPherson had not witnessed the actual shooting — he had been in the southeast bastion at the moment McLoughlin fell — but Simpson had little interest in the death itself. It was the story McPherson told of McLoughlin’s behaviour leading up to the shooting that captured Sir George’s attention. He wanted to hear more of McPherson’s sordid tale of debauchery, and so, at the Governor’s urging, McPherson began cataloguing McLoughlin’s all-too-human failings: “Mr. McLoughlin was in the habit of drinking Grog after dinner.…McLoughlin became very much addicted to liquor, frequently getting drunk as early as 1 and 2 O’Clock in the afternoon…more so even to madness before evening.” The slander struck the perfect discordant note, for Simpson had little patience for those “addicted to the Bottle.”

  Being a lowdown drunk was bad enough, but McPherson insisted that when McLoughlin was in his cups, he “was exceedingly violent, beating the People with his Fist and Bludgeons, inflicting wounds, tying them and flogging them on the bare back with a cat even till Blood Streamed down.” McPherson could never be mistaken for a wordsmith, but he limned a visceral and brutal image of the young McLoughlin, and Simpson embraced that vision wholeheartedly. He had believed McLouglin capable of great savagery since witnessing the boy’s rage at his Montreal boarding school. Sir George also knew McLouglin had made overt threats to his subordinates in the past. While serving in Dickson’s Liberating Army, McLoughlin held command of a small band of men he described as “the worst of all those living under the face of Heaven.” In a letter to John Fraser, McLoughlin confessed he “could not get them to work without hard treatment.” McLouglin then assured his cousin: “before I get to red river I shall break some of their bones, and I will do it with the greatest pleasure for they deserve it, they give me more trouble than they are worth.” Fraser recounted his cousin’s disciplinary tactics to Dr. McLoughlin and Governor Simpson, who mentally filed them away for future use.

  McPherson’s litany of abuses ended with a blanket indictment of the chief trader’s shortcomings as a boss and as a man: “McLoughlin in other respects led a very irregular life, generally keeping 3 women at the same time in the Fort, Sleeping the greater part of the forenoon and paying little or no attention to the Business.” Simpson lacked the moral authority to judge another man’s conduct with women, but that had never stopped him before. McLoughlin’s tendency to sleep the morning away also stuck in the Governor’s craw, as it was not in keeping with “Simpson’s penchant for early starts.” It was McPherson’s final charge, however, that Simpson found most objectionable. Based solely on McPherson’s word, the Governor declared, “The business of the post seems to have been very badly conducted.…the accounts, I fear, are in a very irregular state.”

  To a Company man, this was inexcusable, even if Simpson himself had occasionally fiddled with the books in the past. “Ledger books and post journals, Simpson knew in his bones, could cover as many sins as they could reveal,”and Simpson was certain McLoughlin’s books would disclose myriad indiscretions. So certain was Simpson that, without so much as cracking a single spine or reading a single inventory, he declared Stikine’s books to be in complete disarray, conclusive proof of McLoughlin’s incompetence, corruption, and malfeasance. Sir George’s mind was made up, and hard evidence was neither necessary nor welcome.

  For the sake of appearances, Simpson deposed four other men: Canadians Phillip Smith and Benoni Fleury, and two Kanakas, Kakepé and Captain Cole. During each interview, he asked no questions and challenged no accounts, even when the witnesses openly contradicted themselves or one another. It was only so much legal theatre, for Simpson had reached his verdict the moment McPherson stopped talking.

  The Governor believed what the men told him “because it confirmed his views of the case,” and his credulity flowed from the wellspring of his studied cynicism. He quickly developed a theory of the crime: McLoughlin “had simply reverted to type.” Accordingly, Simpson determined that “this dreadful act [was] done, I firmly believe, under the influence of terror, as a measure of self preservation.”

  As for who had acted in self-defence, Simpson settled on one man: “I have no Doubt on my mind that Urbain Heroux fired the fatal shot But I think it better not to bring it home to him.” The Governor’s sympathies for the perpetrator stood in sharp contrast to his growing indifference for the victim. Dealing with Heroux meant more headaches for the Governor, and Simpson’s concerns for his own well-being always eclipsed the misfortunes of others, even those of the newly deceased John McLoughlin Jr.

  It was not the first time Simpson had been so forgiving. Years before, HBC trader John Siveright had “shot a man in cold blood…and although little is now said about it, he is still looked upon as a Murderer by many of his colleagues.” Homicide, however, was not grounds for dismissal in Simpson’s world, and Siveright went on to have a stellar career with the Honourable Company, rising to the rank of chief factor before retiring with a comfortable pension. Siveright was ultimately acquitted of the killing because Simpson believed “he was more influenced by personal fear and want of Nerve than by any worse feeling.”

  With Siveright, and now with Heroux, Simpson had little motivation to cull the truth from the i
nnuendo. He was the quintessential Company man, this was a Company problem, and, as such, all misadventures would be handled in-house. That the crime was committed “in self defence, might, under such circumstances, prove convenient,” for any public inquiry would bring McLoughlin’s demons to light and “attract much unfavourable attention to the Hudson’s Bay Company,” a situation Simpson wanted to avoid.

  In truth, McLoughlin’s reputation was the furthest thing from Simpson’s mind. His only thought was to protect the Company from a trial that would expose his questionable labour practices — including hiring ex-convicts and retaining problem employees — to public scrutiny. The Governor had gone to great lengths to promote the erroneous impression “he had access to a real labor market,” for in the world of commerce, “perception was everything and no one knew that better than George Simpson.” From the Company’s perspective, the timing of this corporate glitch could not have been worse.

  Simpson sat at the dead man’s desk and, in a letter to his overlords on the London Committee, offered a master class in corporate weaseldom: “In the whole case our aim has been to assume as little responsibility as possible and at the same time to facilitate the prosecution by every means not incompatible with the rights and feelings of innocent parties.” Ethics aside, Simpson knew his efforts at spin doctoring were futile, and he cautioned, “Neither by this course, nor by any other practicable course, can the Hudson’s Bay Company expect to avoid popular censure in this most untoward business.”

  In closing, the Governor offered a crafty yet simple solution: make McLoughlin’s death Russia’s problem. After all, the event had occurred on Russian territory, albeit on land under HBC control. Simpson conveniently glossed over a number of confounding factors, most notably that both the shooter and victim were Canadian and therefore British subjects. Still, he assured the Committee, he was certain such minor details could be resolved in the fullness of time. Simpson then congratulated himself on his “conveniently antiseptic solution of conceding jurisdiction” to Russian authorities and set about taking care of business.

  To that end, he made a number of key staff changes. The first was to place “Mr. [Charles] Dodd, chief Mate of the Cowlitz in charge of the Fort, for which he appears well qualified.” He also ordered “a respectable young man, George Blenkinsop, one of the Sailors, to act in the capacity of assistant.” The Governor left Dodd and Blenkinsop a series of written instructions, as well as some paternal words of wisdom: “Notwithstanding the melancholy event which has lately occurred, the people of the establishment are upon the whole a well conducted body of men. With firmness and kind treatment you will have no difficulty in managing them and I have to beg that no violence be used either towards men or Indians unless such should become absolutely necessary as a measure of self preservation.” In addition to Blenkinsop, Sir George counselled Dodd to rely on “McPherson and Smith, who are trusty and confidential.”

  There remained one very real threat facing Stikine. As Simpson struggled to solve his personnel problems, “the Indians, who are collected to the number of about 2000 in the neighbourhood…were talking of attacking the Fort, which…they thought would be an easy capture.” The Governor’s recommendation to Dodd was a triumph of effect over effectiveness, and showed just how poorly he understood the situation: “The indian interpreter Hanaga Joe I think ought to be removed to outside the Fort as it is not fit that any Indian should have an opportunity of knowing your weak points.” Banishing Hanega Joe was a meaningless gesture, but Simpson had given an order, which, to his mind, meant the problem was solved.

  That left the sticky question of what to do with those responsible. To begin, Simpson fired Pierre Kannaquassé because “he had been guilty of an earlier attempt to shoot John McLoughlin, Jr.” The Governor also decided Kannaquassé should be sent in irons to Fort Vancouver, “to be forwarded to Canada, as a worthless character and not to be re-admitted to the Service.” As for Heroux, the alleged triggerman, Simpson ordered that he be shackled and secured aboard the Cowlitz, so that he could be transported to Sitka and handed over to Russian authorities for assessment. With that, Simpson felt certain he “had done all that was necessary or expedient.”

  Two tasks remained, each of a far more personal nature. First, Simpson ensured that “Mr. McLoughlin’s private property [be] packed up and forwarded to Vancouver, and his private papers separated from those that appear, on a very superficial examination, to be public.” Included in this recovery effort was a highly sentimental artifact. Powkow, a Kanaka loyal to McLoughlin, had taken “a ring from the finger of the corpse,” which he “gave to the woman who lived with McLoughlin.” In a particularly heartless moment, Simpson made certain “this ring was afterwards taken from her and sent to Fort Vancouver with his clothes.”

  To complete his final duty, the little emperor again took up pen and paper. His first missive was addressed to HBC Governor Pelly. In words as cutting as they were cold, Simpson informed his superior that “Mr. McLoughlin’s conduct and management, during the past year, were quite disgraceful; that he had become a slave to licentiousness and dissipation, that his treatment of the people was exceedingly violent & oppressive, and very frequently cruel in the extreme, and that, the business intrusted to his charge was entirely neglected…in short, profligacy, waste of property and disorder characterized the management of Stikine during the past year.”

  Map of Fort Stikine, drawn during the initial depositions in April 1842. The effort contains a very primitive attempt at ballistic reconstruction. According to the notes, the asterisk indicates where the killer “must” have been standing, based on a trajectory that traces a straight line back from the bullet lodged in the carpentry shop door. This, in turn, suggests the map represented what Simpson wanted to believe, rather than what the eyewitnesses were telling him.

  In his last act before leaving Stikine, Simpson wrote to Dr. McLoughlin to inform him of his son’s demise. With complete disregard for a father’s feelings, Simpson laid the blame for McLoughlin’s death at his own feet: “His violence when under the influence of liquor, which was very frequently the case, amount[ed] to insanity.” Salting the wound he had just inflicted, the Governor absolved the killer of all responsibility, claiming “Heroux’s conduct on the fatal night still appears to have been dictated by the Instinct of self preservation more than by premeditated malice.” Simpson then absolved himself, arguing that, because the shooting had occurred on Russian soil, “no legal steps against the parties can be taken by me; but my belief is, that any Tribunal by which the case could be tried, would find a verdict of ‘Justifiable Homicide.’” The law had long recognized the notion of a victimless crime, but thanks to George Simpson, John McLoughlin Jr. had just become a crimeless victim. Sir George then had the temerity to conclude his letter to McLoughlin Sr. by praising the murderous crew and noting “their conduct throughout has been fully better than could have been expected under such inhuman treatment as they were frequently exposed to.”

  From the moment the envelope was sealed, Simpson’s letter to Dr. McLoughlin claimed its place in infamy as a missive “remarkable for its callousness,” a supposed condolence letter deemed so “harsh and tactless” that “even if the details which Sir George cited had been correct, the tone of his letter was uncalled for.” Throughout his life, Simpson’s writings had revealed him to be a museum-quality bastard, but here he sank to unimaginable new depths. Although he did not yet realize it, Simpson had destroyed what remained of the once-proud McLoughlin dynasty.

  five

  “A Sink of Pollution”

  If location is the first rule of real estate, Fort Stikine refused to play by it. The site was, at the time and in retrospect, an absolutely stupid place to build an outpost. Even George Simpson conceded it “had not been well selected…situated on a peninsula barely large enough for the necessary buildings.” As a result, the fort was tiny by HBC standards, “an Establishment two hundred ft. Square.”

  The problem was not ju
st space; it was also proximity to water, as John McLoughlin Jr. lamented in the fort’s journal: “Tide very high last night, so much so it carried away part of the water front.” The tide turned soil to mud and washed away the fort’s underpinnings, leaving behind toxic sewage that triggered even the most hardened gag reflex. In his self-aggrandizing opus Narrative of a Journey Round the World, Simpson painted a vivid olfactory tableau of the region, thanks to “the slime that was periodically deposited by the receding sea, aided by the putridity and filth of the native villages…[filling] the atmosphere with a most nauseous perfume.” One occupant summed it up best when he described the post as “a hell upon Earth with a Sink of Pollution.”

  Despite water on all sides, the fort’s potable water was perpetually in short supply. Access to the vital resource was often threatened by hostile locals, who used it as a form of protest. Eloisa McLoughlin Rae noted, “The water was not close by the Fort there. We had a trough made with two boards for half a mile to bring in water. When the Indians got drunk or in a bad humour they would destroy the trough so that we could not get water.” When the aqueduct was out, the men were forced to drink wine or hard liquor, further hampering the rebuilding process.